Ankyra Sound Mont Blanc Radiance

@Val

In many ways Dwin was still very much a kid. When she got excited about something, she could forget that she had to eat. Or flatly refusing the idea that she was tired and needed to sleep, when - in fact - she was absolutely exhausted and barely dragging her feet. There had been a period in her childhood, when she had been simply unstoppable - 45 minute naps interspersed between peaks of activity. Or not looking truth in the eyes even if it was glaringly obvious. Or telling that she was definitely not cold, even if her lips were turning blue and she was trembling.

Two or three days she had spent on the coast, walking along the shores and exploring. The large mass of water still captivated her every time she set her eyes on it. Sand was another discovery - sure she had seen such along the lakes near her home, but not in such quantities. It was soft to walk on, it was easy to dig and it was so so pleasant to the touch. Now too she lied sprawled out in the pit she had created for herself to protect her from the winds with her eyes set on that thin line, where the water met the sky. All this poetry of life, while her stomach grumbled for food it had not seen in a long time.

when val needed to think, he went to the sound. he had no love for the waves or the dark tunnels ankyra housed, yet something drew him here any time his mind was troubled.

much like ceridwin, val didn’t always recognize signs he was flagging. the world was intense and his place in it was yet to be discovered. if only he were installed with a dial of mercury, so he could tell when he was rising — or conversely when his spirits sunk to an all time low.

he didn’t see ceridwen immediately, but he did see a strangely shaped mound in the sand. it was far enough from the water he felt confident in approaching — yet he did so at a quiet stalk, ears flat to his skull and body hunched in the straight line of a looming predator.

Dwin was not entirely blind to her surroundings. When out in the wilds and in danger of becoming someone else's meal, your senses grow more acute to sensing a malicious intent from afar. Even if that intent has only one molecule of evil and thousand of curiousity and cautiousness. She turned her head slightly to catch a dark figure approaching her and, attempting to make as little sound as possible she shuffled so that she was facing the stranger. 

A pair of ears and a watchful green eyes peered above the edge of the sandpit and she locked her gaze onto the man, who was coming nearer. Once within the earshot, she cleared her throat and said loud enough for him to hear: "If you intend to have me for dinner, I have to warn you that: A.There is not much to have. B.You will disintegrate from inside. Choose wisely!"

once he was close enough to see the form hidden inside the raised sand, val stopped. a pair of bright eyes stared back from the tawny fortress.

val’s spine softened. he’d no intention of eating the sandpit’s resident — it was not every day he found a wolf in a hole. least of all in a place as grim as ankyra.

he estimated this figure to be a yearling or younger. her silvery fur appeared outwardly healthy, though he noted spacing between each rib. she cautioned him against ingesting her person.

oh. i thought you were a dead seal or something. why would you make me disintegrate? you packing chili peppers under that fur of yours? val set on his haunches, watching her from a distance that said he was comfortable but not yet at ease.

Dwin was a tomboy by nature and she was immune to being called names, yet being compared to a dead seal did poke at her ego. Once the guy sat down, she pulled herself up so that they were eye to eye. Good thing that the distance between them made them look almost equal in size and she decided to ignore anything else that would contradict it. 

"Worse. Lava," she corrected him with a mischievous grin. "So you will burn. But first all your insides will be clogged by fur," she added. And then you will burn. "May I know the name of the last person I see before I end up your meal?" she asked.

lava? val’s gaze flickered unbidden to sleeping dragon, which was obscured by the tall sequoias that bordered ankyra like an ancient crown.

he grinned. despite nearing three years of life, val indulged in his imagination. ceridwen painted a gruesome picture of shocking orange lava smoldering from a freshly debrided wound.

i suppose i could give you that, but first… it would be unspeakably rude of me to eat without requesting your full name. mine is valravn elwood dahomey-rivaini eyjolfur. but you can call me val. my full name goes down about as smoothly as your lava-blood.

The guy was not a bore and something in the manner he indulged in the game reminded her of Jay. Another thing, when you are out in the wilds or tough and independent is that exchanges with yourself are not half as funny as, when you have a living person opposite of you. 

She was about to reply with something along the lines of "didn't your mom teach you not to play with your food", when she realized that "talking to your food first" was not exactly playing. All things considered it was an entirely new approach to meals and she herself did not know, what to make of it. 

"Dwin!" she did not give her full name, because - while likeable - he was still a stranger, who may or may not eat her. "My grandpa's name was Elwood. Was he your grandpa too?" she asked, because it was a custom of some people (her dad included) to name their children after noteable ancestors. Her second name "Owl" was in honor of her great-grandmother March Owl. Though Jay used to say that it was because Dwin's eyes were big and round and outsized her brains.

dwin was a delightfully short name. val much preferred it to his lengthy moniker. he didn’t know what it meant, but it conjured the image of sprites and faeries to mind; nebulous things that frolicked in pastel forests.

val started when dwin divulged a shared name in their lineage. having only just realized his entire life and assumed ancestry had been a lie not so long ago, this was not an easy topic. i don’t think so. i think that was a name my mo— choke. was raleska really a mom to him? look, that’s a pretty heavy topic for a first meeting. val kept his tone light in hopes he wouldn’t dissuade her. what’s dwin mean and why do i think of gnomes when i hear it?

"You are not rude to your food, but you are impolite to girls. First you call me a dead seal, now - a gnome," Dwin pretended to take offence, but that stern facade soon crumbled and she smiled. To be honest, she preferred a witty banter over boring, but proper conversation any time. 

"Oh, but why? Elwood is such a good name. I did not meet my grandpa personally, but I heard he was totally awesome," she explained, but it did occur to her that she knew far less about, who her grandfather was, than about Finley, of whose adventures and extraordinary life she had never grown tired listening to. 

"There was also an older brother - Elwood Junior, but he disappeared a long, long time ago," dad had not told much about him and sensing that there was enormous amount of sadness connected to this, Dwin had not pressed forward. 

"Have you had anyone disappear without a trace? Ain't that awful?" she went on, her mind generating questions. She was about to ask more, but - perhaps - this too was a heavy topic for a first meeting. She did not entirely understand the concept of, what were the boundaries of first meetings. 

"Where are you from?" she went for a simpler topic. 

you are not rude to your food, but you are impolite to girls. a dogged grin rose across val's features. you're a girl? i thought you were a dead seal-gnome. in that case -- he cleared his throat and with a flourish bowed: allow me to extend my apologies. pleased to meet your acquaintance, m'lady. val's gaze met dwin's for extra effect as he pronounced m'lady.

as far as elwood, an older brother, and disappearance, val's humor subsided. these were topics he'd likely engage with erzulie, or even chacal -- but dwin was a stranger, and in many ways, still a kid. was it even right to engage in that kind of heavy topic with her?

val would have answered the question about if he'd had anyone disappear without a trace, but he assumed it was rhetorical; in response he offered a noncommittal shrug that seemed to say eh, that's just the way things are. where he was from was much simpler to answer than to detail his convoluted and shockingly dysfunctional family history. i'm from sapphique. he gesticulated to the rising cliffs behind them. what about you? part of him wished to point out she looked a little young to be on her gnomesome-lonesome, but he recalled he had struck out on his own at a similar age.

"Here I thought that you were something a bear had chewed on and passed through," Dwin was never the one to turn down an opportunity to trade insults. She was more careful with her fellow female compatriots, but guys - in her opinion - had to have thick skin. If they could not take ragging, then they were not real men in the first place. If "m'lady" was supposed to leave an impression on her, that was a completely wrong chose. Had he called her "Warlord Swanson" (another random pair of words, no need to Google them for deeper meaning), she would even have felt flattered. 

"Sapphique? That's an unusual name for a pack," this observation was more for the sake of small-talk, because the only other pack she knew was Brecheliant and, unless you knew the meaning and the story, it made just as little sense as this one. "What does your home boast with? Mine has a dragon daycare and a forest full of ghosts," she asked, completely forgetting to reply to his inquiry of her where-do-I-come-from?

funnily enough, that is exactly what has happened. being chewed up and spat out by a bear is a tradition in sapphique, and we are steeped in tradition. he was bemused that dwin hit not one, but two rather sensitive topics in mere moments.

val had never considered the name of his pack strange. he contemplated for a moment what it might sound like to outside ears. we don’t have dragon daycares — that sounded truly fantastical. but we do have many ghosts. some of them are even evil ghosts, according to my mothers. where exactly can i find these dragon daycares? are you their escaped lunch?

Val did not take offence, but played the ball right back at her. On the third go he had earned Dwin's respect as a worthy opponent. "Lunch - no, in fact, I am out here to find them the best gourmet treats," she replied. "But I doubt that bear-lunch rejects are something these royal beasts would ever seriously consider. But they might consider that bear of yours. Any chance?" she tilted her head to the side and grinned. 

"Evil ghosts? Well-played, but have you met aliens?" she jumped to the next topic. "I have met exactly three on my way here," she thought of the three wolf-like figures she had encounterd. The stick-insect Skeletor, who she hoped had taken her advice to heart and was alive and well. The dappled-bear-like beast at the Hot Springs. And the odd snow-pile/matted fur dog. 

aliens, lunch, and royal-beast gourmet treats. val's head was spinning just keeping up.

if you're serious -- pause on the banter for a second, though val was enjoying it. the bear is up the hills in the north of us. i wouldn't go looking for it. ostensibly responsible val had to just butt in with that caveat -- after all, half his family had permanent scars from a bear, himself included.

aliens, i have never met. unless you're counting the thing i'm looking at. val grinned with one brow cocked as if to say go on, about these aliens.

"Well, I am not going to look for it either, but I will tell one of the mama dragons to scout and do the work!" Dwin replied, just in case Val decided to dare her to find that bear and bring it back to the hungry dragon babies. Because if he did... well, self-proclaimed Warlord Swanson would have to defend her honor and do the job. Good thing this guy did not know the Blackthorn code of honor (basically, do reckless things first and think later).

"Yeah, you have not met a single alien," she agreed, though all of a sudden she had an urge to pad over to the water edge and check her reflection. Odd things could happen to you while sleeping. Like that princess Aurora, who had fallen asleep for 100 years to wake up as a frog. Or something like this. "Oh - are you a man outside and inside?" she asked, recalling an encounter that had taken place few days ago. She was a good soul and had been asked to help. Here was an opportunity to do so. 

val decided he would very much like to see this mama dragon: if only to watch her engulf sapphique’s mortal enemy whole. in that aspect perhaps he would have made a good blackthorn, for he was always pursuing his own reckless ambitions before stopping twice to think about the personal safety of himself or others. the last few weeks he had seen firsthand how this affected others, and had done enormous self reflection. in that moment a dare for warlord Swanson was furthest from his mind, though the resulting adventure might have been extraordinary.

dwin did not miss a beat, confirming val had never seen an alien. truthfully he had no concept of them, and could not even begin to devise what they might look like in his minds eye. blue? sixlegged things on pointy cloven hooves? or something a bit closer to his own morphology?

he blinked, only just registering dwin’s most recent inquiry. as if to assure himself that his male parts were still there, val could not help the quick glance under the hood. nope, definitely still male. uhhh. no one has asked me that before. i think so..? why?

Though the encounter with Rykor and the ensuing wealth of information received had left Dwin shaken afterwards, she had eventually recovered. Her mind dealt with the new facts in its own way - cherry-picking, what she thought had been important, forgetting the rest and interpreting the whole so that they fit the young Blackthorn's narrative on, how life was organized and it worked. 

"Well... a few days ago I met this girl or a boy..." here she fell silent, in a rare moment of being unable to quite articulate the encounter, because it had been extraordinary for a lack of a better word. "And she had this most wonderful scent about her - the feeling is like cannon-balling in the water, but somehow ending up belly-flopping on the surface of it. You know - the hit that takes your breath away, affects your whole body and is painful after. And then you sink - kind of like that," she rambled on.

"So - she was looking for a male, told me to send one her way, if I know such," she went on, raking for the details in her head. "And I understand that apparently you cannot go looking for kids in parsley beds on your own - there have to be two. Or something like that," she had almost reached the end of the story and felt relief. "Anyway - she asked for help and I thought - maybe you can? Name's Rykor - know her?" a sigh of relief.

It was evident that Dwin was both, naive, uninformed, had no filter or idea, what she was talking about, and that it had taken a lot of effort to narrate in a way person might understand. It was also very obvious that she did not feel entirely at ease discussing this topic. 

if dwin felt unease, val felt downright consternation. it was all he could do to suppress the shenzi-cackle that nearly threatened to topple his composure.

hearing children came from a patch of parsley was a first for val, who had only ever been acquainted with the unpleasant reality: children came from the gristly guts of their screaming, bloodied mothers.

he preferred the parsley version.

rykor was an unfamiliar name to him, so he shook his head. that’s, well, that’s something. but i think i’ll pass. dwin was likely referring to a wolf’s heat with her talk of wonderful scents, but it only put val at unease. where are you from, again? and how did you end up here?

"Oh, well," Dwin shrugged and added a little green checkmark in the box "At least I tried". She was glad that Val did not ask to elaborate on the subject or point, where that damsel in distress was located. Because - come to think of it - what use of her help was, if she could not even remember, where she had met Rykor or where she had (if she had) intended to go. Probably looking for males was not an easy task.

"Brecheliant - a-a-a-a-a-a-all the way there. I would invite you to visit, but with me not being there and my family not knowing you by anything, you are in a very great danger of becoming a snack to the dragons," she shared waving one of her forepaws in the very approximate direction of, where she thought her home was. Suddenly she burst out laughing, because she just imagined her poor, old, peace-loving dad dragging Val by his tail to the lair. Gruesome fantasy, but these two incompatible things - Eljay and being evil - felt hilarious. 

The next question made Dwin pause, think and then ask: "The boring truth or the colorful improved version?" Though - what was the point of asking, even the boring truth would be in all shades of rainbow. 

dwin gesticulated to somewhere off in the distance. val’s olive gaze followed in silence as she burst out laughing.

brecheliant was as alien to him as dragons. he supposed someday he should take the time to make the hike there, if not to see this mama dragon in all her glory.

he was asked to pick between two absolutes. his lip pursed in contemplation. how about both? answer this — why are you here? and where are you going?

"It doesn't work like that - it is either one or the other. Both do not mix well," Dwin countered for the sake of argument, not that it really mattered. "Well, I am on my way of becoming the best explorer in the world," she said. "And to do that, you cannot simply sit at home and hope that life will happen to you - though plenty of life happened there as well. But - you know - different stuff," she pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, searching for the best explanation.

"Why and where do not matter really - the path does. That's, what my mom says," she told, not realizing that, if Val turned out to be a murderer on the prowl she had just told that she was on her own and no one knew, where she was. "And you do not always know, what you will find on the way. I discovered three aliens, a wolf, whose pack leader is a literal Lord of the Undead Underworld, that girl I told you earlier about - you sure, you do not want to help? How hard that can be? - oh, and this," she waved to the ocean behind her.

"I did not know this kind of thing existed and it is positively marvelous. I have to admit, though, that I like sand better," she shuffled her feet in the sand and smiled. "Just think, what else is there out in the world, just waiting to be discovered!"

if anyone understood dwin’s fascination with her newfound world it was val, for he had been taken under similar wanderlust in his adolescence. there was something sublime about the discovery of the rich world beyond your roots, how very unique and fantastical every new vista seemed.

he would have agreed with dwin’s mother too, for the goal did not matter so much as the journey itself. and paths, he’d found, can take you very unexpected places.

i’m definitely good. especially if she — he — is one of those aliens you mention. val’s grin fell away as dwin motioned towards the glimmering sea. their talk had been a nice distraction from the swarming water, and now that his attention was drawn to the surf he felt his toes curl. that is the ocean. he looked at some fixed point in the distance as long as he could bear — which was not very long at all. the sand is much safer. there are things in the ocean that will drag you under and kill you. no, not dragons — but similar. have you seen this place at night?

"Sorry, no, but I will tell the next alien, who I meet, to go see you. If they express a wish to meet a man - both inside and outside," Dwin promised solemnly. "Even if you are not exactly they want to meet - you can always make stuff up. Improve it, don't you think? I can certainly tell that..." she looked him up and dow, brow furrowed, scrutinizing every detail. "You looke like a black demon beast from Hell. That's as good premise as any. But - if you give more details, I can make more stuff up," again she was not poking fun at him. It was an honest offer with the very best intentions. 

"The Ocean. This is a good name. Fits way better than this big vast water thingie," Dwin looked over her shoulder at the place that had its own name. She missed the part of seeing the ocean at the night and therefore, when she turned back to face him again, she was on to an entirely different topic. "What do you think, Val," she began, her green gaze meeting his again. "Are there a lot of things in the world that do not have their names yet?" 

dwin promised to play expert matchmaker if she came across an alien. val wasn’t certain he needed such services provided, but accepted anyway with a nod.

so she saw him as some sort of hellhound. this thoroughly charmed val, who understood he was anything but. he could be better likened to a marshmallow, but he wasn’t going to poke holes in this fantastical rendition of himself. an alien and demon beast sound like an unlikely pair. what will the bear eating dragons think?

swept away by the appeal of fantasy, val forgot for a moment his anxieties about the sea. he thought to himself: had he ever considered a place or thing might be nameless?

maybe to us. someone had to come across the ocean and decide a better name than ‘big vast water thingie’. i bet everything has a thousand names, in a thousand different languages, time, and circumstances. that we will not be the first, or the last, to look on this big vast water and reach for another name to call it. which, by the way, there are many names. the sea, the ocean, saltwater, mer… or, its newest name — big vast water thingie.

"Unlikely creatures make unlikely pairs. Why do you think it has to be pairs? Why not threes, fours and fives?" Dwin's mind at this point was like a mountain goat. It hopped from topic to topic, never staying in place for too long in fear of falling down. "Wouldn't it be fun to have two mums and three dads. Or even better mods and dams?" she looked up, picturing this kind of scenario. Well, she had grown up with more than just two adults in charge of her, but they had been called aunts and uncles regardless of their relation to the children. "Which one you would prefer better - a two or mores?" she asked with an absolute ease of a person, who has no tact and filters. "I think that having a reserve is good. Just in case."

However hard was it for Dwin to listen to the end, what others had to say, Val managed to catch her full attention with his view on the origin of names. It was just as a fascinating thought - the thousand names - as, when you tried to think outside the boundaries of planet Earth, Solar System, Milky way and then realize that you are a speck of dust subjected to chance. "You are good story-teller, you know?" she praised him, smiling sincerely.