Silver Moraine chase

attn @Faust but open!

 

She and Nagruk had left Saatsine, her own time more short lived than the Tartok woman and man she had found. Now to find him—and then, then they would go. 

Nagruk was to cover ground in the opposite direction. Should no path be found, they would reconvene again at the location they had begun.

War, apparently, loomed. Not her own. 

Better fed, at least, for her brief time with the caribou hunters Tikigâk marched along an easy path made by others that had passed through well before she. The warwoman had been sure to remove from her person all indications that she had ran with Saatsine, but to her good fortune she had scarcely done so in any case. 

By the time she strode onto the Moraine, she smelled only of herself—and something sweeter, too, that grew stronger each day. This journey tempered her; Tikigâk was feeling rather irate, though could not discern the source. 

At least it was not an unusual mood. It was one she knew how to resolve.

The surrounding Wilderness would hear the scream of a fox and a snarling rejoinder before chaos erupted.

It was brief, and was over before it began—silence prevailed with Tikigâk, who picked up her limp prize and carried it with her. Her frustration eased some; her ears pricked to listen for any other that might have taken interest in the commotion.

:D <333

the sharp cry of a fox shattered the quiet, and faust’s ears twisted toward the sound, muscles tensing. war? no. not yet. but his pulse quickened as he moved toward the source, body lowering, the moraine stretching vast before him.
he crested a ridge, peering downward, and saw her. tikigâk, framed against the stone, a fox limp in her jaws, its blood bright against the frost. the scent of her was familiar, but something was different now—fainter, tangled with another.
he moved to her, unhurried but crucial, his tail high as he reached for her muzzle, inhaling deeply. his gaze sharp, assessing, searching.
you are not alone.
the scent clung to her, threaded through the wild musk of her coat. something new, something unknown. his jaw tightened slightly, though he masked it well, his face impassive as he pulled back to meet her gaze.
who?

She heard him before she saw him, the wind the last to tell her this day of his arrival. Her mighty head swung in his direction, tail swaying behind her—it was good to see him again. Tikigâk marched toward him with a confident and easy stride, allowing him to sniff. 


Tikigâk dropped her prize, stepping over it to pick up on the myriad of scents he wore. Many new ones. Some familiar, but she would not place them—they had not been important to her, though she had crossed the literal paths they had walked. Faded scents there, fresher upon him—but it meant nothing to her. 

Tartok, she rumbled, pleased. She stepped around him in a loose circle, nosing the meat toward him. Darukaal has grown large, she shared what her nose told her. There was pride for him there. He wore much more scents than the last time—he, a virile male, was a worthy competitor to any alpha male that might lurk within any radius they might share. Issitoq was but one other she knew of. How many more? 

Then and there, it did not matter—she was with the one she preferred.

faust feels the weight of her gaze as she circles him, sharp and assessing. he does not move, does not shift—he allows it, welcomes it. pride settles in his chest, warm and heavy. darukaal has grown large.
it has, he affirms, voice low, edged with quiet satisfaction. because of the wolves who have chosen to stand beside him, because of the strength he has built, the power he has cultivated.
she moves around him with the ease of a seasoned hunter, the kind who knows her own worth. he watches, measured, pleased. she presses the meat forward, an offering, and he takes it without hesitation, carving through the fox with practiced precision.
his gaze flicks to her as he works, a slow, searching look. he knows what he is—knows the scent he wears, the presence he carries. darukaal has grown large. he lets the truth of it settle between them.
you take the hide before you go, he says, setting it aside to dry. a pause, a shift in the wind. his head tilts slightly, a quiet challenge in his gaze. unless you are not.
he does not press, does not demand. the invitation is there, unspoken, lingering in the space between them. the wind howls over the glacier, but faust is steady, waiting.

Tikigâk tilted her head as he placed the hide aside, bidding she take the fur with her. She had no need for it, and it had no benefit to her. The sentiment intended was lost upon her, who saw things from a utilitarian perspective. With no home yet to speak of, it would be more burdensome to look after than anything else. 

But she did not refute him. Stranger still, she stepped toward it. His next words caused her head to tilt all the more, ears pricked as though there were a key word in there that she found some sort of vestment in. 

Anneriwok—the beginnings of an oath. This moment in time, the whispers of an oath older than even that. Natures call beckoned. It was a song not even she could ignore, deaf to all else then and won over by instinct. Twitterpated, with the coming of Spring, and unaware of it.  

She bore her teeth to him in a feral grin. A step toward him now, head straightening, Could you choose to become? not an invitation, not yet—only a questing question, seeing the make of him, but not wanting to imagine. Wanting to know, wanting to see for herself. Tartok, it was a selfless thing as much as it could be selfish. Choosing her, before and above any other, as she in turn would choose him. Begin anew, baptized in bloodshed. Could he—would he?

he hummed, deep in his chest, a sound of consideration rather than dismissal. he was not a man easily swayed from his path—darukaal was his, the glacier his home, and nothing could pull him from it. yet he did not reject her question outright.
how do you become? his gaze was steady, searching hers, weighing the meaning behind her words. he knew what it was to be forged in war, to be baptized in blood, but this was something different. something older. something… chosen.
she stepped closer, and his muscles tensed—not in resistance, but in awareness. he felt the pull of instinct, the sharp edge of understanding that flickered between them. it was not invitation, not yet, but something that lay just beneath the surface, waiting to be unearthed.
tartok is chosen, he mused, watching her carefully. darukaal is built. his tone did not waver, but there was curiosity there, quiet and keen. can be both?

His question was not an unfair one—neither of them. In fact, it was one asked many times before; the first of many steps. It was good that he asked this, right—he would not go into it blindly. None should. 

How to explain? How to articulate? 

You are given many tasks, for the continued future of Tartok. I have done much, and must still do more. Tartok will find its place here, she rumbled, I thought, perhaps in battle! But now, I think not, for fighting Issitoq for a band loyal not even to him seemed fruitless. There was plenty more land she could stake claim to, and wolves who would heartily choose to become. 

He asked a question, and she nodded. Can be both, if they choose—Tartok, it is also built as much as it is chosen. First is the choice—then, the work. One must give up much, to start… to show. One’s past, one’s blood, even one’s name. But the way of Darukaal—its strength… its ferocity… it, too, becomes. Tartok, it continues to become. Stronger. Fiercer, her words came slow, and not very easily. Would he understand? Could he see his own pivotal place, in the story of Tartok? 

Tikigâk felt him alongside her, and wondered if any of this might appeal. In him, she saw the capability and potential for Sangilak—but what he had worked hard to build alone might be worth much more to him than what Tikigâk would have him work all the harder for, only with her. He was enough, as he was—as was Darukaal. 

But she offered him another formative path, a path he might wish to walk with her. A path his people might wish to choose, too—but she would not force him that way, nor them. First to see if he thought he could! Identity… it meant much to a wolf, she had come to learn.  

he listened, as he always did, weighing her words with the careful precision of a man who had spent his life carrying the burdens of legacy and expectation.
tartok.
the way she spoke of it was reverent—more than a name, more than a claim. a force, a way of being, something that demanded absolute devotion. it was not unlike what he had built here, in the frost and ice of darukaal. his wolves, too, had become something greater than themselves, forged in the crucible of hardship.
he exhaled, gaze drifting across the valley, the land that had come to define him as much as he had shaped it.
i wish i thought like you, he admitted, though his voice was not regretful. it was simply the truth. there was something freeing in the way she spoke, the way she carried herself untethered by the past. as if she had cut herself loose from all that came before, unburdened by anything but the future she willed into being.
faust, for all his strength, could not do the same.
but i hold much from the past.
his name, the weight of it—one he had spent years trying to outrun, to erase, only to realize that no matter how far he went, it clung to him like a second skin. his father had tainted it, had shaped it into something that dripped with cruelty and tyranny, but it had been faust who reforged it. his wolves did not fear it. they followed it.
some things, you cannot give up, he said, finally. his name was his own now, no longer his father’s. no longer a curse.
he glanced at her then, searching, wondering if she could understand. if tartok could be what she said it was, and still allow for something like him—something old and bloodstained and unwilling to let go.

She listened to him, curious—hearing his wish. Tikigâk was intrigued to know that he did not, having thought there was a possibility that he did. 

But Tikigâk heard the hold of the past in his heavy words, weighted by his experiences there. No, she did not understand—not yet. She had not lived his life after all, and so she would not presume to know it. 

Tikigâk had also never been so compelled to be curious, when another seemed to be tethered to something both so far away that hounded persistently at the ankles of one no longer there. It occupied them, distracted them—so she had thought, having seen it many times.

If you are happy—why wish? To become does not mean we forget what blows have hurt and once lay us low. To become means, we win that next fight and every fight after. We endure. We kill it. Together, she rumbled. 

Make it a thing that no longer mattered—because all that mattered was what came next. If the past was more than a geist that came back to polter, her words were no quip: they would kill it, truly. The most important lesson Tikigâk had learned that served her best: do not look back. There was nothing left for her there but the graves she had left behind—many that she herself had dug. 

No judgment from her—she did not look down upon him for his words, wondering if she had better explained now their way, her way. For it could—only, it wore a different name should he ever wish for it. 

Not a thing she sought an answer to, not then. And if from this he only came to better understand the strength of will it took many to accept that part of it in the path of choosing, that felt enough; choosing, for some, could be the most difficult aspect of becoming.

faust let her words settle in his chest, the weight of them pressing against something he wasn’t sure he wanted to name. to become means we win that next fight and every fight after.
he understood. more than she might know.
but darukaal had been built from his own blood, from the marrow of his bones. they were his, as much as his own flesh and fur. he could not leave them, even if he wanted to.
so he exhaled. his gaze steady on tikigâk.
i cannot leave them, he admitted, his voice quieter than before, but firm.
he was not like her. he would not kill what came before—he would carry it, bear the weight of it, until it either broke him or he made something greater from it.
but her words did not fall on deaf ears.
but i fight, he continued, something more resolute settling in his tone. always.
he had no illusions about peace. his was a world of war, of blood and iron and wolves who would take if they were not strong enough to keep. darukaal would not fall.
his tail flicked, and he studied her, wondering if she would understand what he did not say. he would not become, not in the way she had—but he would always stand beside her, in battle if nowhere else.

His words were heard, and Tikigâk nodded. She understood. He was Faust—Faust was Kaan. To him, it was more important than anything else—and Tikigâk could understand that. Kaan was not past, Darukaal was not past. It was present. It was now. 

Faust, Kaan—that is you. That is not wrong. Darukaal is not wrong, she rumbled. Tikigâk would not insult the man who piqued her interest, who listened—who was honest, even to himself. But she sensed he fought a battle that had nothing to do with the present that kept him so adamant, something else that had been formative. 

He had made Darukaal perhaps as Siku had once made Tartok. Perhaps, like Tartok, it too would endure. 

This other thing, though, this other weight—she thought he must kill it. Take it in his teeth and shake it until it grew limp and took on deaths eternal stillness. 

He would fight, always. She believed him. It was perhaps why she was drawn to him; she could see this strength in him. No leave them. No abandon—that is not our way, she would not ask that of him. The choice to become, she offered it to him and to his Darukaal—that they all might become one-blood in this way. 

Tikigâk would not push—what was unspoken was unheard, and not known to her. What she wanted him to know was that she would not ask for him to turn his back to those that were his that became. He was a strong leader—that had not once occurred to her to ask, nor think of him. 

But there was more than just him—and she suspected if one of his wolves determined not to become, it would be the them that he stood with. And why should he not? But that was why one’s faith in one’s own choice was imperative: they must be resolute.

And he was—in a different way, for a different purpose. In a way that appealed even still. There was spine and spirit in this one. The enemy that pursued him would lose in the end, she suspected.

faust listened, taking her words as they came, steady and unwavering. he appreciated that she did not press him, did not challenge what he already knew to be true. he was kaan. darukaal was his. there was nothing more to it.
but he could tell, too, that she saw something else. something unfinished, something still waging its own war inside him. maybe she was right. maybe there was something he needed to kill.
but it wasn’t going to be today.
so he let out a breath, a slow thing that misted in the cold, and let a small, crooked grin tilt at the corner of his mouth.
that isn’t my way, either.
it was a simple confirmation, nothing more. a truth that needed no extra weight. he stood by what was his, fought for it, bled for it. no leaving. no abandoning.
his gaze slid to her then, to the sharp cut of her, to the fire in her. she was fierce, feral, something untamed yet deliberate..
hunt with me?
it wasn’t an order, but it wasn’t quite a request either. something in between. an invitation to something they both understood—to sink teeth into flesh, to let instinct take over. to fight for something worth fighting for.