Redhawk Caldera Kiss my (uh oh).

Now that she was more or less back on her feet and not sleeping 'round the clock, Towhee took some time to think about the whole Reyes issue. She simply couldn't come to a conclusion on her own, so she decided to seek counsel from her Council. It was primarily a personal issue, though it affected the whole pack, since they were all family.

Seated in the shade of the dogwood tree atop the Hobbit Hole, she waited patiently for her Regents to come to her call. When @Ruenna and @Fennec arrived, Towhee cut right to the chase to avoid wasting anybody's precious time.

"I could use your advice. I exiled Reyes for attacking Caracal because, in my mind, there's no acceptable explanation for that behavior. Plus, there was the history with Niamh. I didn't consult with anyone but I want to do that now, because I had a thought. He's already come here a few times and now he's living with Brecheliant. He's not just going to go away and leave us alone. And he's unpredictable."

She paused, huffed, then cut to the chase. "So I was wondering if it might be better to allow him to move back here, so we could monitor him, keep an eye on him at all times. And if he so much as touched a hair on anyone's head, I'd kill him outright. Thoughts?"

I power-played you guys here; please let me know if that's an issue and I'll make edits! :)

Well, here was the moment of truth. Reyes had asked Ruenna to appeal to Towhee on his behalf, and Ruenna had turned him down, unwilling to oppose Towhee in such a personal matter. But Towhee asking for Ruenna's opinion changed the game, didn't it? 

Rue could not decide for certain whether Reyes posed a direct threat. Towhee had said that Caracal was attacked, but the kid looked fine to Rue. Believe it or not, Rue wasn't overly-opposed to a stricter brand of discipline. The Redhawk kids got away with murder around here, in her opinion. What Reyes intended to be discipline might have looked like an act of aggression to a protective mother. Without having witnessed the event herself, Ruenna couldn't judge it. 

The same went for the situation with Niamh, although that evidence was much more damning considering she had been pregnant, and the attack ultimately resulted in her death. 

Towhee sounded like she was leaning toward readmitting Reyes, so Ruenna indulged that train of thought. "What if there was a probationary rank he could be assigned? Similar to omega?" Redhawk Caldera didn't have traditional ranking system, but surely they could think of something fitting. "..And then after being monitored for a set period of time, he could earn his Tradesman rank and the pack's trust." 

It wasn't a perfect solution by any stretch, but there was risk no matter what they decided. The last thing she wanted was for harm to come to the pups... But what if they kept Reyes out, and Tierra ran away again? 

Ruenna also didn't want to sign on to any plan that involved monitoring Reyes's every move until the end of time; that sounded like a recipe for failure. Surely, if they gave Reyes the opportunity to redeem himself, he would rise to meet their expectations? Rue always had been one to assume the best of people. What would Fennec think? Rue had observed that she was not especially given to optimism, so she expected to hear a counter-opinion from the other Regent.

There were a lot of reasons Fennec wasn't entirely invested in this discussion and none of them had to do with the actual subject matter.  It was rude to treat her mom's mate issues like they were no big deal but, at the present, it was probably pretty clear that she found the entire thing to be exactly that- no big deal at all.

So what if he'd played rough with Caracal?  She'd sparred plenty rough when she was a kid too, and it had pissed her off pretty royally when she couldn't find any adults who wouldn't pull their punches with her.  Especially after they figured out the whole blind thing.  Towhee had been one of them, and there was a reason she'd chosen to train more with Niamh until.... well.

You can't just ignore it and hope it goes away.  Plus, maybe we could use a little less nice here.  Fennec replied.  Her expression was the usual hard to read, but the words were a little unnecessarily targeted.  Maybe I'd care if it weren't true.

Rue spoke up first, suggesting a probationary rank for Reyes until he could earn back their trust. Fennec's response was a little less constructive, though she had her answer: they both felt like Reyes should be given a chance to reenter the caldera's ranks. There was part of her that rankled over it, since neither one of them had been there, but another part realized they could be a lot more objective. That's why she'd brought them here for a consult. In any case, she didn't really disagree with them and intended to defer to majority.

She took a few breaths as she processed everything before saying, "Okay." She paused for another moment, then looked at Rue in particular to ask, "Would you like to go to Brecheliant to inform him of this, let him know of our terms?"

Towhee slowly licked her lips, feeling her insides clench a little. She did think this was the rational thing to do, though she couldn't just put aside all her personal misgivings. She would allow him to see the kids, albeit begrudgingly, but she really didn't know if she could salvage any kind of relationship with him. She frowned pensively, not bothering to bring this up while they were trying to discuss what amounted to formal pack business.

Fennec spoke, and Ruenna simply listened and blinked, her face unreadable. She was in awe of Fennec's interpretation of the Redhawk Caldera's daily-- sometimes hourly-- drama as too "nice." Did they live in the same pack? In the same reality? 

Ruenna supposed that for a wolf who had grown up a Redhawk and knew nothing else, the past few weeks may have seemed a little quiet. 

Or maybe the we could use a little less nice here was directed at Ruenna herself? She and Fennec had admittedly been a bit of a good-cop-bad-cop routine lately, and they seemed to have vastly different communication and conflict styles. 

Towhee agreed to Ruenna's plan quickly, which indicated to Rue that the suggestion was probably along the lines of what she had already been considering. 

"I can do that," Rue agreed to Towhee's request. "Also, um... if it comes down to it, I don't think you should kill Reyes." Stars, the kids were going to have enough to deal with already due to this weird parenting situation. They didn't need to pile mommy-murdered-daddy trauma on top of everything else.

Luckily Ruenna spoke up first because Fennec had no way of knowing who that request was directed at. She closed her mouth when the other Regent agreed. It made a little more sense for Ruenna to go with Killdeer and all, but she would have leapt at that chance to get a break. The (percieved) missed opportunity just ticked up her annoyance levels.

Right. Let me take care of it. She replied, completely straight. Then she flicked her tail once. That it? Good. Without bothering to wait for much of an answer, she turned to leave, ready to get back to whatever shit she had to do next. She might not know what that was, but she definitely had something more worthwhile than this.

Feel free to skip me through the rest if they don't make her stop! And honestly, she's bein a butt, so even if they do call after her you can assume she'd likely ignore it lol

Something about the way Rue phrased her comment tickled Towhee’s funny bone. It felt inappropriate to laugh when it was technically a matter of life and death, so she stifled the urge. She licked her lips and held her breath against the sensation welling against her ribs.

She was still busy trying to suppress the insane urge when Fen suddenly left. Towhee hadn’t caught her parting words and could only stare blankly after her. The abruptness made her furrow her brow and glance quizzically at Ruenna, then at her daughter’s retreating back again. Fennec was mercurial at the best of times but that was outright rude.

The Sovereign sighed, not feeling up to addressing it at the moment. This conversation had already used up her emotional and mental bandwidth for today. No longer feeling like laughing whatsoever, Towhee fixed her eyes back on Rue.

Thanks, Rue. Thanks for everything you’ve been doing lately. I really appreciate you. She paused. Since it was just the two of them now, she decided to ask, How are you, anyway?

It was a little ridiculous, that they were all sitting around casually discussing who was going to kill who. Ruenna might have cracked a smile herself if Towhee had laughed, but none of that happened thanks to Fennec's rushed departure. 

Ruenna met Towhee's quizzical look with a shrug. She had heard Fennec's parting words, but they hadn't made the reason behind her hasty exit any more clear. 

"Oh, I'm just glad to be useful," Rue responded with the polite answer, but it was also the truth. Now that she was a Regent, she felt that her disability was all the more visible, and she always wondered if she was doing enough in the eyes of the pack. 

"Better," Rue answered her question, her thoughts still on her disability. "I've been swimming a lot, and it's been helping the pain, and..." 

And this was not actually what she wanted to be talking about. 

"...I heard the Phox was back?" Rue changed the subject practically mid-sentence. She made the sign for Phox just in case Towhee needed help keeping up. Rue swallowed heavily. Her body language shifted from its casual tone, becoming more attuned, more alert and oriented to Towhee as she waited for a response.

Huh, Towhee thought when Rue mentioned swimming to help with her chronic back pain. It made sense. Water—particularly cold water—could be quite soothing, plus there was the sense of weightlessness that came with swimming. But she didn't get to think on it long, nor ask any follow-up questions, because the Regent just as quickly swung the topic over to Towhee's brother.

Her heart sank a little. "He was," she agreed, "but he's gone back to his kids for now. It's... complicated." As far as Towhee understood it, Niamh had died giving birth and two strangers had raised the pups for the first several months of their lives. Naturally, those pups considered the pair to be their parents and though Phox had finally found them, he was a perfect stranger to them. The entire situation was utterly heartbreaking and stoked some of Towhee's dormant fury toward the late Niamh.

But she pushed those feelings away. There was no time and no energy for them. "I'm hoping they all decide to come here, once the pups are ready for that." It would be an emotionally wrought and peculiar dynamic, though the Redhawks had never been very conventional with familial matters anyway, so the Sovereign was sure they could make it work.

Abruptly realizing she hadn't actually explained the details to Rue, Towhee said, "By 'they all,' I'm including the couple who raised the pups when Niamh died. I forget their names. They both start with 'M.'" She shrugged, oblivious to their identities and all the lies and secrets involved, probably because those in the know hadn't wanted to burden her with those grisly details while she was sick. Or possibly they had simply fallen on deaf ears at some point.

Her orange eyes drifted a moment, then found their way back to the Regent's face, anticipating more questions about the matter.

"Oh," was Rue's initial response, and she (mostly successfully) caught herself before she could look too disappointed. It made sense that he wouldn't linger, especially since he had a lot of lost time to make up for with his pups, but Ruenna had held onto hope that she might have a quick conversation with him, if only to gauge his current mindset. 

Ruenna nodded, agreeing with Towhee that it would be best if Phox could somehow get his family here, sooner rather than later. 

"Did he seem, uh, okay..?" Ruenna ventured, falling short of voicing her true question. Was he heartbroken? Angry? Overwhelmed? Jaded? 

Almost on top of Ruenna's question, Towhee added a few more details. Rue's brow furrowed. "Maegi and Mou of Yuelong," she supplied from memory. "..Mou being your brother, according to Meerkat.." Ruenna spoke slowly, hesitant to accuse anyone of dishonesty but more than a little skeptical that Towhee could forget the name of her own brother.

Towhee shook her head lightly. "No, he looked a thousand years older, and..." Well, there were simply too many emotions involved to begin naming them, much less describing them. "That's why he needs to bring them back here. He needs to be with his kids, of course, but he also needs to be with the rest of the family. And his children deserve the chance to meet everyone." She didn't mean to shove their adoptive parents out of the picture. If not for them, those pups would've died along with their mother. That's why she hoped they could simply come here.

Rue surprised her by mentioning the wolves by name. "Yeah," Towhee agreed, both of them striking her as familiar in a passing way. She even recognized the name of the pack from Meerkat's mentions here and there. But the next few words out of the Regent's mouth made no sense to her and were met with a fiery orange blink and a stretch of silence.

She didn't have a bother named Mou. She didn't think it was even close to any of her siblings' names. Towhee started going through a mental checklist but gave up quickly. There were so many of them, with Finley's and Elwood's bundled in there. Maybe she really had just forgotten one, an older one, perhaps? Or possibly it was a nickname? In any case, that was as comforting as it was interesting. It gave her hope that it really would work out if and when they came here.

The Sovereign didn't really want to admit her brain fart, especially with the way Rue was looking at her, so she simply said, "Ah, yeah." Feeling lame, she quickly added, "I think they'd all be happy here. It might be a bit weird, probably a little hard for the kids, but we've always had multiple parental figures, so... I'm hopeful it can work out."

Towhee touched on Phox's current state of being, and Rue winced sympathetically. Of course he was suffering. Of course he was just barely making it, tackling the chaos of his life one day at a time. Ruenna felt instantly guilty, ashamed that she could even think of wanting one more thing from a man who was already stretched to his limit. 

Ruenna mentioned the thing about Towhee's (other) brother, and silence stretched out between the pair. For a few beats, all they did was blink at each other. Finally, Towhee capitulated with a casual, "ah, yeah," and then directed the conversation back to the previous topic. 

Must be nice, Ruenna thought, to have so much family around that you could stand to forget a few names. It was yet another privilege of being born into the line of Teekon royalty that was the Redhawks. 

"I'm sure Yuelong is nice, but they should be here, connected to their roots," Ruenna agreed, a little absentminded. She was still brooding on the topic of Redhawk privilege. "This pack is their namesake, and they should inherit it. It's what I want for mine, too--" 

Ruenna stopped speaking suddenly, realizing that she had accidentally dipped into speaking-her-thoughts-aloud territory. She had never meant to imply that she aspired to have pups here, especially when Towhee's last ruling on the topic had been unfavorable. And she definitely hadn't meant to imply that those pups might be Redhawks. Maybe Towhee wouldn't notice the slip..? For stars' sake, Towhee had forgotten her own brother's name, so it stood to reason that her mind wasn't quite the steel trap that it might once have been.

Rue readily agreed with Towhee's assessment about where Phox and his children belonged, saying something that put a flare of pride in the Sovereign's heart. Of course, Towhee knew it was idyllic. More of their collective children would go out on their own rather than stay put. But they were talking about entire future generations here, so hopefully enough Redhawks stuck around to pass along the torch as the years passed.

The Regent cut herself off rather suddenly and Towhee smiled softly in understanding, lips parting as if she meant to say something when an intrusive thought waltzed right into her head. Her expression shifted as she caught herself letting the thread of thought unravel wildly. What if Phox returned and hooked up with Rue? Towhee's baby daddies from this and last year could give her the chance to play baby daddy next year.

The Sovereign gently checked that thought, much as she liked it, and decided to share a thought with Rue that she hadn't really spoken aloud to anyone. "You know, I might be done having kids. So it'll be up to you next season. Fen too, if..." Towhee suddenly glanced at the spot where her daughter had been seated earlier, brow furrowed. Bronco would surely return well before then, right? Was that why Fennec had seemed out of sorts, because there was something amiss with his recent sabbatical?

Towhee didn't seem at all put off by Ruenna's slip; in fact, she looked more amused than anything, but that couldn't be right..? Maybe Towhee really was loosing it.  

Ruenna's train of thought came to an abrupt halt at Towhee's next admission. Towhee couldn't be any older than Rue! What reason could she possibly have to think she was finished--? 

"Wh--?" Rue stopped speaking before she had voiced aloud a whole question. She played it out in her mind a little more. There was Towhee's most recent brush with death to consider. There was all the drama with Reyes. There was Fennec, a handful and a half, already having babies herself. There was the little grave dug under the Hobbit Hole's tree. 

Phox was not the only Redhawk who had lived out a harrowing year. 

Ruenna registered more of what Towhee had said, belatedly realizing that Towhee had given her the go-ahead for next season. Rue's heart did a funny leap. She ought not to have been surprised-- leadership positions did traditionally come with breeding rights-- but it felt like a victory, hearing her rights acknowledged aloud.

...A victory that was best celebrated quietly, given the situation. Ruenna was unsure of how Towhee felt about it all, thinking that this years' pups might be her last litter. 

"Do you think Phox is done, too?" Rue asked, no longer caring what her curiosity might imply. Her mind was racing, fueled by the all the possibilities that next season might present.

She quickly returned her attention to her present Regent. It looked like Rue planned to say something only to cut herself off again. Towhee gave her a questioning look, hoping to prompt her into continuing. The Sovereign knew her words must've given the woman so much food for thought and she wanted a taste.

Towhee did not expect that question and stared for a beat, wondering if Ruenna had read her mind. Had Rue considered the pairing herself? That couldn't possibly be the case. Maybe it was just a general inquiry as Rue tried to map out who else might be looking to breed the following year. That did make sense, plus it made Towhee aware that it didn't even matter what she said today. Everything could (and probably would) change dramatically by the time any of this became relevant.

But she answered, "I don't know. I hope not." That was true enough. "You'd have to ask him. I can only speak for myself, though I bet he's in the same boat. Things really did not go according to plan for either of us, did they? I mean, we got some great kiddos out of the deal, but..." But nothing looked like they'd imagined at the beginning of the season. There had been so much heartbreak and strife in there. And their family was still in pieces.

It wasn't just that, though, not for Towhee. "Even when things were on an even keel here, I struggled a lot with this litter. On the other hand, Killdeer's been nothing but a blessing. I need more of that in my life: kids I adore, who I'm not entirely responsible for."

Out of politeness, Rue hadn't asked Towhee to explain her decision, but the Sovereign did anyway.

No things really hadn't gone according to plan. A litter that was supposed to have two fathers ended up with none.. at least the Auntie Woo thing had worked out. No doubt Towhee and Phox had intended to raise their children up side-by-side, and they had yet to even meet. Well, with the exception of Tierra, whom Rue assumed would have come in contact with her cousins during her brief stay with Phox outside the Caldera. 

Although Ruenna knew how difficult and dramatic everything had been lately, Tohwee's admission that she had struggled came as a surprise to Rue. 

"Towhee, I didn't know. I'm sorry." Rue's expression clouded. Was there more she could have done to support Towhee? The Sovereign always seemed so strong. 

But Towhee didn't dwell on that. She went on to sing Killdeer's praises, and Rue smiled despite herself. Towhee wanted more kids around, even if they weren't hers. Especially if they weren't hers. 

"I'll see what I can do about that," Rue answered, raising an eyebrow facetiously. "That reminds me, weren't you supposed to be finding me a mate..?" She was definitely kidding at this point. Towhee had enough on her plate with the kids, and Phox, and Wraen, and Reyes, and the venomous snakebite, et cetera, ad infinitum.

Towhee shook her head at Rue's apology, mouthing, "No need." She made sure to punctuate this statement with an appreciative look though. She sincerely appreciated Rue's help these past several months and didn't take it for granted, even if all the support in the world was never quite enough to fight off the demons in Towhee's life.

Ruenna's facetious retort elicited a woof of laughter from the Sovereign. "Seriously, though," she rejoined in the next breath, "I know it's too early to call it. And our lives have a tendency to go topsy turvy all the time. But I'd really love to see you with a litter next year, so I'll be happy to keep an eye out while I reserve your dibs."

She didn't mention that she already had a potential suitor in her back pocket. For one thing, the timing was wildly inappropriate. For another, Phox didn't even live here and his future at the caldera was still up in the air. Yeah, there were plenty of reasons to keep that thought close to the vest for the time-being, though maybe by the time next spring rolled around, they would all be together, in a happier future...

"Actually, I think I'll start my search now. I'll catch you later, yeah?" Towhee said, shooting Rue a fond glance and reaching out for a quick nudge too. "Keep me posted on how your visit with Reyes goes," she requested before preparing to take her leave.

Rue smiled. It was good to see Towhee laugh, especially in the wake of such a serious discussion. 

Towhee informed Ruenna of the "dibs" she was reserving, and Rue opened her mouth to speak. There were no words. Although Rue's own rank had elevated, it still surprised her to hear how readily Towhee had switched her opinion on this matter. Eljay's departure had been a bitter pill to swallow, Ruenna knew; it stood to reason that Towhee wouldn't want a repeat of last season. 

Rue still hadn't caught up with her thoughts enough to form words, and Towhee had already begun picking herself up to depart. Towhee had a habit of swift exits, Ruenna had noticed-- she  had things to do and people to see, of course. It wouldn't surprise Rue if Towhee was off to check on Fennec, who seemed to be in an even more sour mood than usual. 

"Of course," Ruenna managed to answer. She watched Towhee depart, sitting quietly with her own thoughts for a long moment before eventually moving on to busy herself with other tasks.