Nova Peak foundling-bird

This is vaaaaaaaaague. Torvi, lmk if anything needs changing (and sorry for the wait) <3 Also, tl;dr -- he is trespassing :)

The journey to Sagtannet had been wrought with complexity since the moment it had begun. And things had been especially difficult since Thade had learned of @Wintersbane’s ousting from the pack.

The boy often waffled on how he felt about following the lone wolf, which stirred up rebellion when compliance was needed most. As often as he thrummed with anticipation and closeness to his rescuer, there were just as many times where he would stubbornly refuse to believe they were going the right way at all, and demand that they head in the direction he wanted instead. It had cost them many miles of frustration, and more detours than any guardian should have to endure, but the finish line was at last near when Thade reached the threshold of Nova Peak, more or less of his own accord, and put himself within howling distance.

It just so happened to be one of those times where he wanted nothing to do with the severely underappreciated Wintersbane, who was (not for the first time) made to lag a fieldslength behind in order to assure Thade that he was “making his own choices.” The stubborn prince was mostly aware that he was being difficult and immensely tiresome in these moments, but it never stopped him. Thankfully, it all seemed to serve towards building trust; especially when he would turn and see that Wintersbane was still following dutifully in the distance, despite having been given every reason to ditch the brat for greener pastures.

Having given Wintersbane the hardest of times, Thade was considering being nice and actually sleeping next to him again that night, when the smell of the border hit him. He had been traveling in an arbitrary direction — likely just to piss off his persistent sitter more than anything — leaving him absolutely gobsmacked by the familiarity.

The halfling’s nose pressed into the grass, and he loosed an involuntary whine as he recognized the scent of Sagtannet. The scent of his parents. He ignored pack etiquette by immediately trespassing; his pace fervent as he scoured the ground for a trail that would take him straight to his family’s den.

When Wylla rose in the morning, it was to find the grass white with frost and the air tight and cold against her nose. Even now that the sun had burned the frost away and the day was bleeding away into oncoming dusk, her breath was a curling silver mist. For the coastal she-wolf, whose winters had always been mild with the sea to temper them, it was shocking how fast the cold was coming in, and how bitter the wind’s bite was here compared to her previous homes. She wouldn’t admit it aloud, but she wasn’t sure about her ability to weather a frigid winter in the taiga, what with her short fur.

Down through spindly pines and rich firs she went, to where the pack’s strongest scents laced through the forest, working her muscles to ward off the impulse to shiver. She’d refreshed these borders just yesterday, so today she strode along on a simple patrol, keeping her ears perked and her singular eye peeled for signs of trouble. The ruined side of her face burned with every cold breeze that touched it, drawing a grimace across her thin lips.

Suddenly, the relative quiet was broken as she picked up the sound of legs crashing through the undergrowth. Wylla paused, swivelling her ears and squinting while she tried to parse if it belonged to an ungulate or not. After a few seconds, she peeled back her lips and stalked toward the sound, bristling. When she came upon something dark and definitely not deer-like stumbling through her forest, she snarled and lunged without hesitation.

Only to get a faceful—and possibly a hefty mouthful—of her long lost son. She might never have recognized him by sight given how much he’d grown and the threadbare state of him, but his individual, characteristic scent wafted into her nose, bringing to mind the smells and warmth of home, and she halted immediately, drawing back and relinquishing him with a whine. Thade?

Because he had been raised to be neither seen nor heard, Thade did not howl for those he knew were close, even though he could feel the need for it deep inside; like the feeling of remembering a song you used to love, that you now dared not sing out loud. A memory too painful for a boy who had been conditioned not to express himself.
 
As much as he liked to think of himself as the same young wolf — unscathed by the memories inflicted upon him the last few months — it simply was not true.
 
His nose was buried in a frond patch, its leaves shivering off a thin dew-slush, when he heard what sounded like an animal locomotive coming towards him. He had barely lifted his head and registered the gunmetal blur, when he felt it crash into him, immediately clamping down hard on the back of his neck. He flashed back to when Mother had caught him trying to escape for the umpteenth time, and knew that he had been found out.
 
Thade yelped in surprise, and as pain dug into his consciousness, he tried to roll over and show his belly — beg for Mother’s forgiveness. He tucked his chin instinctively, and cried out for the only thing he thought might save him in this moment: Wintersbane! HELP ME!
 
The grip on him loosened suddenly, letting his full weight fall back to the ground, and leaving a sharp, stinging ache in its place.
 
“Thade?”
 
The boy went rigid, rolling stiffly to his side, as his hind leg remained cocked and supplicant. Too afraid to run, too afraid to even stand. His forested eyes bugged towards the face that regarded him, and the scars kept him from recognizing her at first.
 
But the scent she had left clinging to him was unmistakable. His nose began to wiggle of its own accord, and then everything clicked into place. Her perfume connected with the sound of her voice, which connected with the sunflower stare, that connected to the distinguishing mask — even if it had become torn. Mama? he sniffled, quickening to a sob. MAMA!
 
Thade scrambled into Wylla’s chest, remaining apologetically crouched as he played her a symphony of jubilant whines betwixt a litany of desperate kisses. His tail was also kept submissively tucked, but it thrummed back and forth like a sprung coil doorstopper. And as relief washed over him, slowly replacing the stench of fear, his posture lifted and strengthened; only so that he might persist in attaching himself to the Eisen, permanently, if he could.

the peak here had been edged in snowfeel since the wolves of sagtannet had arrived, and mahler had come to take it as a sign of harsh snows to come. with the sea surely already turned to ice beyond the sight of their eyes, it would send frost-rimed storms across the top of the contested cliffside, and both eisen had not yet recovered for a large hunt.
his own was slowed; whatever the musiker managed to gather was stuffed into deep larders. he knew the salt, however cold, provided its own bounty; he had learned this in his time at grimnismal, which both tormented and amused him to think upon now.
mama
at first he did not think he had heard the tones correctly; some odd echo of another sound bouncing oddly from the mountainside, mahler decided. but it was his responsibility to investigate, as well as his intrigue. long strides of his heavy limbs beneath the shifting darkness of his coat carried the gruff man in that direction — he paused when his trail crossed that of wylla.
pace quickened; mahler cantered through the foliage where the ashdove had gone, and found her
a charcoal-dark boy beneath a gradient of dust, all sharp angles and little cries and wylla! —
the boy at her breast and something audible in her throat. "thade," mahler scarce whispered, voice cracking at the edges and fraying into nothing as he numbly swept forward and on and on and on,
until he was around and about them, drawing in the solidity of thade and still disbelieving while his throat grew silent and his eyes muted with sudden and unassailable tears.

just a lil cameo

thade’s never quite trusted him the same since he’d found out he wasn’t apart of sagtannet anymore and for that wintersbane respects the boy’s wishes by hanging back — but never out of sight. he understands in a deep seeded way that he wished he didn’t …if because he hated the knowledge that the boy has suffered greatly at the supposed ‘care’ of another. dutifully, the tundrian lags behind, bringing up the rear like a soldier of the rear guard …

he follows until thade crosses the threshold of sagtannet’s claim; into where wintersbane could not follow. he lingers back, in the shade and prickly needles of the evergreens, no longer able to see the boy. the cry out of his name draws the stiffness of his muscles but he forces them to relax a breadth later. he is home and he is safe.

there’s a pang in wintersbane’s chest as he knows this means their time spent together has ended; it’s bittersweet upon his tongue and digs at his chest like an ache that refuses to be soothed despite that wintersbane knows he should be happy that the boy has been ( presumably ) reunited with his parents.

he’s done what he promised thade he would do and there is no need to linger, knowing he is not welcome. good luck, thade. he knows the boy will not hear the low rasping murmur of goodbye but he utters it all the same seconds before he turns and shrugs into the trees, back the way they came.

There was a moment where mother regarded son, neither one of them believing the other was real, and then both quickly devolved into whining, wriggling masses. She would have to think on why he had called out for Sagtannet's former Eisen later; had she known he was nearby and was responsible for returning Thade, she surely would have revoked her previous decision regarding his tenancy here. She would deem herself wrong about his loyalty—but perhaps it was for the best that he left quietly to pursue his own goals elsewhere, for admitting she was wrong to turn him away was still quite different than elevating him back to his former rank.

My boy, Wylla wept, sweeping Thade as close to her as she could. He need not try too hard to mold himself into her figure, for she was just as eager to keep him close as he was to be there. She couldn't muster herself enough to even loose a joyous howl; she was too busy snuffling at his head and neck, sweeping her tongue over his face, trying to get a read on just where he'd been all this time. It hurt to feel his bony ribs and shoulders pressing against her and implicitly know that he'd suffered in his absence, but there was plenty of time to fatten him up later.

Her first reaction to Mahler pressing close was to bare her teeth at whatever sought to steal her baby from her, but upon recognizing him, she simply pressed her cheek to his chest and breathed in deeply. No sign of Phaedra, but there would be plenty of time to reunite brother and sister whenever she got back to the mountain. Where have you been? she wondered in a hoarse whisper.

Not even incalculable joy could entirely deflect Thade from detecting the oddities he did not remember about Wylla; The existence of foreignness that threaded through the undeniable familiarity that was there between them. She was for certain his mother, and he was absolutely her son — but when had she gotten so small? Where was the high-chinned queen he remembered standing over him? In his memories her head had been so much bigger. Now it looked small, almost frail, to his smartened gaze. Not that any of this much mattered... because it was her.

Lost in his mother’s embrace, he would not have noticed Mahler at all if not for Wylla’s disturbed reaction to the Eisen’s sudden conjuring. Thade stiffened for a moment, bristling and ready to mimic her violence, but it took only an insecure beat for him to recognize who it was that had appeared before him.

Papa! the boy cried, throwing himself fiercely at the shadowpriest, and then briefly erupting into a bout of zoomies. Overwhelming excitement coursed through his emaciated frame as he wriggled his entire body around, over, between, and under them in an effort to douse himself in their delicious scent. He ended up spinning out before them —



Ending up in a rolled over heap at their feet. He was panting hard, viridian eyes pulled up attentively as Wylla questioned him. Thade swallowed, hesitating to answer, though it also might have seemed like he was just trying to catch his breath. Well, I was with Mother, but I dunno where we were, he admitted slowly, after his panting had subsided. I’m sorry I went with her, but she promised to... She said she’d bring me back... He started to whine, filled with unbidden regret, and a sorrowful well that was much too deep for someone his age.

his son, his son returned, his child lost once and found again — had mahler known what wintersbane had done for sagtannet, he would have demanded the welcome for a proper hero and brother.
but he did not; the gargoyle knew only the joy pouring ragged and harsh into his chest, the warm press of wylla between them, the surreal sound of thade's voice forming sentences and words where he had not yet been old enough to speak so,
when he had disappeared,
he shoved it from his mind, charcoal ears tipping forward. "mother," he repeated, lavender gaze shifting in curious worry to wylla's sculpted face. "she took you?" and fury threatened now his delight, though he kept a chain upon it for now.
but how had this happened? and how close had thade been, all this time, that the wolves of sagtannet had not found him, that this woman had escaped their notice?

Beneath them. Beneath the mountain.

That was where Thade had been all this time, and neither Wylla nor Mahler would ever know it, even now. He didn’t know where they were, only that someone who called themselves Mother had taken him there. Like Mahler, Wylla wondered how that was possible. When had they let down their guard so much that a pupnapper had slipped into their territory and convinced Thade that she was his mother?

A wicked snarl built in her throat, but she choked it off when she looked into his black-marked face again. Thade was alive. It was more than she ever could’ve hoped for. Food, she announced abruptly, disentangling herself from her family. We need to get you some food. Come, come. You’re safe now. She will never see you again, vowed Wylla as she gestured up the mountain to where the caches could be found, unaware that Mother was already dead. She would kill any woman who sought to take Thade from her.

Mother, he heard in the accent of his father – remembering this voice as surely as he knew them both as ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ – though nearly all the rest of Mahler’s language had long been lost to him. Thade had not been allowed to speak words Mother did not understand. I didn’ want to call her that, but she made me, he sniffed, gathering himself into an emotionally-wrought slump.
 
She took you?
 
She camed through the stream an’ told me that she couldn’ get out ‘cause she was a fish-wolf, and that only a mountain-wolf could help a fish-wolf out the water. He had never forgotten the story that had lured him to the riverbank. Like someone who never forgets Santa Claus. Or the boogeyman. I dunno what happened after that, but Mother said I almost drowned tryin’ t’save her… She said she’d bring me back when I felt better… But she was jus’ tellin’ a story. A lie, he knew now.

Wylla took it upon herself to smartly redirect their joyless conversation to a matter more pressing. Thade lit up like a lightbulb. He had been raised where food was given to him as a reward and nothing else. To be offered a meal now was like being paid to feel happy and safe.
 
He nodded eagerly, clinging alternatively to both parents as they went. Later, about an hour or so into his return, he would remember to tell them about Wintersbane, and what he had done for their family — but for now he was enraptured, and too shell-shocked, to do anything but marvel at his new surroundings, the new Sagtannet mountain, and his parents, new to his juvenile eyes.

fading <3

wylla's tight voice, the passion and motherly emotion coursing through her throat. thade, returned; surreal, surreal. mahler listened to his son detail what had happened to him, what had been said.
and all the while, thade had been so close.
muscles tensed beneath his coat. he nuzzled the boy's cheek, hanging back as wylla took him off to fill his belly with something more solid than whatever he had been fed. the gargoyle himself stared down the mountain, gaze hardening. let this mother stray close again, and he would rouse the cold parts of him to spread her blood across the borders.
thus, he followed, strangely tense despite the clear revival of his son's presence ins sagtannet.