Sawtooth Spire As easy as rolling off a log

The crunch of bones cracking sounded loud in the still morning air as Quell dispatched the second hare of the day. Panting a little from the brief burst of activity, she pinned the slain rabbit to the ground with a paw and took a moment to catch her breath. When she was ready, she plucked the carcass, still warm and dripping, from the snowy ground and trotted back to the place where she'd stashed the first. It took a little bit of juggling, though she eventually managed to grasp both in her mouth. Quell began carrying them toward a more central location, the bodies thumping against her chest as she went.

She set them down at her feet and peered around, simply taking a moment to study her surroundings. The youth then tossed back her head and howled for her father (@Wintersbane). Hopefully he was in the mood for breakfast and a chat. Q licked her lips and settled on her haunches to wait. When boredom inevitably struck (after a mere two minutes), she began to play with the dead rabbits like puppets, role playing a very loud argument between the two of them over who had eaten the last damn carrot.

the howl from quellcrist that rises into the frigid morning air; made more sharp and bitter by their altitude and the stony fortress around them, breaks wintersbane out of his singular mindset focused as it was on his patrol. the master warrior casts one last keen gaze to the wilds below, stretched out before their spire before turning his back on the borders and heading inland of the spire.

it doesn't take him long to find quellcrist, mostly because of the loud argument she appears to be having with herself. correction, with herself as the rabbits. scarred brow twitches in tune with the snicker of amusement and the warring twist of concern that fights for dominance over his facial features. a rough noise of contemplation; a muddled mixture of concern and amusement rumbles in the tundrian's chest.

❝i can't quite tell who's winning, q,❞ he says with a low rumble as he prowls forward to offer his daughter an affectionate nudge to the chin if she allows him.

Her sire's arrival did not put Quell off her game. The play concluded with the smaller of the two rabbits kicking the larger's ass, which she conveyed by tossing the bigger of the two carcasses toward the approaching Eisen. She offered a grin and a bow, straightening just in time to catch the nudge to the chin. The youth's eyes twinkled and she bumped her snout beneath his in turn before stepping back and motioning to the rabbit she'd tossed.

"I'm pretty sure they both lost..." Q replied to his comment, pausing for effect before delivering the punchline: "...their lives." She snickered. She did hope this demonstration of her skills pleased her dad, who doubled as her leader, though mostly she just wanted to share a meal with him. "I was hoping we could eat these with a side of ketchup," the teenager said, stealing his role with a good old dad joke.

Taking a seat beside the smaller hare, Q began to rip it apart with gusto. She began by peeling the skin back from the muscle, the flesh and fur stretching like melted cheese between her mouth and the carcass until she tugged it free with a snap. She spat it to the side and began to help herself to the exposed meat, saying between bites, "So how come I'm a Mayfair and not an Assborn?"

wintersbane watches the end of the puppet show with a chuckle and a shake of his head as she tosses the larger of the corpses to him. he places a large paw on it on instinct, almost as if he expects it to get up and run away before he drags it towards him. ❝thanks,❞ wintersbane says gruffly, giving a soft clear of his throat, appreciative of the demonstration of skills and the consideration that she wanted to eat breakfast with him; snickering at her dad joke.

as she tears into her own meal, wintersbane does the same; ears cupping forth to hear her question. ❝ansbjørn,❞ he corrects her a bit more sternly than he means to. his ears flutter back and he sighs, ❝sorry ...it's just ansbjørn was your grandmother's last name and she died. a long time ago now but ...it's all i have of her.❞ and wintersbane was and always would be a mama's boy. would she have made a joke out of the 'fearghal' name he wouldn't have cared if only because as far as wintersbane knew arturo was still alive and spawning out children like his day of reckoning was coming ( and it was ).

❝well, to be honest your mother and i had a one night stand. i'm not sure if she was mated to the mayfair man before or after you were born... or at all, really. i assumed he raised you and it didn't seem right to try to force 'ansbjørn' or 'fearghal' on you. i think what name you choose to carry should be your own.❞ but those were just wintersbane's thoughts ...as an adult ( at least in the eyes of the pack ) she was more than capable of making her own decisions in regards to such matters.

She heard the sharp note in his voice and it gave her momentary pause, a string of bloody meat dangling like a limp noodle from between her front teeth. Quell quickly slurped it into her mouth and smacked her lips as she considered his explanation. He questioned the nature of Elixir's relationship with Cortland. His guess was as good as hers. Q had been very young the last time she'd seen either of them and, especially after her head injury, those memories were very fuzzy indeed.

"I honestly barely remember them," Quell said baldly, pausing again to gauge his reaction to this information. Perhaps she should, though honestly Q didn't feel sad about it. She had been shunted around a lot in her short life, yet it had all been such an adventure. Between that and her faulty memories, she really couldn't say she had any regrets.

Bolting down a few more hearty mouthfuls—because eating like a lady was for the birds—Quell then sat back and wiped a foreleg across her mouth before saying, "I look like you and know you best, so I think I should be an Ass—an Ansbjørn." She enunciated it slowly, not particularly wishing to offend her paternal grandmother's memory. "Or I could be like the wolves of Seabolt," she continued conversationally, "and take my pack's name as my surname. I'ono though, Quellcrist Sagtannet is a mouthful," she opined before shoving a hunk of rabbit brains in her pie hole.

though q's story is different from his own, they are not dissimilar, he and her. if anything, he is slowly coming to comprehend that perhaps she is much more like him than in just the looks department. in truth, he remembered little of arturo and lotte himself, only knowing more of the latter's homeland because he spent some time there. still, there is a sharp pang of regret in wintersbane as he looks upon his daughter and knows that hasn't been there for her, nor offered her any sort of stable life — though she does not appear to hold this against him.

...and anyway, sagtannet is the fresh start that he sought after burying andraste. perhaps it was her fresh start as well, their chance to be the father and daughter they'd never really been before.

wintersbane feels a warmth fill him and a lump of emotion rise in his throat as she gives her reasons as to why she thinks she should go by ansbjørn. it means more to him than he could put into words. ❝i think anyone's name added with sagtannet is a mouthful,❞ wintersbane admits with a conspiring grin. ❝could always be quellcrist sawtooth... but quellcrist ansbjørn sounds good too.❞

She'd always wondered: did the wolves of Seabolt change their names if they moved on elsewhere? Q opened her mouth (despite it being full of food) to ask about how this might work when Wintersbane spoke. She clapped her mouth shut, chewing on the last of the pulp in there and swallowing it before reaching for another big bite, listening all the while.

Her face scrunched at his suggestion. "Sawtooth?" she questioned, pale lavender eyes shifting left and right. Had she missed something? Where on earth had that come from? "Wait," Q realized, clapping a paw to her mouth and speaking the rest through her toes, "is this a commentary on my eating habits?" She often chewed with her mouth open and talked with her mouth full, Quell knew. In fact, she began to choke and laugh simultaneously, spraying crumbs of gristle.

❝it wasn't,❞ the tundrian laughs at his daughter. ❝but you are a messy eater.❞ he points out unabashedly, ripping another chunk of meat from his own rabbit corpse which laid fairly untouched at his paws. he wasn't used to conversing during his meals, in truth. ❝this territory is called sawtooth spire.❞ wintersbane explains, forgetting that she probably isn't aware of that though her previous explanation of barely remembering her mother and the mayfair man should've given him clue enough.

❝i've known a few wolves that used the territory or pack name as their last name. i was just making sure you knew you had options.❞ the tundrian says with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

"Oh," Q said, then recollected, "you totally told me that on the tour. I just forgot." She shrugged, tossing him a sheepish grin. There was a piece of meat stuck between her teeth, she could feel it. Instead of picking it out, she smiled all the wider, putting it on display as if to playfully mock her father's commentary on her table manners.

"I think I like Quellcrist Ansbjørn," she said after finally sucking the chunk from her gums, "same as you." She lifted a paw and picked at her teeth some more with a toenail. Without waiting for a response to that, she wondered, "Could you tell me more about my mom? And my other, uh, dad? What were they like?"

to her forgetfulness, wintersbane can't say much. he, himself, is known for forgetting things — namely offering his name during most meetings with strangers. he was getting better, for being a leader meant introducing himself ...though not marginally. if he could get away with not giving his name he probably would; a leftover habit as a small child when he created several identities in what he thought was a way of protecting teaghlaigh.

❝i like quellcrist ansbjørn too.❞ wintersbane says with a small smile. a small smile that falters and begins to fade as she asks what her parents were like. her mother and other father. he hesitates, ears fluttering back to lay at half mast atop his skull. ❝uh,❞ he begins. ❝i ...don't really know. i didn't know your other father at all and as for your mother she was still practically a stranger.❞ and if that made her feel a certain way about him, then so be it; but it was the truth and in his mind, she deserves to hear it regardless of how it paints him.

No, he couldn't. Quell's paw froze and she slowly set it back on the ground as she regarded Wintersbane. He seemed a little abashed as he told her he had barely known Elixir and Cortland not at all. This was news to her, though rather than finding it untoward, the youth just laughed.

"Ohhh," came her reply, "that makes a lot of sense. It was a one night stand and I'm the 'oops!'" Q chuckled again before making finger guns and clicking her tongue at him. "You're not, like, screaming internally because I'm here, right?" He'd seemed glad to see her and welcome her to Sagtannet but... "Be honest," she prompted with a soft smile.

a frown tugs at the edges of wintersbane's lips as quellcrist calls herself the 'oops'. he doesn't agree with that statement even if it's the nature of how she was born. ❝no. there is no internal screaming,❞ he repeats the words with some of that 'dad trying to get with the lingo' slowness, as if he's not quite sure what he's said but it sounded right. to clarify he says, ❝you may have been unexpected q, but all the best things in my life have been unexpected.❞ and that was the honest gods' truth.

❝i'm glad you're here and i'm glad you're giving me a chance to be your father.❞ wintersbane seeks to assure her. ❝you're my daughter and there's nothing and no one who can change that.❞ and then adds. ❝i could never regret you.❞ if wintersbane harbors any regrets ( he tries not to ) it was the fact that she'd came about in a reckless way instead of via a stable relationship; but after relmyna died he hadn't sought anything of the sort and there was no going back and changing anything with elixir. it was done and the most important thing to take away from all of it was that quellcrist was here.

He told here there was nothing of the sort, which was good enough for Quell, but then he went on to say a few more things that tugged at the youth's heartstrings. She clapped a paw to her heart and grinned at him, truly touched by his words. When he finished, she moved toward him, kicking the remains of her breakfast aside as she flung out her forelegs.

"Come on, pops, bring it in," Q said right before she went in for the hug.

in wintersbane's attempt to soothe any worries or doubts quellcrist might've had about how he felt about her — especially learning the truth of her conception — he hadn't meant to get as sentimental as he had. she appears to be affected by his words; and for a moment he worries ... until she grins at him and tells him to 'bring it in'. for a moment, the tundrian is confused — what does 'bring it in' mean?? — but before he can dwell upon it for too long quellcrist moves in for a hug and he obliges, pressing his muzzle to the fur of her nape.

he almost gets hung up on being called 'pops' but in his daughter's embrace, realizes that he doesn't mind it despite the initial urge to protest.

In many ways, her father was a stranger to her, though had Quell ever really met a stranger? She snuggled into him as he returned her embrace, holding on for a few beats before drawing back and giving him a fond, daughterly grin. She then scooted back a few more feet, waving a foreleg at the rest of the rabbit remains.

"Welp, I'm sure you have tons of shit to do, since you're the Eisen and all," Q said, raising a brow questioningly as she enunciated the word, hoping she hadn't bungled it, "and I have a cool project I'm working on, so I'ma just nab these..." She positioned herself over the partially eaten hares and used her teeth to skin them both with expertise before pushing the rinds toward Wintersbane. "And get outta your hair," she concluded.

She gave him a moment for any last words, then saluted her sire and said, "Quellcrist Ansbjørn signing off. Peace!" Q snatched the ragged pelts off the ground and pivoted, trotting away to do her business even as she left Wintersbane to his.