Emberwood [m] But if you get me out, you get a show

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Vaguely kinda forward dated a lil

Her days were devoted entirely to her daughters, preparing them for their eventual departure from the Emberwood and toward the coast. From dawn to dusk she was mother and leader. But it was her nights she most looked forward to, recently.

When the sun disappeared below the horizon and her daughters settled for the night, Reverie slipped away to find @Dusty Rose. This had quickly become her routine since the morning they'd spent together in the rain. They'd repeated the encounter several times — but not every night. Some nights, like tonight, were quieter, though she never failed to bring a gift to their meetings. This time she'd brought the tiny skull of a songbird.

Lightning flashed dimly through the mouth of the small hollow which had so quickly become theirs, though Reverie tried not to think of it that way, illuminating Dusty Rose's slim features and his dark eyes. She shivered and twined her limbs further with his as the hollow fell back into darkness and thunder crashed. Guiltily Reverie thought of her daughters; she hoped they were asleep. Everett would comfort them if they weren't, she knew, but it should have been her.

Instead she was here, and she wasn't sure why.

He was doing his best not to, but Dusty Rose still had feelings about this new development. Obviously, it could not be kept a secret — not unless the wolves around them were idiots — but Dusty Rose could not help feeling that this was something Reverie very much wanted to hide from the rest of the pack. That was okay because it was the coywolf's natural inclination to hide the things that were important to him, lest they be stolen away by coveters or detractors.

Still. A guy had to wonder, didn't he?

"Whatcha thinking?" he asked her, shifting to make a better pillow of himself. Their movement disturbed the bed of leaflitter he'd constructed, and the coywolf paused to delicately lift the bird skull from the detritus and place it on his other side. Then his head swiveled back to Reverie.

Since she was thinking about other things, too, Dusty Rose did not feel so bad about the direction of his own thoughts. These gifts were another thing that made this situation so sticky. It was what'd kept him single and celibate for all his life until now.

He hated the idea of someone wanting something from him. Or rather, he hated the idea of giving it to them. And his own Wanting had never quite been enough to make him see it as an equal exchange. Apparently, flowers and bird skulls and a dance or two was all it took to shore up. There was something about even that that didn't sit well with him.

He didn't wanna be cheap, was all. And he didn't wanna be paid for it and he certainly didn't want to not be compensated. The whole thing was just a little confusing. Just a little distressing. He didn't know why he kept at it, then, except of course he knew why.

He wanted to fuck. And, for better or for worse, he wanted to fuck Reverie. Which gave her a power over him that he was emphatically opposed to. Except for the part, of course, where he wasn't opposed at all.

Wasn't that some shit?

Dusty Rose wanted to be angry about it. He wanted to be a little huffy about it, at least. Instead he forgot all about his reservations every time he saw her, and even now, given plenty of time and brain power to remember said reservations, he was choosing to keep quiet.

He'd just rather hear about her problems. His own didn't want to be solved.

She rested her chin delicately on Dusty Rose when he shifted, oblivious to whatever turmoil he felt. His question only gave her a moment of pause. Thinking about you, Reverie murmured, smiling faintly though she knew he wouldn't see it. Dusty Rose des Peres, dragon bone connoisseur.

It wasn't far off from the truth. And she thought of him more often than she would ever admit, thought of questions she'd like to ask and places she'd like to show him. Those were dangerous thoughts, though, so she tried not to think them. She tilted her muzzle to preen at his fur before any of them could spill from her lips.

Him.

The coywolf didn't call her out. It was easy enough to believe that he was the topic of her distracted thoughts even if it was him those thoughts were distracting her from.

"They don't really do surnames, where I'm from," he admitted, stretching languorously to give her a larger surface to preen. "It's a joke — des Peres is. It means of the fathers in some other language. And, y'know, I got two. So my brother, Roamer — that's what he named himself. Slow West des Peres. And we all thought that was funny, so I took it, too."

He rolled toward her, hooking a long foreleg over her ribcage to trap her close against him.

"I wasn't Dusty Rose anything back then, though," he told her. "I didn't have a name. Dad called me baby-darlin' but that's what he called the rest of 'em, too."

He gave his father's words his father's twangy, sing-song accent. It was not unlike his own accent, shaved down and warped though it was.

His eyes glittered in the dark, half-lidded. He had questions of his own.

Two fathers; another question she wouldn't let herself ask. Dusty Rose managed to answer some of her other unvoiced wonderings, though, all the while adding to her collection of curiosities about him. A brother, Slow West. Where was he now?

Rather than ask, she let her preening trail to more sensitive places as he pulled her close. Several moments passed before she spoke again. I wasn't always called Reverie, either, Her voice was soft. I took that name when I left The Gilded Sea.

She placed a few featherlight kisses along the arm stretched across her chest. Even so, a certain anxiety gripped her as she spoke again, one that perhaps Dusty Rose would sense if he was perceptive enough; Were they all coyotes? In the Red Desert?

As hard as she tried, this was an insecurity she could not shake. Did he understand just how little she understood? Even in the realm of wolves she sometimes felt misplaced — and she could not forget the hint of fear she'd felt that morning. The uncertainty. He frightened her, just a little, and she wanted him anyway. But she wasn't sure he would want her once he knew the truth.

A swivel of his ears betrayed his interest. He wondered what she'd been called before her name was Reverie, but this, at least, he did not feel the right to ask. For the same reason he did not speak the names of the three young children — names were an intensely personal thing. The kids had not consented to being Named, and indeed, were not yet capable of true consent.

A coyote dug a den for his cubs, and then he hid them away, just as he hid away every other precious thing. And Dusty Rose had been taught from birth that he was precious, and that previous things needed to be hidden to be kept safe. So he had kept himself secret — and he, Dusty Rose, had been the very first person to know himself. The first person to speak his name. The only one who had ever been in possession of him.

As much as he wanted to possess Reverie, he knew it was not his right.

"Mostly," he replied, still watching her face. Another distant lightning strike lit her all in white. "Coyotes or half-coyotes, or prairie wolves, y'know? Smaller. Different fur."

Her tone was not missed. He was not sure what had caused it.

"Dad was half, maybe. Or maybe he was a prairie wolf," he told her, waiting to see if these words touched on any of her nerves. "But the one that was my blood — he was full coyote. And it was my momma who was a prairie wolf or a half-coyote or somethin'. I didn't know her, but I hear she was a looker. Legs for days — that's what everybody says. But a god-awful voice. All pitch and no rhythm, y'know?"

Dusty Rose was relieved not to have inherited such problems.

Prairie wolves. Reverie had never heard the term before. She was quiet for a few moments, taking in his words, wondering distantly what it must be like to never know your own mother. Ironic, she thought, that it was her mother's blood which troubled her now.

So there were never any dogs there? Reverie asked carefully, not looking at him but his fur and the way it shifted beautifully from grey to ruddy in some places. She went back to her preening; it was a welcome distraction from the anxiety of waiting to hear his reaction to a certain word.

The coywolf was quiet. Their eyes met for an uneasy moment before she went back to grooming him, and Dusty Rose turned his gaze up toward the canopy. Her tone raised his hackles, but lying as he was, it was impossible to see this small tell of nerves. He was otherwise calm, and contemplative, as he often was.

"There were dogs," he said after a long stretch of quiet. "Mainly hunting dogs — y'know. The kind that keep with humans. Most of them spoke a different tongue, if they bothered speaking to us at all. I've only met a few face-to-face instead of fang-to-fang. One was real pretty — she had a pedigree or somethin', and the wolf that married her wouldn't shut up about it. Another was a sniffer-dog. I met him and his band during the water hunt. We didn't speak the same language, though, and he died before I got to know him. Snake bite."

He did not have strong feelings about these dogs. He hadn't trusted either of them, though.

"The hunter-dogs, though," he went on, still gazing up at the canopy. "We lost a sister that way. She got her paw caught in a trap. We were there all night with her, trying to dig it up or pull her out. We were just starting to talk about chewing her little paw off when we heard 'em. First the dogs, cawing and baying. Then the men. We had to leave her."

He did not have strong feelings about those dogs, either. His sister was a distant memory, and though he'd loved her, he'd long since burnt away those particular nerve endings.

"But these things happen," he said. The words were rote.

The silence was her first hint. Reverie felt her throat tightening even before Dusty Rose spoke.

She'd heard many things about dogs before, so many terrible things, but never anything like this. At worst she had expected that Dusty Rose would look down on her, that he would think less of her intelligence or her ability to care for herself. Not this.

She felt sick. I'm sorry, Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper. She pressed her muzzle to his cheek. Just for a moment. Then she pulled away, tail curling closer to her own body in an instinctive bid to make herself smaller. Her ears fell as she confessed: My - my mother was a dog. If - if you don't... She couldn't finish, but she was sure now that he would not touch her again.

The coywolf gave a tiny, mute shake of his head; he was sorry, too, but it was long in the past.

Automatically, his claws flexed to dig into Reverie's fur, reflexively attempting to keep her in place. His expression was a quizzical, where do you think you're going? in the scant moments before she explained herself. Then he understood, and the whole line of questioning shifted in his mind. He was quiet a moment longer as he absorbed this, but he still had the wherewithal to tug her back into place.

"Naw — I don't care," he assured her, thinking it would be pretty rich of him to fuss about bloodlines right then. "Everything's gotta eat. Sometimes coyotes are on the menu. I don't — I don't hold it against them as a species. Maybe I won't rest too easy until I know what kinda background a dog has, but — "

He huffed out a little laugh.

"I think we're past that, don't you?"

It was clear in his eyes, though — he had questions. Like, "What was she like? Or did you know her?" And, "Blossom..." he began, hesitatant this time not because of her name — for she was plenty old enough to have one — but because he was sure it was none of his business. He let that matter lie, uneasy.

Reverie tensed momentarily at the feeling of claws in her fur, but only long enough to realize that she liked it. She let him pull her back with a contented hum and a half-hearted click of her teeth in the space near his ear; more provocation than protest. Even then her relief was too large to deny him anything.

My mother was... Harsh. Elegant. Hateful. Full of expectations. And often disappointed. She was a singer... she wept all night when I became a dancer. Even her good mood only went so far where The Gilded Sea was concerned. Reverie fell silent again.

Blossom will never know her, I hope, She finished softly after a short silence. The crash of thunder startled her slightly, and she buried her face in Dusty Rose's fur.

Retaliation was immediate — a whine grizzled out of open jaws that sought the offending muzzle. His bottlebrush tail whipped lazily through the dirt even after the clumsy, half-hearted strike. He might've gone on to start another fight if she had not reminded him of the serious topics they'd opened up.

"It sounds like we're well short of her," he replied, allowing himself to be settled once more. He kissed her cheek, just in case that was the wrong thing to say, and followed his lazy stream of consciousness to the next thought:

"How come she didn't want you to be a dancer?" he asked. He shifted, making more room for her to hide underneath him, if she wanted.

A familiar fire stirred in her, but Reverie was distracted by thoughts of The Gilded Sea. Still, the faint whine that slipped from her in response to his teeth on her muzzle promised more on the subject. Just... not now.

For now she was content to enjoy his casual affection. Though, the opportunity presented when he shifted was not missed; Reverie burrowed into the offered space nose-first, catching his cheek fur playfully in her teeth as she settled beneath him.

She wanted me to be like her, She murmured. And being a raindancer is dangerous. You dance until the rain comes - or until you can't anymore. A singer might lose her voice, but a dancer might lose her life.

But if the rain didn't come, the fires would never stop. So we danced, She arched her spine lazily against him, half distracted by memories and half by lust. The words continued to spill softly from her; Dusty Rose would find that Reverie never denied him from this position. We danced for four nights and three days, once. That was the longest, I think. By the end it was just me and Evander. The others fell - but we saw the clouds gathering. We felt the rain.

Then we slept for two days. She finished with a quiet laugh.

She wanted me to be like her — a simple concept, but one that made the coywolf frown in thought. He compared it to the sense of adoration he'd always felt from his own family. They'd wanted him to be things, yeah, but what he remembered most was being watched with bright eyes that asked, what will he do next?

But he supposed he had made his parents weep, leaving them the way he had. And if her mother thought she might lose her, Dusty Rose could see why she might be upset. It was just that he couldn't imagine why a dancer might lose her life — not until Reverie went on.

He shifted against her, distracted, fitting himself against the curve of her spine. His mind was elsewhere — off in the plains under the haze of a hot summer day, watching the fierce and pleading dance that Reverie had showed him. Her fur would've been oily and matted, her nose cracked and bleeding. Dusty Rose wondered if she'd faltered near the end, or if she'd kept moving as forcefully as when she'd started.

He pressed his weight against her.

"Y'know — I think I like you a whole lot," he told her, and he spoke as if it was a truth he was reluctant to concede but forced to own up to all the same.

Speaking of The Gilded Sea like this was strange, though she didn't linger on the thought for long. It was just that she'd spent so long trying to put it all behind her, trying to be — something else. Someone else. And no one ever really minded that before; no one asked these questions. But Dusty Rose did.

Heat washed over her ears and cheeks when Dusty Rose spoke again, but Reverie didn't shy from his words or the truth she found within herself as he spoke them. She felt safe beneath him; wanted in the way he pressed against her. I know I like you a whole lot, A faint smile curved her lips.

More than I planned to, She reached out to press kisses beneath his chin. More than she should, she thought. Reverie hadn't planned to be — involved like this again. She didn't want to, not really, but neither did she want to stay away from Dusty Rose. At this point, she wasn't sure she could.

The confession left the usually confident coywolf feeling just a little flustered. He was flattered, was all, and full of an uncomfortable level of sentiment. He said, "Oh," sounding just a little shy and just a little stupid, and his bottlebrush tail spun in helpless endearment.

"Then I guess I know, too," he allowed. Casual-like. They were just talkin'. There was no reason his heart should be pounding out of his chest.

Dusty Rose gave into the urge to squeeze his dancing queen. Tight, like he was hoping her eyes might pop out like a lil squeezy frog toy. Like he was hoping she might squeak. Like he had to do something with the violent excess of affection he suddenly felt. Something other than saying more stupid things he wouldn't be able to take back.

Reverie only smiled at that, a brightening of her features like the sun breaking through the clouds. That was how he made her feel. Then she felt his arms tightening around her — and she did squeak a little then, a soft sound of surprise and affection.

There were no more words after that. Just the two of them and their wordless confessions to one another, expressing through touch what neither could say. This time she was nearly reverent in the way she touched him, deliberate as if to commit every part of him to memory; as if to imprint her touch on his skin so that no other would ever try to lay claim to what was hers.