Redhawk Caldera Lightning over Mexico.

Although it was only temporary, Towhee found herself with a bad case of empty nest syndrome. It didn't help knowing Caracal and Sphyra were traveling with Reyes and his little girlfriend. According to her son, her name was Teya. Towhee didn't realize she'd actually crossed paths with her before but it didn't matter. She didn't want to know anything about her; didn't want anything to do with her; and would breathe fuckin' fire if Teya ever tried to assume a motherly role in her kids' lives.

Inhale, she reminded herself as she walked downhill toward the borders, exhale. In, out, in, out... Towhee tried her best to redirect her mind to more constructive matters, like what the hell she would do with herself the rest of the day after she finished her imminent circuit.

Ruenna lingered at the border, gazing in the direction of Akashingo. She had accepted a secondhand invitation to their leaders' wedding ceremony, but there had been radio silence since. Rue imagined they would have held the ceremony by now; perhaps they forgot to send for her. 

That was no big deal, she supposed. The ex-scout wasn't much of a traveler any more anyways. Letting her breath out slowly, Ruenna turned to ascend the hill back into the Caldera. Her honey eyes landed on Towhee, and she swung her tail in greeting.

peregrine was angry. that was nothing new, but it seemed lately he had more to be angry about. maegi and mou were gone, @Vesper was reclusive, and @Phox was all peregrine had now. not that he had any desire to mingle with his packmates, much less get to know them. so imagine his displeasure when he stumbled across one of those packmates on his way to the border, and she seemed to be going the same way. he should have recognized her, but he didn't care to, so he had no idea who she was. he simply kept a distance between them, glancing over at her every few seconds or so to see if she was still there. so far he did not see the second woman, who he might have recognized. maybe.

written by kairos

since, as far as i can see, no one has referenced peregrine as being gone, i'm just going to plop him back in and say he's been reclusive (: if anyone has an issue with this or if he's been referenced as missing somewhere and i didn't see it, let me know!!

EDIT: shadowposted, sorry for the weak edit to incorporate it!

Thank you both for joining!

Should we add Peregrine to the ranks? :)

When her path crossed with Rue's, Towhee immediately hastened toward her fellow Sovereign. They hadn't had much time for a proper conversation lately. Not only did she need the distraction today, Towhee was actually quite keen to catch up with her friend.

"Hey, boss lady," she greeted, waving her own tail and preparing to say something else when she saw Peregrine loitering in the distance over Rue's shoulder.

It was a rare sighting, to be sure. Towhee hadn't so much as spoken to her nephew since he'd arrived at the caldera with Mou and Maegi. Now that his pseudo parents were gone, maybe it made sense that he might turn up more. The Sovereign eyed him a bit warily, though, having heard some things and not entirely sure he was approachable.

She raised a paw to wave at him, even crooked her wrist to beckon him closer if he wanted. But then she returned her focus to Ruenna, hoping to demonstrate there was no pressure for him to approach.

"Anyway, what's shakin'?"

At first, Ruenna thought Towhee and Peregrine might have arrived together-- that would have been quite a development for the reclusive boy!-- but the longer Ruenna watched them approach, the more clear it was that Peregrine was intentionally ignoring Towhee. At least Rue wasn't the only one getting the cold shoulder from the boy. It seemed that the only person in the Caldera who Peregrine could stand was Phox. 

"Hey yourself," she returned Towhee's greeting, amusement pulling at the corner of her mouth. She was boss lady, huh? Someone needed to inform all these sassy teenagers. Speaking of which.. where had Caracal been, lately? 

"Oh, I was just wondering about Akashingo," Ruenna imparted with a shrug. "The leaders are getting married in some kind of big ceremony, and ah.. a friend passed the invitation along to me." Ruenna might have looked a little affected at the mention of the friend, but she did her best to recover. "Actually, he passed the invitation to both of us. I just figured that you, ah..." ..would hate it. Towhee had always been quite clear that she thought these kinds of things were a massive waste of time.

she noticed him eventually — and so did someone else. the other wolf definitely looked familiar, but peregrine didn't bother trying to remember a name even as he changed course to approach the two older wolves. he couldn't say what drove him to do it, beyond passing whim. he slowed to an awkward lingering halt as ruenna finished saying something about invitations — whatever that meant. rather than try to insert himself somehow, peregrine only stared at the pair of them as if uncertain of how to proceed. or maybe he was just straining to think of something appropriately obnoxious to say. who knows.

written by kairos

yes plz!!

She saw Peregrine move in her peripheral vision but Towhee didn't turn. She needed to look at Rue to catch what she was saying. An eyebrow arched, probably predictably, at the news her co-leader shared. "Getting married?" she mouthed to herself. There was going to be some kind of public ceremony and they'd been invited.

Rue was correct: Towhee wanted little to do with it. It sounded very attention-seeking and frivolous. She wouldn't even want to go if it was someone she knew, someone in her own pack. Who cared if they were getting married? That shit was private. Idly, she wondered if the celebration involved public fucking. The other brow arched.

"I'll pass. But you should go, Ms Diplomat," the Sovereign said good-naturedly. "Uh, and just out of morbid curiosity, what does this ceremony entail, do you know...? And who's the friend? Maybe he can be your plus one," Towhee suggested. She hadn't consciously noticed the shift in Rue's expression but something must've tipped off her subconscious, anyway.

"I can't even imagine," Ruenna answered honestly, with a shake of her head. Given Akashingo's reputation, she expected the ceremony would be a spectacle, probably with many elements that would offend a wolf with practical sensibilities.

"Oh, Germanicus? He's loner who lives in the area. One of my.. informants?" Ruenna tried out the word with an amused tilt of her head. She was far from being any sort of spymaster, but she enjoyed the humor in conceptualizing herself in this manner. 

"I'll stick close to him," Ruenna confirmed, "I expect he'll be an island of familiarity in a sea of peculiarity." 

She turned her head looking for Peregrine, but he had disappeared.

Rue explained that Germanicus was merely an informant, a word which earned a snort of amusement from Towhee. It made her think of espionage, which seemed very unlike Ruenna. But just because she was a diplomat and a sweetheart didn't mean she couldn't also be crafty.

"Wait, have I met this guy?" the Sovereign wondered aloud, thinking of the swarthy man she'd met by the lake late in the summer. "No, wait, the dude I met—his name was Crowfeather," she thought aloud. "He mentioned a Germanicus though." She paused, reflecting. "It was pretty clever of you to work with them the way you did."

That's what she admired most about Rue: her diplomacy and the way she leveraged alliances for the Redhawks' benefit, proving they did have value in the face of Towhee's former doubts. And that was why she would be attending Akashingo's ridiculous party. Perhaps Towhee should've sucked it up and gone for her co-leader's sake, though she knew Ruenna could hold her own.

Especially if she stuck with this Germanicus guy. Towhee opened her mouth to say something when she peeked over at Peregrine, only to find him gone. Turning back to Rue, she bluntly wondered, "So... is he husband material?"

Ah, Towhee had met Crowfeather! And it sounded like he was more talkative when he was parted from his mentor's side. "Yes, they travel together as teacher and student," Ruenna confirmed of Germanicus and Crowfeather. 

The compliment was a surprise. "Thank you," Rue answered, her ears flattening a bit bashfully. 

Unfortunately, bashful was only the tip of the iceberg. Towhee zeroed in on Ruenna's designs incisively, inquiring about Germanicus as husband material, and Rue's abashment deepened. "Well... I like what I've seen so far," Ruenna allowed, fighting to keep an affected smile from her features. 

"The trouble is getting him to settle down." She shrugged in a gesture that was perhaps more nonchalant than she truly felt about the issue. She had offered Germanicus a place in the Caldera twice now, and both times he had turned her down, albeit gracefully.

She could've been barking up the wrong tree here, though Towhee knew Ruenna hoped to start a family someday and was now in the best possible position to do that. All that remained was finding an eligible bachelor and every hale man who crossed her path was a potential candidate, this Germanicus included.

"Oh?" she said, which was followed by a very different, "Oh," when Rue mentioned the problem. Towhee's brow furrowed. She opened her mouth to say something, appeared to reconsider, then decided to say what she was thinking, after all. "That doesn't sound like good husband material. I mean, that's kind of the foundation for a marriage, isn't it? And you should never settle for anything less than exactly what you want... and deserve."

Towhee gave Rue a shrewd look, then said, "What about the other one, Crowfeather? I didn't speak to him for long but he seemed like a decent guy. A little young," she was forced to admit, head rocking back and forth, "which I wouldn't have said mattered much, until the whole fiasco with Reyes. But this guy had remarkably good manners. Hmmm." But, oh, hadn't he said he went wherever Germanicus did, which made him as mercurial as his mentor?

Towhee started off strong with a good point, but then she concluded with a very bad one. 

"I don't think his reluctance to settle down is a true character flaw.. I think it's more a flaw in timing," Ruenna noted. Perhaps that would come across as overly optimistic and starry-eyed, but if she had learned anything from living in the Teekons, it was that anything and everything would change, given time.

"You should never settle for anything less than exactly what you want... and deserve."

"Oh, Towhee.." Ruenna murmured, brow knitting sympathetically. Were these the words by which Towhee lived? Because if they were, that would go a long way to explaining why she was still single. 

"Relationships require compromise. They're all about settling. What flaws am I willing to settle with? What assets would I settle for? If I cut loose the possibility of anyone who doesn't meet every standard I've devised in my mind, I'll end up alone." Although Ruenna still couched the advice in terms of her own love life, she meant for Towhee to hear it and apply it to her own situation. 

Of course, Ruenna giving relationship advice to Towhee was pretty much the blind leading the blind. Maybe they were both hopeless. 

Crowfeather. Ruenna chuckled. Cradle-robbing was much more Towhee's thing than her own. Besides, it was unlikely Ruenna would be appealing to a young man who could attract a pretty, graceful, nubile young woman of his own age. 

"I believe that Crowfeather and Germanicus are a package deal." The moment she said it, she knew Towhee would probably choose to interpret it as a sex thing. "Not that-! I mean, you know what I mean..." She moved quickly to amend her word choice, but couldn't quickly find the right replacement words. She ended up just laughing at herself and shaking her head.

"Ah," Towhee replied, not entirely sure that changed anything. But that was really Rue's call, wasn't it?

She pointed out that relationships required compromise. Towhee wholeheartedly agreed in theory if not necessarily in practice. But that wasn't the same thing as settling. Ruenna should maintain some basic standards, in her opinion, though again it was all up to her.

"I'd rather end up alone than with a shitbag," came her knee-jerk reply before she snorted and made sure to add, "Not that Germanicus is a shitbag." She didn't know the guy. "And not that not wanting to settle down makes someone a shitbag, generally speaking. But if you want to settle down with a dude who loves you and have his babies, then you should hold out for that, lady. That's all I'm trying to say."

Whether Ruenna accepted her logic or even followed it, Towhee would let it rest. It was Rue's life and she'd earned the right to do whatever she wanted with it. She was a queen now!

The other woman's sputtering earned an arched eyebrow and a disgusting snort from Towhee. "No homo...?" she supplied, joining Ruenna in laughing. In the next breath, she joked, "Maybe you should consider starting a harem, then. Maybe it's time to guide the Redhawks into an era of polyandry." Insert another gross snort. "Too bad I don't even want one, much less two. Maybe if it was the other way around, actually. Whenever I got tired of the hubby, I could just send him to one of his other wives." She wasn't being serious at all, but it was an entertaining thought.

It was clear from Towhee's response that she only wanted the best for Ruenna. Her advice came from a place of caring; she wanted Ruenna to have it all.. she thought Ruenna deserved to have it all. It was touching, although Rue still considered such a endgame to be out of her reach. At the ripe old age of five years, if she continued to put off child rearing in order to search for a man to love, she may be forever forfeiting the chance for having children to love. It was not an outcome she was willing to put to chance, especially a chance as slim as the one that some Prince Charming might take one look at her and fall head-over-heels. 

Ruenna nodded, offering no more insight on the situation. Towhee was unlikely to be able to see it her way, given that she was a younger wolf, much more able-bodied, and had already had all of the children she desired. Of course Towhee would be more focused on the companionship piece than she was on the child-rearing piece. 

Their conversation took a silly turn, with Towhee once more supplying the ever-mysterious phrase of "no homo." Now that it had been applied to Germanicus and Crowfeather, Ruenna felt finally understood what it meant in entirety. She laughed along with Towhee, completely unaware that in a few short days, she would learn truths about the nature of the relationship between Germanicus and Crowfeather that would render this supposed "joke" no laughing matter. 

Ruenna rolled her eyes in a good-natured fashion at Towhee's remarks about harems and polyandry. It was absolutely ridiculous, the notion that such a way of life could be Ruenna's legacy. "If you like the sound of that, maybe you should give Akashingo a visit," Ruenna suggested, humoring Towhee in a voice that was equal parts mysterious and facetious. She didn't know anything for sure about what exactly took place between the wolves and coyotes of Akashingo, but she had heard the rumors. 

Speaking of which. 

"I think I'm going to scout out a ways and see if I can meet Germanicus on the road," Ruenna said after their chuckles subsided. He really was due to arrive any minute now, and perhaps it was silly of her, but she didn't want Germanicus to witness how difficult it was for her to climb down out of the Caldera. She still had her pride, and she still clung to the hope that Germanicus thought her graceful and dignified. It was a perception that would be difficult to perpetuate, if he saw her hobbling and lurching her way slowly down the hill of the Caldera, her face a twisted mask of pain. 

She also wanted to spare Germanicus the appraising gaze of Towhee, as well as whatever embarrassing comments her friend would feel were necessary to make.

One corner of the Sovereign's mouth lifted when Rue told her to consider visiting Akashingo after all. Did they practice something like that there? She wondered. But her interest didn't go far enough that she actually asked.

"Alright," Towhee said when her co-leader said she wanted to meet Germanicus, "I should get going on this patrol." She motioned idly at the nearby borders, as if that was any kind of necessary. "Be safe. Catch you later," she added in parting, glad to have caught up with Rue if only briefly.

As she began padding away toward the starting point of her reconnoiter, Towhee glanced around for any sign of Peregrine. She didn't see him and she frowned thoughtfully. With her own kids away, she would've liked to spend some time getting to know him better. Oh, well, maybe next time.