Totoka River innleachd

they'd taken it!
and his hand flexed emptily where the circle of bone no longer burned on his palm. it scorched instead his mind; it bit at his anger, and unleashed in pieces the long rage with which lestan did not know he had been living.
he flew down the beachline in search of @Swordfish, eyes searching for the one he knew as shardik.
"i found her! blossom! but i l-lost something else!" lestan cried, his eyes not filled with tears for once, but a shattering black wrath.

Something was wrong.

Swordfish relaxed on the beach, watching the waves crash to shore while he thought of the conversation with his grandmother. Sun Mote Copse stuck in his mind, tempting him to find it and see for himself that his parents were alive and well and happy. The concept felt so foreign to him that he’d convinced himself it was a lie.

I found her! Blossom!

Heavy lidded eyes shifted to Lestan who scrambled up the coast with fury in the black of his eyes. Swordfish watched him for a moment. The urge to ask him if it was his mind he had lost was swallowed.

Where is she? It seemed more pressing. Swordfish scanned the grounds behind Lestan in search. What else did ya have to lose?

tag for ref!

"an amulet! given to me by a d-deer of fire; they've taken it! an old woman and a younger man." and he knew how he sounded and he did not care; "@Blossom is —" well! couldn't shardik catch the floral scent upon his nape beneath the salt.
"she's b-been through a l-lot," he muttered, but the dilated pupils swung inland. "and m-maybe — oh, shardik. tha mi a’ dol a chuir sìos mallachd."
but first, he needed the mayfair magicks, and stalked to and fro, so filled with hatred for the old woman and her thieving mate that he almost vomited.

An amulet…

The little relic he’d carried with him. Swordfish remembered, though he had no idea how Lestan might have procured it from a flaming deer. The troubled man went on to say an old woman and a young man had stolen it and the bear-hunter felt his chest tighten, some instinctive protectiveness that he had formed while herding Lestan along the coast.

Then we get it back.

The drawl of his young voice was less than enthused about the prospect. He hadn’t seen or heard or smelled this troublesome duo. And Lestan was hardly reliable for things like following paths with any hope of finding who left it. He’d spoken in a tongue that did not register familiar to Swordfish.

Even when his daughter had been missing, Lestan had not carried this magnitude of rage. Fortunate for the strange man, Swordfish was keen and knowing. He too had carried all-consuming anger. It still dug with pinprick claws into the valleys of his heart.

so much of his life had been consumed with finding blossom that lestan had taken all other things for granted. "yes. we get it back." his voice had taken on that deadtree resonance again, a voice almost disembodied from the slender tremble that usually comprised all of lestan.
"it was only through the amulet that i found her at all."
and his paw closed again on nothing, the muscles along his jawline jumping.
"so we have to find it again. i'll never be whole without it."

Skepticism clouded his features when Lestan stated that the only reason Blossom had been found had been because of the fire deer’s amulet. Swordfish felt his shoulders sag slightly, mentally preparing himself for another search with this man and his unpredictableness.

I’ll never be whole without it.

Can’t have that, the young man’s monotonous tone answered.

Didn’t seem likely they’d be staying near the water. Then again, their original intentions had been to venture toward Swiftcurrent. Before, Swordfish felt as though he had been able to steer Lestan, or at the very least guide him toward a single goal.

What’d they look like? What’d they smell like?

because shardik sounded very much the same from moment to moment, lestan picked up no hint of sarcasm in the younger wolf's words. "an old coyote woman, wearing all sorts of decorations. and the man was hard-faced, silver. they smelled of the wilds, not pack."
"but i don't w-want to find them first. we sh-should go to the creek."
his heart hurt. "i h-hope blossom chooses to c-come with us. i don't want to leave her, not ever, not after all this. so if she won't, i stay." no matter that the loss of the amulet was beginning to eat the shreds of himself.

That he wanted to go to the creek first was surprising to the young man. He regarded his companion with a studying stare, wondering why they would allow the thieves more time to put distance between them. It was likely he’d never find his amulet if they didn’t act fast. 

Another mention of the long lost Blossom forced Swordfish to look behind Lestan again. Was she an illusion? Only visible to the strange man and the things that he was privy to. The bear-hunter wasn’t keen on having ghosts trail after them… 

Where’s she at then? We oughta get goin’. Faster we find the thieves, faster we- keep you from crumbling any further. Another sigh. Can’t let ‘em get distance on us.

"i don't know."
but they couldn't wait. could they? what if not having the amulet meant harm would befall blossom; what if it meant that she was safer here than with him, while he was unprotected and open to the flame-doe?
his thousand-yard stare grew in despair, and then lestan turned pointedly from the sea. "we'll go slowly at first, if she wants to follow. then —"
then he would have to go, and it felt horrendous to be so swiftly snared in a new direction, as if he were only a conduit for the unseen.

It might have been foolish to ask Lestan about the what-ifs. No matter what scrambled through his mind, the other man seemed keen on going to the creek. He wanted a slow journey to allow Blossom to follow, if that was what she wanted. Swordfish buried the rising questions in his throat, drowning them so as not to delay their next steps any longer.

Wanna send her a call? Let her know… or- did ya already tell her?

The bear-hunter was aimed inland, lazily fixed on Lestan from over his shoulder. His thoughts on the copse, on his mother and father and brother, the look on Suzu’s face when she had seen him all faded. With a goal in mind, he could distract himself from the rest.

Inland to the creek and then to collect Lestan’s amulet.

lestan mayfair was quiet for an hour thereafter. he piled a cairn of stones high there beside the beach, as many stones as he could muster, and he lay a pink anemone flower there, catching it between the edges of the cairn.
it pointed southeast. the creek.
"for @Blossom."
he fell into step with swordfish then, still silent and refusing to look back upon the shoreline.

We could... fade this one and I can make us another? <3

If he had known the trouble that would come with the theft of Lestan’s totem, Swordfish might have abandoned the poor man on the beach.

Instead, he helped gather stones so that Lestan could build the cairn. When it had been finished, the young wolf looked at it and frowned. He didn’t think it would adequately guide Blossom to their location. He still wasn’t convinced that Blossom was real. Whatever Lestan needed to move on, he would indulge.

When they began to move away from the sea, Swordfish saw a flash of the bear’s eyes. He felt his frame grow tense. The creek would take days to reach. With Lestan, Swordfish imagined it could grow to more than a month.