Redhawk Caldera goldsun

this is to tag everyone as to what teya has been doing bts, its aw!

at last teya reached to @Eljay and to maia, consulting with @Bridget over how best to support @Sorana as she herself knew no more options. she asked them to help her bring meals to the densite on the lake, leaving them near as not to overwhelm the girl but making their presence known in this small way.
she herself remained in movement until she near sickened; she split her time between the recovering chickadee and the lakeshore, sleeping as close as her daughter wished and speaking where she was able, offering a touch if sorana was welcoming to it.
on some afternoons she joined @Bronco for an exhausted nap in the den she felt that she only visited these days, her body gently curving with the growing children. on some mornings, too, she might share breakfast with her mate, smiling in hopes it chased the strained look from her shoulders and gaze.
and then back to sorana, nestling in the earth of the lakeshore as she lifted her head to fix coolwater eyes on the sprawling den once more.

Tags are for reference.

Now that Chickadee was recovering and there were other pack members too to take shifts on looking after her, Dwin had more time on her paws. Now that she had had her sleep and square meals every single day, Brain Dwin and Meat-and-bone Dwin could finally work in coordination with each other and she did a lot of exploring around the Redhawk caldera. First she checked all her favourite places, secret hideouts and stashes of treasures, scattered all across the pack territory's map. Then she spent time with @Maia - as much as the Auspex could spare - and @Eljay - the good old dad, who seemed to have grown older and stiffer than she remembered leaving him. She told him all about her adventures, snuggled up next to him and joined him for lazy afternoon naps in the rare February sunlight. She had to admit that, while exploring was fantastic, staying put in the same place and routine had its magic too. 

Today she had come to the lake to check up on the Big Fish (catfish). The lake still had the ice cap - at some places snow-covered and not transparent at all, which was a disappointment. Until she found a little window in that ice that offered her a look on, what was going on underneath. When Teya appeared by the lakeside, Dwin had spent a quarter of an hour or a little more, peering through, waiting for her the big guys to come out. "Oy, Miss Tee!" she greeted the Raven from afar to draw her attention. Then she closed the distance between them and met her mentor in person. "How are you doing today? I was checking up on the Big Fish. Do you have any idea, how are they doing?" considering that Teya had been the one to introduce her to the way of water and the living things in it, she had to know. 

ceridwin was back and with her was a smile that brightened the quiet caldera. teya turned her eyes away from the den to find the girl there, and thumped her tail in answer.
"it been a while since i fish," she admitted, as if they had never been parted. picking up the threads of conversation about the great toothed fish.
"what you think, ceridwin?" teya asked, gesturing toward the water. "you think they sleep, or just waiting deep underneath for it to be warmer?"

Dwin noticed that Teya was not exactly happy, but she also did not remember the Raven ever being as an exuberant person. Among the generally rowdy and lively Blackthorn/Redleaf majority of the Brecheliant her personality contrasted starkly. She considered to ask, what was wrong and whether there was anything she could do to help, but it felt awkward to do so. Not because she would feel embarrassed, but rather the gap in age and experience between them. Dwin was almost an adult, but Teya had been a grown-up longer. It would take another year or two, before the two could face and talk to each other as equals. 

"Maybe both?" Dwin suggested and shrugged. "I mean they can't hunt puppies as they used to during summer," she referred to a myth that Teya might have mentioned in order to extend the young Blackthorn's life expectancy. More likely explanation was that during one of the many fishing lessons the Raven had warned Dwin not to go to the lakeside on her own or swim there and the girl had come up with a creative explanation, why was it so. Explaining to someone that you can drown and die without that someone having an actual experience of it almost happening, is quite fruitless. Most adults learn from their own mistakes. For kids - that is the only way they learn. 

"So, I say that they have a hu-u-u-u-ge den down there, where they all huddle up together during the winter, sleep soundly and wait for the ice to melt," she said. "What do you think, what do fish do all day long underwater? Sure they eat and sleep, but what else? If I was a fish, I wanted to come out of water too. There's so much life here they miss," she mused. 

teya's teeth flashed in a deep amusement to hear ceridwin's reference to a story she had told before.
children indeed had to learn their own lessons. it was a truth she wished was not apparent, but she was pleased to see that the young wolf appeared to have taken the words to heart.
the youthful blackthorn spoke with an authority and a curiosity that teya was happy to encourage. "i think they dream. up here when it is cold, not safe for fish. not so welcoming. but under, they safe to sleep and think about what spring brings."
the raven laughed. "what you think they dream about, in this huuuuuuuuge den?" she inquired playfully.

"Well... I have no idea, what the Big Fish think or dream about. If I start to think about too much, it might get difficult to tackle them in a... I forgot the word... oh, spar or maybe hunt them to deter them from eating other puppies," Dwin rambled, leaning down to sniff out the edge of, where the ice-cap met the ground, as if expecting to one of the dreaming fish appearing now. "I mean - if you thought that fish had thoughts also, would it not make them harder for you to fish and eat?" she looked up at Teya. 

"Or... what if you eat that fish and its thoughts and then you wake up one day and are half-fish/half-wolf inside your head?" now that was an entirely new train of thought. According to that logic Dwin's brain should have been a composition of rodent and lagomorph thoughts. Brains of bigger animals had always been eaten by craftier people, who knew, how to get them out of the skull dish. "Have you ever felt like a fish?" she asked. 

teya laughed a little at how dwin seemed to take in every detail of the world and was able to put it to words. "i think i still eat fish," the raven said contemplatively. "and i not think i have felt like fish before. or think like one."
"but," she went on, "i would like to have fish thoughts. do they think about swimming, or just know?" her eyes glowed with the pleasure of the conversation.

"I don't know," Dwin shrugged, looking down at the little window in the ice-cap, where she had cleared the snow away. "I think that swimming is like walking. You think of walking and then just walk," she said. "I mean... I do not remember ever not being able to walk. Or even learning that. If I had thought about walking as a process, then I would definitely remember, wouldn't I?" she asked, facing Teya now, wondering, if she knew. She had been here before Dwin had been born and she had witnessed, how babies learned the craft of moving their limbs in coordination. 

"What is the first thing you remember? Like the first memory?" Dwin moved to the next subject, while trying to recall herself, what would the answer to this question be. 

now that was a question. teya, who did not think often of her past, found herself contemplative.
the inquiry brought her to bitter mind of her aunt and uncle, but this was not dwin's fault. "i remember a forest of red trees and purple flowers," she told the girl thoughtfully. "i think i was born there."
the name was lost to her now.
"what about you? what you remember first?"

"Red trees?" Dwin furrowed her brow, glancing at a tree nearby and trying to visualize its brownish-gray tree-bark turning bright poppy-red. Had she been younger and therefore less critical on all the information she received from older people (at that time she had sincerely believed that they always spoke truth), she would have considered a theory that Teya was an alien. Now she decided that "red" was simply a perception of, how a shade of brown might have looked. 

"I dunno. Oh, I know. You. And the lake. And the big fish," she exclaimed, though she was not quite sure, if she had actually met the big fish on that very day or it was a figment of her imagination that had found its place in the memory. "But everything is so foggy. Why is it so? Why do we forget stuff?" Teya was older, she had probably forgotten a lot more stuff than Dwin, but she may have also learned the reasons as well.

teya nodded. "red. maybe dark as purple." but that was all her mind surrendered from memory for now.
"i remember that too." dwin had been as inquisitive as she was now, a child with a great thirst for knowledge.
"maybe we forget to make room for new memory," she responded calmly, scooping snow from the grass slowly greening below. "maybe we not meant to remember everything."
there were certainly things she wanted to forget.

"Maybe, but then we do remember some things better than the others. Wouldn't it be nice, if we could simply delete the stuff we do not want to remember? Like... unsee it, unhear it, unknow it?" Dwin wondered. She did not have many bad memories of her childhood, but some moments were less pleasant to go back to than the others. 

She was about to ask, whether there were any particular things Teya wished to rewrite in her mind, but stopped short of doing so. It was a personal question, a secret and Dwin had no business in other people's sorrows or lows. "Me thinks that memories as such kind of make, who we ware. I mean - I probably did not remember much, when I was created," she suggested. "And if I had an entirely different set of memories... maybe... I would not be Dwin at all. Or a very different Dwin." 

dwin was the most contemplative child that teya felt she knew. "yes." she thought of borva's raised voice and the shrill tones of tremelia. "i would like to unknow things i know." her voice was solemn. 
the idea that you were the sum of your memories intrigued and saddened teya, who felt quite often that the negative things she recalled outweighed all the golden moments, glow as they might. it was a somber and bleak way to look at things, or perhaps it was pragmatic. that depended on who you asked.
she smiled at dwin. "do you think it same for ah, birds? or bears? if a bear remember how to be a bear, always a bear. but if a bear remember what wolf knows, is bear able to change?"

"Why should a bear want to stop being a bear?" Dwin challenged Teya with a question of her own. "I think that you should wear the body and form you are given proudly, even if you wanted to be something else entirely. If..." she paused to collect the new train of thoughts that had been set in motion. "... if we believe that there are endless cycles of rebirth of souls and that there is some logic to it as well... you know, based on your deeds in your former life and such... then... you probably get a form you deserve. Or one you need to learn from," she said. 

"And, if you have been particularly good at doing all that your form has offered in this life, maybe you are given a choice, what to become in your next life?" she asked, trying to remember, which of her dead relatives had wanted to become a tree after death. To have a long and well-deserved rest after a very full life. 

the karmic wheel. something sparkled in teya's head, some talk of the stars which she had long put aside. and in them she found a dream she had forgotten long ago. it was a wonderful mystery.
"you right. if i get to pick next, i pick bear, i think. then wolf again." her eyes were mirthful. "how many cycles you think you have now, dwin?" she herself liked to consider the very idea.

"Oh, that is something I do not know," Dwin shrugged, having never truly contemplated this issue in earnest. "I think that counting should not matter so much as... enjoying the experience," she argued. "If you live constantly thinking that you will have another chance and another - that will make you value life less. Or not even try," she added. 

"Mom says," again it was a generic term used by Dwin, when she could not for the world cite the exact source. "That it can also be that you become nothing after you die. Your soul dies with your body and that's it. A scary thought, but also possible," she added. 

dwin was curious but reflective. teya wondered if the calm upbringing in brecheliant had helped. maia and eljay were constants, and she hoped they would bring new siblings earthside for the thoughtful girl.
"that very scary," teya agreed, crossing her paws. "maybe if you only get one cycle, and you know this, you live better. more fully."
after all, if you got many chances to be better, not everyone would choose those to be good.

"Scary to those, who stay alive, I think," Dwin reflected after a little thought. "If I stop existing as such, then by this logic fear should stop existing as well. Every emotion. If there is nothing left to build fear on, then - I imagine it could even be somewhat blissful," she added. 

"What do you want to believe?" she asked. 

dwin was quite the thinker. teya wondered if had anything to do with the girl's forays outside the pack; well, she was hardly a girl anymore, was she? and yet the experiences seemed to have left a great impact on her.
teya thumped her tail. "want to say we come back after we die. maybe once. twice." she smiled. "but not over and over. three chances, maximum."

"Come back as a wolf or something else?" Dwin asked first, then realizing that she had already asked this question earlier. "I would like to believe that the feeling of being alive does not disappear with me gone," she mused and fell silent with a far-off look in her eyes. For a moment there she was here and was not. Then she snapped out and smiled. 

"I am hungry - would you like to share a lunch with me?" she asked Teya, surprised to realize that mental exercise could also be tiring. Flexing "brain muscles" had always come effortlessly to her. 

"yes," teya responded happily. "i always hungry these days." carefully she lifted herself up. "what you want to eat? and you right, dwin. i think we leave mark on universe, all of us. in some way."
a smile lit her face and then she was ready to pace off, prepared to fetch whatever the girl decided would be good for their luncheon.