Wheeling Gull Isle vaucha

"i've decided," she told @Bartholomew.
she was leading him into the caverns, marvelling again at the play of light and sound and color. the other day had been a trial but she had not forgotten that was how he had given his initial request.
the muted glow caught the gold coinage of her gaze as she flicked it toward the man. heda drew in a breath. "i want you to come with me. i —" well she had stayed up all night, wondering if jasmine would be all right alone for the several days it took to get there and back.
"i could go alone." she knew the way back to the summit. heda stared up at the expanse and then back to bartholomew. "but i don't have to be alone now." her lips trembled as she curved them into a tiny smile.

his lips formed a small O in thought at her first words, he followed along near her flank. listened to her breathing and the words that may come.

it seemed there were no tears now.

you never have to be alone now. at least until you want to be. he teased with a soft smile, but the sway of his tail behind him betrayed his internal excitement.

i'm honored you want me to go with, heda. sincerely.

he peered at the cavern, hesitant but not fearful. he wondered if a spirt of a past time might be waiting for him. ready to clutch him back. none of that ever happened though.

now his mind wondered the logistics of the trip. jasmine would have to be informed. he wondered if she had any interest in being a...temporary resident, at least for a while longer. the island would be wholly hers while they were away.

heda ducked her head with a grin, her own tail returning the gesture. "it's a long way from here, but it's pretty. i wish — i wish i could have loved it. fallen in love with it. made it my home." regret tinged her words but she wanted there to be no crying today; commanded it of herself.
bartholomew had said here he was a different man. here a part of him lived. and she still didn't know if he meant that piece of himself resided in the shadows ahead, or on the island itself.
"you said you 'desperately wished to hide from god,' once."
there was little light in this passage. she tried to make her voice larger in the space.
"was this where you hid?"

no tears still, but he felt a fracture in his own heart and could not imagine how it pained her. to have faces she knew and perhaps loved there, but to not have loved being there.

not every place is forever, but they can still mean something along the way. he whispered softly. mindful of her still tenderness. he imagined she would be raw in the heart for some time, even if she seemed to embrace a new shift in her life.

but now it was his time to feel exposed. raw. burdened by the memory of himself. how terrible to be repulsed by his own self.

yes. his features fell, gold eyes peering at a place big enough to lay. somewhere he had slept once upon a time. i stayed here in the dark, literally, for some time. as if God might not be able to see me in the dark. he laughed bitterly but hushed. then i left the island in the night, trudged along the mountains. self-imposed punishment, i suppose.

yes, he said, and even though she couldn't see his face, heda knew it was solemn. he had hid from god and he had been found all the same. but then it sounded as if he had run away to chastise himself. their stories aligned here, she thought, though before this moment heda had never considered that she was punishing herself.
the corridor opened into a room of azureite stone. reflections of sunlight upon water danced over the walls, and them both. 
she looked at bartholomew. "why were you hiding?" her own tones were somber. heda still did not think he had done anything so bad, but she was starting to learn that 'bad' was measured in far different ways.

he dreaded the question.

the delicate tangle of it all left him uneasy and for a moment he thought he might vomit for it all. how ugly and raw he felt to think of how he hated that version of himself.

he tried not to picture the faces of the women or places.

he stared at the shimmer reflections of water waves along cavern walls.

i...committed sins, bad things to do in the eyes of God. i laid where i should not have, i meddled in affairs that weren't mine. he did not wish to explain the finer details. there was no need to burden her mind yet with affairs of men and women without shame.

and i was crueler than need be. even to those in need. that's not a man i should have ever been and it's a man i'd like to never see again.

bartholomew spoke gently and heda listened. no one had told her of such things, and so his proper vagueness kept the allusions floating out of reach over her head.
ironically then, his lecture against himself held little sting. heda could not imagine him cruel. meanness seemed far beyond bartholomew. perhaps he counted shouting and yelling also as sins.
but his features were grave. "when i left atautsikut, i was angry. it's not a person i want to see anymore. but sometimes i think she's part of me, that furious kid."
suddenly heda wanted to leave the cavern and return to the sky and wild air and the greenhills.

it's always there in us, i think. he swallowed the lump in his throat. tried to find his own sense of balance once more.

it's just a matter of if you feed into it. everybody feels bad things sometimes, the difference comes from acting on it or not. he sucked in the salty, cool air. how different it felt from the heat of the shorelines and hills outside. he thought fondly of the place under the stars they called home on the hill.

do you think that furious kid will return when we get to atautsikut?

heda laughed a little. "god — i mean, gosh, i hope not." briefly embarassed, she looked away and around them again. the scar in the earth was like a wound which had not healed. what should have been a place of serenity unnerved her, for she remembered greyfall and duskfire glacier too easily.
but heda was still rampantly curious about these 'bad things,' especially as bartholomow continued to say that without giving any context. her golden eyes found his.
"did you ever give this place a name? even if you just thought it. like um, the hills. where we sleep. i call them 'greenhills' or 'the greenhills' in my head."
her tail stirred gently. naming things like the island all at once was too hard. maybe it was better to go place by place.

she corrected herself in one swift moment. a smile returned to his face, kind and thankful. she was learning, he reminded himself. he knew she did not say His name in any sort of vain attempt.

but a name was not on his mind. she had named their hills. the greenhills was a good name. soft and kind, the embodiment of their little place. his own tail swayed with content peace.

i haven't thought of one but...it does remind me of a story. a man thrown into a lion's den, saved by the blessings of God. he wondered if she cared for such a thing. although i wonder if naming it the lion's den may scare those who visit, unintentionally or otherwise.

and he doubted any mountain lion (or other felines for that matter) seemed to make home in here.

"lion's den?" heda echoed, her curiosity truly sharpened. the way that bartholomew bestowed his silent approval of her quick self-edit pleased her, somewhere inside; the fact that his face was affected by what she said was curious. it added a certain delicacy to their rapport.
"i think it's a cool name. but i've never seen a lion. i guess — do you want anyone coming down here?" he'd said visit. not stay. heda briefly wondered if he was including jasmine in that number, as one of theirs or a guest.

did he want anyone down here?

i suppose i don't know why they would want to be down here, if not for some type of...exile. his brows furrowed in brief thought. his back turned away from heading any deeper into the cavern, near eager to make his way back into the sunlight.

the memories of here still stung.

there's so much beauty here elsewhere. the greenhills, as you say, for example. perhaps it's best to spook off any who might want to live in a lion's den.

heda followed. "let's call it it that, then," she decided with the satisfied air of the young when they have come to a decision. "that way if someone comes down, it's their choice."
she was discovering that the idea of more wolves on the island did not perturb her quite so much when she had bartholomew's soft attention.
when they had come out of the cavern, heda stretched and tossed her head, frisking about for a moment. he was right. the loveliness of the place was not lost on her. "will you tell me the story?" heda asked when she had returned to his side. "about the man and the lion's den?"

he smiled, some sense of satisfaction and relief.

this would the lion's den. it would be a place not meant to be lived in for long, more of a...statement piece of the island almost. a tribute to the awful things that could happen — and that God may lift them out of it. he held these thoughts closesly.

until she asked for the story.

it's a story about a man who had a jealous rivals, eager to see his downfall. the sadness in his voice was absent now, in the warm air and sunlight. instead his tone shifted into that of a story teller. he was a man of God, devoted wholly and praying each day. do you know what his rivals sought to do in retaliation?

bartholomew took to the telling. heda, who had been intending to trot down the coastline, now tucked closer and kept her gait trained to his. if he walked she would follow and if he did not, she too would heed this, despite the urging of her own mind.
the protagonist was a man of god. like you, heda thought. slowly she was acclimating to this unknown upon which her mentor constantly called, though she was unsure that god himself had ever talked to her.
"what did they do?" she asked, her red-backed ears sweeping forward. "if he was a man of god, then he was a good man. why did they want him to fail?"

because some people do not believe any word of God and sometimes those people go great lengths to hate the things they do not understand.

he remembered the young boy with his sedna, he remembered the pale coyote who scoffed at him.

he supposed he had learned things from those days too.

so these rivals went to the king of that land and convinced the king that none shall pray for a whole moon, unless it was to the king. but the devoted man did not listen and he continued his prayers to God.

he walked along towards the edge of the lavender fields, where the shoreline shifted from flowers to sand. his gaze fluttered to heda briefly.

when bartholomew looked at her, heda watched him solemnly. she shifted her paws in the flowering ground. "why would they worship a king?" what did a king do that was worthy of honor? but it sounds like the hating men had accomplished their goals.
the man continued to pray to god.
"even if they didn't believe in god, they didn't have to try and get him to stop."
heda's nose twitched. "is that why he was thrown into the lion's den? for disobeying the king?"
her face was thoughtful, all of it devoted to her processing.

his shoulders shrugged at first, as if he understood as little as she did. he supposed some men were not happy with doing the work of another, of spreading good and being seen as such. rewards could come later.

but she was smart, she followed along the story and plot well.

it is! he offered with a tempered smile, lest he look too pleased upon such a part of the story.

however, when the king and his men went to go see our man, it was found he was alive and well. and the blessing of God was said to have kept the mouths of the lions closed, so that he could survive to tell the tale.

god had saved the man from the lions. he had kept the one who prayed safe from harm. heda looked at the lavender blooms, at the sea, at the shore.
and then she turned her silver-smudged eyes on him.
"does god punish people in the same way? what happened to the ones who tried to keep the man from praying?" her brow furrowed.
"did the king worship god after that?" bartholomew's eyes were always gentle, and glancing into them she knew he had the answers she wanted.

she had plenty of questions and he smiled for them all.

briefly he thought of abraham, of jacob. he remembered when they had been young. when all of these lines had been bedtime stories he had told them before they tucked in alongside dove. he remembered how they clung to each word and yet they also chirped like baby birds, eager to pelt him with questions.

the memory had his eyes turn out towards the ocean.

God's punishment is a complicated thing. sometimes i — he paused, lips drawing thin in thought. i do not know if it's God punishing more than it is...straying from him does not ever seem to bring much good.

he paused, reclining his mind back into a story teller role once more.

for it was not God that punished the worshiper's rivals, it was the king, who witnessed this miracle of God and sent the rival's into the lion's den. the king proclaimed God, spoke him to be true to his land for such a witnessing. that they too should worship.

straying from god did not bring good.
heda considered the life she had led before bartholomew. though she had many good memories, the overall trend of her life was a steady decline in quality of some kind.
this she felt was her fault. no one else made her feel this way; it was simply how her mind chose to interpret the exhaustion of this year and last. 
when bartholomew looked out to sea, heda did the same. druid came to her mind, druid and witch.
for once it did not hurt to think of them.
the king sent the man's rivals to the lions in the den. "did their mouths stay shut?" she asked softly, still turned away and somehow knowing what the response would be.

the boys had asked the same thing.

he answered the same way.

no, he told her plainly. for they did not believe, their doubt of God too great. the lion's would feast. a grim end for rather wicked ways. if they had believed in God, they would not have pit brother against brother. they would worshiped together, not convinced a king to make such a foolish contrive.

his eyes turned to her now, wondering what she thought of the end of such a tale.

her eyes widened slightly; the shock of the story's end raced through their golden cores. and then she was gathered again, fiercely introspective as she stayed very often these times. for a long moment heda said nothing, and then she lifted her chin somewhat with a touch of her usual defiance.
"they should not have told the man to stop praying to god. god — well, it seems like he protects you if you believe him." she was sheepish now, feeling that her grasp of things was tenuous at best and wrong at worst.
heda glanced down the coast again. "are you hungry? i am. my treat," she teased bartholomew with a bright glimmering smile, tail swinging in an arc.

he smiled at her warmly. he supposed that was the biggest take away from the story, wasn't it? to hold fast in faith even when it might hurt...it paid off. it could save.

show me how your hunting skills have grown, he encouraged with a looser smile now, a nod of his head to prompt her on her way.

he would be happy to follow her in the wake of this lesson.