Dawnlark Plains caught in your riptide

for @Erys

afternoon wind blew low and dry across the hills. anoré moved silently through the shallow drifts, her body tucked to the earth. the land was quiet—watchful. but quiet never meant empty.
a young deer, separated—perhaps foolish, perhaps simply unlucky.
she'd downed a stag the other day, fed upon it, but this one, lean and sound, she would bring back to winsook.

erys sits hidden in the brush, waiting impatiently for his hero to return. emyr has been gone too long (a few hours, really), and the thought of him out there, whisked away by someone else...it sets off a fire in his gut, and he curls his lip.

as he does so he catches a scent. not quite familiar, but something about it nonetheless draws him in. he sits up sharply, startling the herd into flight, and snaps his teeth to hurry them along. when the dust has finally settled he squints, eyeing a looming gray shape as it charges toward him.

"he-" he hardly breathes a word before she is crashing into him, paw pressed taut against his throat. how familiar.

the deer scatters like leaves in a storm. and she is upon him in an instant.
she strikes the smaller wolf like a hammer to stone, her muscled shoulders crashing against his chest with the weight of a bull. 
he hits the ground and she presses him flat to the earth with a heavy paw. the ridges of his windpipe flex beneath.
she pressed, hard enough to stutter his words, but not enough to strangle. at least not fully.
"that kill—" pallid gaze watches him, "was going to feed our new mothers." 
there was no anger there, rather the steady weight of a hunter’s logic. 
the women would be fine, but the doe would have kept them fat for a few days. strong enough to make milk for the babes.

"what kill? i see only fleeing deer and a failed ambush." he spits, lip curled in a sneer. her paw presses firm upon his throat, a silent threat, but he does not waver. instead he snarls, breath hot as it clashes with hers, and snaps jaws open and shut in warning. emýr's scent is upon him, heavy and warm and inviting, and it bolsters his confidence. the raven prince will tear him apart for this later- but not before he saves him. again.

"release me now, or you will regret it."

Erys had been right; the dark prince had been lurking in his footsteps after that night. prowling after the fool, mind muddled with his own discontent. stewing with residual anger, for he could not decipher he he'd felt so inclined to trail after a man so devious and repulsive. he uses his moral compass as an excuse, but the shrouded truth lay disregarded. perhaps he's too cowardice to confront it...or perhaps he's too prideful to accept it.

any question to his intent would be met with teeth and storm. he needed not explain himself to anyone, especially Erys.

fading tracks had led toward the mountainous north. a bitter irony that reminds him of the home he'd left behind, of the life he'd once lived. walls that used to swallow him, chains he'd allowed himself to sulk in. there's a scent too, one unmistakable. it makes his chest tighten, makes his skin itch. he doesn't think it's true, as his steps fall quicker. carrying him with haste toward the sound of a struggle.

a voice that used to scold him as a child for playing too rough with his gentle brother. a voice that used to soothe him during his fits of rage. and then he sees her looming over his scraggly companion. no teeth bared, as her wrath was something more silent. something more lethal. it reminds him so much of home that it hurts. 

why is she here? when had she left? what is she looking for?

a ghost he'd rather leave as a bittersweet memory now only a few feet away. he hates it, the way it rouses emotion to well inside him.

"mother?" followed by a sharp inhale of icy breath. eyes of emerald wide in disbelief, or was it welcome? relief?

there is no time to reminiscence, and there certainly is no time for a bittersweet reunion. she's crushing the windpipe of something he'd begrudgingly named his. "what the fuck is going on here?" a demand, though he hardly doubted his mother would act so rashly without proper cause.

her paw kept steady, just barely for him to breathe. and the boy spat defiance through bared teeth. all bark and fire, as if it may sow doubt.
but he had too much pride for one so thin. regret requires expectation, and she had none for the whelp. clinical gaze swept over him, unrushed.
the hollow beneath his jaw. the jut of his hip, the gauntness beneath scruffy fur. even the spit he flung at her barely wet the earth, "small boys shouldn’t bare teeth they can’t afford to lose.”
she spoke it like fact.
but beneath the stink of dust and sweat—something coiled in the back of her nose. and again, it came. storm-touched, bitter-spined. 
the voice cut through her calm like the crack of a tree splitting under ice. something that only showed in the flick of her tail.
mother?
heart threatened to leap from her chest. her son. her baby.
a boy's voice once, hoarse from training in the snow, softer when he’d curled against her belly, when his temper had not yet grown teeth.
she remembered his cries when he’d broken his first blade, and how he’d thrown it into the river with a child's fury she found endearing, because he was hers.
remembered too the quiet complaints whispered into her fur when the world would grow too large for him. and how she sang his woes to rest.
but that voice had vanished with the thaw, and for months it had existed only in memory.
what the fuck is going on here?
"a question i should be asking you, son." her focus remained fixed upon the dark male beneath her,
“i was stalking meat when your lítill skuggi sprang from the brush like a child from his blanket, and frightened it off.”
finally, her eyes turned to him—slow and sharp. gods above, he looked just like his father.
how she wished to run to him. to gather her boy in her arms and hold him so close. to feel his heart and warmth so that she may never be apart from it again. but it would need to wait for another day. 
"er hann þinn, eða eitthvað sem þú gleymdir að tauma?"

there are no quick words, no excuses, only an utterly besotted look as emýr enters the fold. he came. he said he wouldn't, but he came running. following devotedly after. and for a moment there is no woman above him, no conflict, only him. them.

and then her paw presses upon his throat, and he is reminded with a soft choking sound. right. her.

"not my fault you were too slow to act. he scoffs, even as his vision dims a little at the edges. he is a stubborn bastard always, even at the mercy of another. confident, still, that emýr will come to save him. he will not fight this woman, but he will make her see reason. talk her down. his paws pry uselessly at her chest, her paws, her forelimbs. she is immovable.

the world tilted on its axis, his view shaded but not scathing as he gazed upon his mother. as strong and as ruthless as he remembered. had her gentle heart—the side of her only bore to her sons—survived, too? 

memories flood and threaten to overwhelm. to shake the foundation he'd built, to cause his walls to crumble into nothing but a burning pile of rubble. the gentleness of her voice when she sang, the care she had provided when tending to wounds won out of bride and revelry. 

how she used to shield him from the wrath of his bastard of a father. the only woman who'd ever believed in him, or had cared to nurture him despite the darkness passed from father to son...

she is right there. his chest feels unbearably tight as he wonders if Kaelith had made it out alive as well. guilt will forever eat at him for leaving the two of them behind. but a jaded and angry teenager hadn't given any thought into taking with him the two most important people in his world. 

he's failed them. just as he'd failed his father, his kingdom. 

he cannot let himself be swayed. not now, not ever. finally her eyes find him and it takes everything he has not to dissolve into a boy stewing in the shadow of his father, aching for the love of his mother. 

"it's complicated." he simmers. furious at the man trapped beneath his mother for having stirred her so, and pissed at himself for allowing the weasel of a man to sink his fangs into Emýr's flesh. "he is not worth blood spilled. he won't make it to summer anyway." 

words as cold as ice—he doesn't allow himself to glare down at Erys. if he had been as cruel as his father, he'd turn a blind eye and allow his mother to pass her judgement. he might have even helped. but he is not that man, and so he'd bargain for a life he isn't sure is even worth it. 

"let him go. i will help you find a bigger meal." and if she refused? 

well, he'd be forced to make a decision he'd rather not.

exit ano!

it's complicated, he'd said. and wasn't that always how it was?
her eyes hold him long and hard, as if the silence might name all the things they could not. but in it, she saw not just the child she'd nursed beneath frost-heavy boughs, but the man he had become.
carved by storms with night in his bones. 
how she'd prayed to see him again, dreamt of this very moment—but not like this.
not with him standing like a wall between her wrath and a man not worth the dirt he’d die in.
but she saw it. like a sliver of light flashing between storm clouds. he was protecting him.
then she saw herself, when she was young, defiant, and foolish. shielding a man who had squandered every ounce of grace given.
but whatever her son chooses to do—it matters not her opinion. 
her breath hisses through her teeth as she draws breath. she lets it fill her lungs with needling wind before finally lifting her weight and stepping away. the male chokes once, dragging in air like it was the first he'd tasted. she did not look at him.
her eyes belonged to her son, then.
she'd killed for less and she'd do it again. but she would not raise tooth nor claw against her son's will. at least, not today.
"keep your runt." the words are pointed, but devoid of any real venom, "if you feel he’s worth the space he takes."
she turns, steps slow but not uncertain.
"you offer meat,” she says over her shoulder, "but i find i am not so hungry."
a beat passes.
"find me in the valley when you are done here." she does not elaborate beyond that before disappearing beyond the outcrops.

he watches her go, but satisfaction does not come. not when emýr's gaze trails her so forlornly, as if a piece of his very soul has been torn from him. erys rises slowly to his feet, wary for once of that temper, and moves to stand beside the man.

the bond between mother and child, that warmth- he has never known it. but he longs for it with every breath he takes. it is why he stayed with ennaya as long as he did. he steps closer, almost enough to touch.

he will not make it to summer anyway. and then he retreats. recoils slowly, like a dog kicked one too many times. he is acutely aware of his own mortality, how the clock ticks day by day. he does not like to think about it. does not want emýr to see him as some shriveling, dying thing.

"go with her." he urges, and then he is slipping between tussocks of grass, one careful pawstep at a time.

"i will not bother you again."

exit erys!