Swiftcurrent Creek pearls

a zealous glint had entered all of lestan. he walked with an upright step, consumed by thoughts of this fire.
and now he knew he must tell @Akavir, bring him close at last to the place that was loch teine, and the grievance their family had suffered there — and much, much more. admissions. revelations.
with him, he carried the round piece of bone, tangled into the fur along his throat where it hung and bounced with each step.
his eyes were wild as he hunted for his cousin only.

Solemn, he remained outside the den after the pups had fallen asleep. Their cries for their mother had been unwavering until sleep had taken them—regurgitated meat and soothing warmth did little to assist them in their tenacity.

So when heavy eyes fell upon Lestan, Akavir began to pull himself up to his paws, indicating Lestan should be as quiet as possible—if they woke, he did not know if he could settle them once more. Nodding a bit away from the den entrance, his tired eyes fell upon the man, only now noting the glint in the eyes of his distant cousin—had he always seemed so frayed?

belatedly, it occurred to lestan that he had not seen jakoul at all since he had been back. of course, he had hardly been away from reverie since he had been back. akavir's tiredness and the silence for which his cousin gestured told the dreaming mayfair more.
quietly he followed but it was fit to bursting inside him, the notion. and when at last he could speak, lestan licked dry lips and whispered, "do you know about the Mayfair Murders beside the Fire Lake?" that was how it had been told, after, in the small territories, those around the glen and beyond. akavir, perhaps his side of the family had known this lore also.

Lestan spoke of something he had never heard—the Mayfair Murders. His brows arched, recalling suddenly some of their initial meetings and Lestan’s fascination at any information Akavir could provide given their last name. "No," was his simple response.

Before, he had felt maybe the younger man had simply been curious of some of his own origins—innocent enough with his curiosity. So why had he never mentioned such a dire sounding story of his own? “What are they? Where is Fire Lake?”

carefully lestan recounted the story he had told reverie: the golden deer arriving amid the dancing, cursing the name of mayfair; the thirty souls which had perished; the guard which had knocked him into blackness and spirited him elsewhere, so that he might start anew.
and then what he remembered of the deer, speaking 'reverie.' of the golden fur, of the doe had found torn outside swiftcurrent. of the cat and the burning doe which followed his fever-dreams.
"i know how it must sound, akavir, but this — this woman. this deer. reverie, i — they are connected. and this is a matter for mayfairs."

Akavir listened—and he did so with a carefully guarded mask—the same he had learned to keep in place over the years when life continually battered ones soul, for he feared if he revealed his surprise at the words that came, or his concern, Lestan would no longer confide in him.

And at the end, he felt a vast, gaping bridge between the both of them—the very same way he felt of Reverie, and he came to recognize this feeling as one of complete loss. He did not know how to bridge that gap, and he did not know what to do with the nonsensical words—he could not help, and then, glaringly obvious, he did not even know if there was anything to help.

What if the two were simply eccentric, and would always be so? Who was he to declare such was not normal?

Only when it affected the creek as a whole, as it had been the past week or so, would he need to make a decision on what to do…

But his main focus was his children for the moment—his capacity to lead two grown adults as if they were also children seemed next to impossible.

“And… how is this woman connected to a deer, Lestan? How is Reverie connected to the Mayfair’s, if this is… a curse.” The word curse again—he did not argue it. Could not.


And what had Lasher done to invoke, in at least Lestan's mind, such an event that had occurred?

lestan felt all the verve leave him at that. "i am not sure," he said, maintaining some studied tone. "but i mean to find out." he sighed, a small sad smile clinging now to his mouth. 
it meant something to him that akavir named it too as a curse. "haven't you ever felt it? something following your surname, cousin?" he urged, not yet knowing it was a plead for his relative to know him as he was.
"i-i told you! we have another cousin, out there." maybe lestan had been going to find him. "if i-i brought him here, would you speak to him? we've spoken nothing of this curse, of course, i only met him once. but if we can find seven, akavir — we can rout this evil."

“Seven?” Did Lestan mean to find seven Mayfair’s? To break a curse?
It was the ramblings of delirium—but not without a hint of merit… something that toyed in the own man’s superstitious heart.

“And what did Lasher do that was so awful?”

Truly—this was the part that he fixated on for the moment. Constantine’s stories of the man had only been held with love and affection—so what was it that his grandfather had done to warrant a curse to follow their family?

his nostrils flared.
did akavir truly not know?
"they say before he was lasher, he — was something else. taltos. a taltos, to be exact. something from the glen, which held a witch captive and — spawned monsters."
he knew how it sounded! "i think such tales are f-fantastical. but tell me, cousin, what do you know of him? his kindness? the druids of donnelaith? i was only taught his perfection. but i saw blood s-spilled over his name."

To hear such a story shrouding his grandfather’s memory gave Akavir pause as he studied Lestan. What did he know of the man? He knew only what his father had told him—Lasher having died prior to his conception.

“My father spoke often of his kindness and protectiveness for his pack and family. He had a wife in Blue Willow, my grandmother. Apparently, there were none kinder than her. She passed before him, and my father found out only after Lasher’s death also that he had bedded another woman—allegedly, in his words—and bore more children that he had never gotten to meet.”

He paused, considering. “He encouraged my aunts—my father’s younger siblings—to pursue the magicks he felt had been born to them. Constantine had spoke how they seemed whimsical and loving in many ways—Deirdre, particularly, was one he had been fond of. She died in the fire by the sea.”

lestan nodded, for those were the things he knew of lasher. but he had not know deirdre's fate until this moment, and stared stiffly at akavir for a long moment.
"is fire tied to us then?" and by us he meant their family, though he was swiftly becoming bogged down by this connection.
"his daughter died in fire. the lake of fire was where i almost died."
a breath, a small laugh that mocked himself. "i don't know what to make of it all. i just know somehow they are connected."

Lestan was convicted in his beliefs—and it wasn’t that the dark wolf was disagreeing to the uncanny potential of it all. He had grown up with a family that dabbled in the arts of magick—not his father, but taught everything he had grown to know through the man Lasher.

How well did Constantine know his father?

In turn, how well did Akavir know Constantine?

“Why would you be punished for a man you didn’t even know or meet?” That was what stirred his disbelief—that last connection. Why then, hadn’t his father’s pack smoldered to flames? The creek?

"that's how curses work, don't they?" but there was no humour in lestan; instead he stood looking forlorn and somber at once, his eyes upon his cousin. and then he took them away and swallowed, and thought of reverie, alone.
"i s-should get back, akavir," he said quietly, though his mind pleaded for his relative to — understand.
but perhaps akavir carried no such spectre around upon his spine.

If he had realized this was a final conversation he would have with the man before him he might have tried harder to bring reason to the forefront—or, at the very least, discuss further the lineage of the Mayfair’s.

Instead, he was left with his rumination—haunting thoughts of what Lasher, a man he had never met but only had ever heard great things of—had possibly done… or to accept the fact that his cousin was mad.

Neither seemed a decent option.