Heron Lake Plateau not looking for a confession

@Owen!

Phox hadn't made it to the copse yet, and now he was pretty sure he wouldn't be making that trip for a long time. Now that Niamh had betrayed Towhee, he couldn't imagine going there until the two of them had made up... and that didn't seem likely anytime soon. He was Towhee's Person now, party of one. He pushed thoughts of the Firebirds (and Camilla) aside, deciding he would visit @Raven, assuming @Quixote wasn't right there with her.

Instead, he found @Phoebe. Not quite sure how to interact with her, he paused awkwardly and waved his tail. Uh, hey there. She ran away, probably uninterested in talking to her (at one time estranged) uncle.

Owen was examining the freshest layer of snowfall more closely, squinting at the glittering white stuff with a frown of concentration, when sister Phoebe went rocketing behind him. Owen's head snapped up to follow first her ashy tail as it streaked out of sight, then to pivot the other way and look with confusion in the direction from which she'd come. Uh...Pheebs? She was already out of sight. Her brother lifted a paw indecisively as he for one moment considered lighting off after her, but not having seen nor smelled nor heard anything worth running from, with a minute's additional thought he figured this would smack a little too much of abject cowardice. And wasn't Dad always telling him to buck up and not be so afraid of, well, everything? Owen let out a little sigh as he crouched down and padded carefully in the direction from which Phoebe had come shooting in. Besides, Owen figured, sometimes sisters were just like that. Sometimes they were just crazy.

Owen told himself as he cautiously tiptoed up over the small rise between him and the pups' rendezvous site that he would just take a quick sniff, or a tiny peek, at whatever it was and then if circumstances warranted it he could hightail it. But he knew if he ran without checking it out, Quixote or Raven or another of his sisters would doubtless catch him and demand a full report of what he was running from, and right now that was a more intimidating thought than... whatever it was he still wasn't really smelling or hearing or seeing. Owen's brow creased as he stopped and snuffed harder—but today, all the scents were pretty boringly familiar. He cast a quick, suspicious look at the nearest patch of pristine white snow, but the only thing even slightly odd was the stronger and nearer scent of one of the Redhawk adults Owen was less familiar with. It took him a moment to place the name, but after that he felt at least safe enough to go creeping up into view and catch the older male's eye. ...Phox, right? Owen shot a quick look around the clearing before returning puzzled green eyes to the Delta. Heh, you...haven't seen any puppyeating monsters around here, have you? The question was mostly, but not quite entirely, a joke.

He furrowed his brow as Phoebe went running away, wondering what he had done to cause her to act that way. Maybe that was just the way she was. As he stood there trying to figure that out, he was approached by Owen. At least he hoped this was Owen. There were so many kids younger than himself that Phox had a hard time keeping them straight in his head. Hey Owen, he replied, suddenly trying to imagine what it would be like to talk to his own kids.

The question was a bit... nonsensical to Phox, but he answered anyway. Can't say that I have. I was actually looking for your mom, but it doesn't look like she's here. Phox looked at the den, then back at Owen. He honestly hadn't spent much quality time with any of the younger generations, so he struggled to find a topic to talk about.

Owen gave a little half-shrug of one red-and-brown shoulder. Then he took a quick furtive look back over that selfsame shoulder, scanning the landscape there before putting his paw back down again. Dunno just what it was that lit a fire under Phoebe's tail, then, he muttered mostly to himself as he turned back towards Phox. Then, more audibly: ...And yeah, no, she's off somewhere else... probably in her garden or something, I'm guessing? We don't really spend a whole lot of time very near the den anymore. Which was kind of a shame...Owen sorta missed those days, still. Everything seemed like it had been a whole lot simpler and safer then, at least; now, with random new faces some of which couldn't be trusted, and the new pack splintering off and taking some of his most favoritest old faces, and monsters lurking in the maybe-maybe-not iced-over lake...Owen really wasn't sure what to make of the world anymore, some days.

But at least the dastardly grasshoppers seemed to have disappeared for the winter, on the upside. How come you're looking for her? Owen squinched up his face in a moment of considering thought as he tilted his overlarge ears a little. Dad's still the only alpha right now, ain't he? An' Aunt Towhee unner 'im? He couldn't think of much else that seemed likely to have sent Phox hunting for Raven, off the top of his head. Though Owen thought he'd've heard if the ranks got scrambled up again...who knew, though; thoughtless grownups often didn't bother to tell the younger generations everything, regardless of whether or not it might affect them. And frankly Quixote himself seemed like he was very definitely one of those oft-thoughtless types of grownups, in Owen's book.

Raven's my sister, he replied with a shrug. He hadn't talked to Raven much since he had been back, their only interactions being brief when he had stood alongside her against Caiaphas and again when he had brought her poor, tailless Cinder. And, of course, when she had helped his own face heal from Camilla's attacker. He had hoped to maybe have a proper reunion, but the timing was never quite right. That didn't mean he would turn down the chance to talk to his nephew, though.

That makes me your uncle, he said, flashing Owen a smile.

Oh! Owen was still getting all his familial relations straight. Obviously. He squinted fuzzily at Phox, though, thinking this was a little extra-odd coming from him... he hadn't been around the whole time like Aunt Towhee had been, after all, and Owen couldn't think why that might have been so. Was there some sort of bad blood between his mom and her brother that Owen didn't know about? Not to mention—But you're not ranked that highly, blurted Owen thoughtlessly. The youngster's eyes widened and he wanted to whack some sense into his own skull as he heard how that'd come out. Whoops. Though 'course you still outrank me, he added hastily, and mentally crossed his paws and hoped that might repair whatever damage he might have just done. Or at least keep Phox here from getting angry; Owen felt like this was exactly the right thing to say to piss off a lot of the adults he knew a little better.

So, uh, yer Towhee's brother too? And, what, X's adopted hatchfather? Mostly Owen's brain and mouth were scrambling for a hasty distraction. He was trying to bring his mental picture of the family tree into better focus, though, as well. Quixote's side of it seemed so scraggly and blank by comparison, sheesh—but even his mother's side still felt like it was pretty motheaten and patchwork, with some big ol' holes through which the sky shown—Owen had the mental image of a sadly bedraggled half-shed autumnal arbor, with a couple of the branches splintered and broken by fall storms too like as not. (And leave it to freakish weirdo Towhee of course to have some random freaking bird somehow perched on one of those tree limbs as well, sheesh! Though Owen still wasn't entirely convinced X wasn't secretly magically some shapeshifty part of her...somehow.)

- ...And you speak ptero too then I'd guess? - he belatedly added. Probably better than Quixote, odds were—Owen hastily tried to wipe the smirk off his face at the thought. With his luck, if Uncle Phox saw it the guy'd probably assume immediately that Owen was laughing at him and his rank or something. Owen just bet it wouldn't take much to wipe that pleased smile off Phox's face and send it swirling down the drain.

Well, Phox could probably guess where Owen got his talkativeness. And he didn't think it was from Raven. The boy rambled on just like his father, and Phox was left mentally scratching his head with all the "oh"s and "ah"s and questions the boy put on him one after another. Maybe all kids were like this, though. Now there was a thought that certainly frightened Phox, who had never been a particularly chatty wolf. What if all his kids ended up like this? Then again, if he, Camilla, and Towhee raised them, that seemed unlikely.

He decided to ignore the part about who ranked where, if only because Phox felt he had a perfectly reasonable place in the pack, and he had no drive to be a leader. At least not for now. The most impressive part about Owen was his fluency with ptero, which Phox answered in with ease. -Towhee's brother, too. No relation to X. I'm not even sure where that bird came from. Towhee probably pooped it out one day out of pure necessity.- Phox hoped that would get back to Towhee.

Owen boggled a little as his brain got stuck on the notion that even Towhee's brother didn't know where the bird had come from. That was pretty mindblowing...and pretty suspicious, if you asked him. Okay, yeah, the "pooping it out" thing was probably a joke, but seriously... what if Towhee had summoned the thing magically, or split off part of her soul and turned it into a raptor? So you never saw X's egg or anything? Hhhhhuh...

Really what Owen wanted to do was to get to the bottom of this mystery. Or catch Towhee in the midst of her whole sneaky shapechanging act, even more ideally. She always had those random bits of feather and down clinging to her in a different spot every time Owen saw her, after all... but pulling himself back to the real world and the here and now, what the kid said next was, - Towhee does and says some strange things, doesn't she. What was it like growing up with her? And with Mom? And, uh, the bird? X. -

After a moment, Owen also thought to add: ...An' when did you meet Dad?

How hadn't it occurred to him before that maybe other family members might know a little more about some of these deep dark secrets and ancient history? Assuming they were willing to share them with their baby nephew, or cousin or what-have-you. Owen's green eyes burrowed hungrily into Phox, hoping for some interesting stories and dirt to be unearthed from somewhere in this interrogation. And maybe one or two tips for becoming a tricksy shapeshifty magical wolf as well if he was lucky, who knew.

Phox shook his head. X had been around for as long as he could remember, so it wasn't like he remembered the moment he met the bird or even the circumstances. Owen went on to ask, in ptero, about Phox's family, which had him shifting uneasily from side to side. He couldn't really explain why he felt unease, considering they all seemed to be on good terms now... but there was still a sense that he had shamed Towhee and Raven when he had run off. Phox tried to remind himself that he'd been a mere child at that time, but it didn't do much to stave off the feeling.

-She hasn't changed that much since we were kids,- he replied with a non-committal shrug. -She and the rest of us made up ptero as we went along, and now it is what it is. Raven fed us and kept us alive, just like she did with you, since our mother died when we were born and our father had died even before that.- Finley had helped, too, but Phox had never formed the same sort of bond that Towhee had with her. Maybe because he had split before the Blackfeather fiasco.

-I can't remember if your dad was around or not when I left. I guess I didn't really meet him until I got back.- If Quixote had been around, Phox didn't remember it, nor had they interacted on any meaningful level.

Owen's intent green eyes took note of the subtle uneasy shifting of weight on Phox's part. This line of questioning seemed to be making his elder kind of uncomfortable, it looked like... which surely was a sign his uncle must be privy to some really juicy family secrets, right?

Phox didn't offer up very much of that juice to fill Owen's alertly tilted ears, however. Disappointing. Maybe his uncle thought Owen was too young to have such details spilled to him. Or too dumb to get it. Or both, who knows. There was one thing though that caught Owen's attention and left his mouth hanging ajar as the implications hit him—an explanation that made some past cryptic remarks of Raven's suddenly make more sense, in hindsight. Wait, y'mean mom was your mom too?! Even though she's also your sister? Owen struggled to wrap his mind around this concept. No freaking way he could imagine Kite or Vasa or Phoebe being a mother to anyone, but especially not to a brother. That was a notion so firmly planted in bizarroland that even Owen's overactive imagination had trouble stretching to encompass it. You and Towhee and— and wait! Did she mother baby X too?! Owen had no idea just what a comical picture his face was as his brain jumped to trying to imagine that, though on some level that still seemed less of a leap than the change from sister to mother. Owen was still pretty fuzzy on a lot of the details of how this whole familymaking kidraising strange business worked but even so, how would one ever nurse a baby raptor?! He was pretty sure the sharp beaks would present some problems, at the very least. And imagine growing up with not only a sister for a mother but a bird for a replacement sibling! Gosh this family was weird sometimes. How had his dad ever managed to entangle himself in all this mess, too? It was just crazy.

Or might Phox be making a bunch of this stuff up, to divert Owen away from areas of greater uncomfortableness? The youngster gave his uncle a doubtful sidelong look, trying to make certain he wasn't being taken in by some sort of family tall tales, here.

*passes info along to PPCs*

Phox shrugged, -Yeah, kinda.- Raven had been his mother in some ways, but he had known about his birth mother for as long as he could remember. -Finley was always there for us, too. Not to mention Elwood, Eljay, and the rest of the pack.- The Firebirds had never wanted for parental figures, despite the biological ones being gone before they had a chance to meet them. Owen asked about X yet again, and Phox was starting to wonder if he knew where babies came from. Better let Raven dole out that information (or God forbid, Quixote).

I guess you'll have to ask Raven about that one, he said, leaving it up to Owen's mother to decide how she was going to handle that question. Maybe she didn't think he was old enough to learn, or maybe she just wanted to hold onto his innocence a little bit longer. Either way, Phox wouldn't be interfering in any of that.

The sound of footsteps headed their way soon revealed themselves to be the one and only. Speak of the devil, he said to his sister/guardian. Owen here was just asking where X came from. He's got me thinking you laid the egg yourself. @Raven seemed at least somewhat amused at this, and Phox grinned mischievously at her.

I just wanted to stop by and say hey. Also wanted to let you know Camilla sorta... claimed me as her property. He couldn't quite get a read on what Raven thought of all this, but she didn't appear to be outright upset, so he had to assume that was a good thing.

That's...a lot of mothers, said Owen somewhat tentatively, still struggling to envision any of this as Phox kept piling on the improbabilities. Now just about the whole dang pack had nursed and raised Phox, and Towhee and X and who only knew who else?! Owen was definitely going to have to find some clever little way to ask Raven about all this, and soon. Or even Quixote. It would be interesting to see what and how many different answers he got asking different wolves, really... Phox confirmed that Mom was the first one to ask, though. Which made Owen just a little extra-suspicious, now: had the two of them collaborated on some sort of crazy story to tell all the pups, just to see who might swallow it whole? It didn't seem like the kind of thing mom would really do, but then again who knew, maybe that could be part of her sneakiness too... Regardless, Owen resolved to corroborate as many of these insane details as he could, with whoever he thought might be able to give him a piece of the puzzle. One of these days he would figure out how his family worked, really.

Owen was startled however by his mother's padding up beside them, with unbelievably coincidental timing. He gawped at her a sec, and then remembered at least some of his manners and offered up a feeble smile and twitching of his tail in greeting instead. - Uh, hi Mom. - Well this was awkward. Owen had had it pretty firmly in his head that he was going to ask each wolf one on one, not here put so uncomfortably in the spotlight in front of two or more of them like this... That was the kind of thing likely to make some pup think the adults were having a joke at his expense, or something very like. ...Which meant that Owen was only too glad to let Phox oh-so-conveniently change the subject, right now. Camilla claimed you? he blurted out, finding this particular way of putting it rather baffling, at least while half or more of his brain was still genuinely stuck back on whether or not it just might be possible for wolves to hatch eggs for themselves or pups to hatch out of eggs or eggs to come out of wolfmothers or sisters to become mothers at all, for that matter. All of which was way more interesting than some vaguely-worded change in the adults' relationship dynamics among themeselves here and now, although Owen did want to have that explained to him now, too, to be fair. Was Phox just being coy about claiming mateship, or was there something else more unusual he was trying to convey in some sort of code, here?

me @ writer's block: BE GONE! figured we could wrap up here since this one is gettin' old!

Well, how was he supposed to respond to that? Phox stared blankly at Owen for a moment, then shrugged. Maybe he didn't have to respond at all. That seemed like the best strategy right now. If Raven wanted to give him the down-low, that was her prerogative, but Phox certainly didn't want to get too involved in that kind of conversation with his nephew just yet. They weren't that close.

I'll let you explain that one, Raven, Phox said, shooting a wink in her direction. Not wanting to stick around for further follow-up questions from his very nosy nephew, Phox swished his tail, nodded to both of them, and made a speedy exit.

Seems sensible enough!  ;)  Though sadly, I ttly have way older Owenthreads than this, too... Thanks for the thread! And best of luck in battling that dastardly writer's block. One never invites it in and yet it always seems to find one eventually regardless... alas.
*PPs momma a bit  <.<  >.>;  *

The adults were both being awfully vague and noncommittal in actually supplying him some up-front answers here, and between this question-dodging shrugging and these mischievous but silent grins being offered on his elders' part Owen was getting rather suspicious. And paranoid. Though really...that was often par for the course for him, a realization he was willfully attempting to avoid admitting to himself. He wasn't the crazy one here; it was the rest of the world that kept going batty all around him, and Owen was just trying to parse it out like any reasonably sane and intelligent youngster.

In any case, Phox seemed very eager to escape the continued befuddled interrogation Owen was trying to conduct, and with a quick wink dropped toward Mother he lit out like his tail was on fire. Gosh, was it something that terribly embarrassing that Phox an Camilla had been up to among all this "claiming" business? And ugh, did Owen really want to know the details or not, if that really was the case. Owen gawked after Phox's disappearing white tailtip for a second before he turned his head toward Raven to half-mumble, Uh, that's okay, never mind, before she could start in on some boring lecture again on how Grownup Business worked. Adults got so squirrelly around the subject of mateship, or almost-mateship, or not-really-exactly-mateship-but... Or, y'know, whatever the hell this "claiming" nonsense was about in Phox and Camilla's case. Rather than have the details painfully laid out for him, though, Owen decided he had far more interesting things to do and places to be today. Think I'm due t'go practice my hunting, actually, he offered up hastily to his mother, and then beat his own expedited retreat, stage left. Owen had been getting some heavy hints dropped from certain others here and there that he ought to have some sort of sudden fascination with girls starting up, and obviously desperately needed to know every intimate detail of what they thought and how to talk to them and all this other stuff that he really didn't quite understand. In fact, if you asked Owen this whole mateship business was a huge nonsensical distraction that kept the adults from paying attention to anything really interesting or important in the world. That was a morass Owen had zero intentions of letting himself get trapped in; now, the moment he suspected another of Those Conversations might be in the works, his eyes glazed over and he tried to make himself scarce.

Raven looked from her brother dashing off to her almost-as-quickly retreating son as he hopped up and over a small grass-tussocked rise and disappeared. She shook her head woefully, but couldn't keep the small smile from lingering on her lips. Boys would be boys, perhaps—but Raven was wise enough to know this mercurial stage wouldn't last forever. In Owen, anyhow; for Phox perhaps it might be a little late to much change.