Duskfire Glacier universe everything's wrong

The days were terribly short upon the glacier and a brief interim of sunlight descended with haste into the west. Firelight caught a mane of red hair meandering through the heart of Duskfire's wood, ambling with apathetic strides. It was the third time the expat, Tuwawi, had slithered back to her woods like an adder to its hollow. Where else could she find sanctuary? Defeat had mangled the ember's spirit, amplified by a string heavy with failures.

The collar wrapped tight around Tuwawi's neck, feeling hot against her skin. Some days it choked the mother but today its presence was second to the buzzing in her skull. Njal had gone, perhaps for good this time, and not by means of wanderlust. The words still boiled upon her tongue but, even though her grief had aged somewhat, her side was cold without him.

For new she mingled absently betwixt the towering pines, hungry for solace.

mommy <3333 *clings on 5ever*
i wonder what tuwa will make of her compulsive new habit :x

[size=large]"lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones"[/size]

[size=small]A pair of bright feathers of russet hues.
A delicate autumn leaf with an intricate design and a couple of shiny stones.
Those were the objects that laid in the small heap that the teen had separated especially for her mother, all neatly arranged in the small room that had been dedicated to her collection. Though it was little what she had found worthy ennough to add to the pile, it was enough to comfort the girl, or at least easen the bitter taste of nostalgia that climbed up her esophagus every time she had to wake in the morning to remeber she was alone.

Even if her father had returned, his musky scent was beginning to fade again from the walls of the family's former den and from everywhere really. So again, with a heavy heart Maera had begun to pile grey stones and rocks: a tribute to her rocking father that had once again decided to roll.

As much as Maera loved picking the forgotten and disposable things of the floor to give them value, she didn't like the fact that her collection didn't do anything but grow. She did not want to make more altars because she did not want to have any more people to make a tribute to; to miss.

With her head in the clouds but her gravity well centered the lanky teen that had become Maera begun to hop and skip over the large mounds of snow, her mind seeking some sort of entretainment depsite the fact her eyes kept subcounciously scanning the floor for any object that might catch her eye.

Suddenly, as she continued with her reckless snow-flinging rampage, from the very corner of her eye and alerted by her delicate nose she halted to a brusque stop and jerked her head around to get a second view at the painfully familiar blur of red that dragged itself in the distance.

"mum" she managed to whisper as her lungs deflated with an intoxication mixture of shock, confusion, impotence and most of all fear.
Fear that as soon as she greeted her she'd be out the back door once more.

[/SIZE]

i didn't make mae immediately approach since she is super confuzzled :s

Where had the months gone? How had their lives been riddled with such disaster? Why had they come to this glacier in the first place? Did they deserve such pain? The questions were endless; a biting rhetoric.

Tuwawi tried to craft a timeline in her mind in a futile attempt to sort her grief. The memories stung, the collar wrenched tight around her burning skin. It was a constant reminder of their loss. Some days she was void of emotions... others it was unbearable. The Sveijarn dam was inconsolable and irrational; her abduction made it so. Always she had resented the Kesuks and their bears... but how could the Sun and Earth of Kindred explain this collar? The shapes she saw? The grating sounds she had heard? There had never been proof of a higher being... if it hadn't been for the dark piece of leather buckled around her throat Tuwawi would have thought herself mad.

Her nose flirted above the ground until a slow breeze brought a familiar scent. Her red crown lifted, silver eyes placing themselves upon a ruby in the distance. 'Mum...' it muttered, voice audible among the silent trees. Tuwawi inhaled sharply, gaze fixated upon her daughter. She had grown older, more beautiful despite her parent's missteps. The mother's blood boiled, spirit catapulted into a torrent of potent emotions. The most feral reigned supreme; the desire to protect and be with her offspring.

At once she kicked off into a swift jog despite her haggard appearance. "Mae! Maera!" she called to her. Within moments they would be nose to nose and Tuwawi would attempt to smother her with a combination of love and possessive posturing. Her sooty tail whipped to and fro, nose forcibly poking into her daughter's ruff affectionately. If Maera had been any smaller Tuwawi would have surely picked her up by the scruff and drag her to the old burrow. My daughter! My baby! the mother's mind echoed, Njal's void eased slightly be her child's presence.

[size=large]"lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones"[/size]

[size=small]
The woman that stood on the distance wasn't even the shadow of what Maera rembered her mother as. The fierce eyes and strong frame that wrapped her figure had been replaced by a shaggy and unkept drape of red. While the reasons concealed behind her initial departure had never been directly explained to the girl, she had made her own assumptions: that she had gone for Valtyr, Jokull and Larus.
And now, the rose colored faccade she had used to excuse her absence crumbled as the teen noticed Tuwawi was alone.
As alone as herself it seemed.

And still as perceptive.
Without having made any other movement or pronouncing any other word, the attention of her wandering mother was suddenly summoned to her. It was then, after a silent exchange between their eyes, that the long lost mother began to run towards her -- and Maera that still felt terror gnawing at her bones and making her knees like jelly, remained rooted to the spot. Her maw falling open in awe as she recognized the same light (a little duller) and the same beautiful scar within her mother's features.

"You came back!"She whined as she recieved her mother's love with deep acceptance, her tail also wriggling furiously behind her as she too proceeded to smear a few messy kisses across Tuwawi's muzzle. Suddenly in between the madness of hugs and kisses her nose touched the cold, hard material of the collar and with a brusque movement she pulled away only to narrow her eyes with concern at the foreign object wrapped around her mother's throat.

"What the fuck?" she suddenly exclaimed, forgetting in the midst of the excitement that she was cursing in front of her own mother.

[/SIZE]

Even though Tuwawi's love was assertive, insistent, and desperate, the orphaned Sveijarn received it with open and wanting arms. Pitchy whines cooed from the mother's throat as she smothered her daughter with attention, noting just how much she had grown. No longer was Maera's fur soft and peachy or her body small and chubby. At half a year she was nearly a woman grown. Rich, ember hair was sleek against her svelte body and bright hazel eyes were placed like gemstones upon a slender face. Though the smallest daughter was created in the image of her dam, hints of Njal peppered her appearance. Grizzled locks of soot flippantly intermingled her topcoat — a gift from her northern sire.

A potent blend of guilt and joy caused Tuwawi's chest to tighten. Her crime was beyond apology. What Tuwawi had inadvertently done - effectively depriving Maera of a parent - was unforgivable. 'You came back!' Maera squeaked with relief. Yet a sharp, biting remorse went into the ember like a dagger. Her child's words were incriminating.

The Sveijarn's best intentions had gone awry, as if no good deed went unpunished, and the life created besides Njal had quickly splintered apart. The weight of Larus, Jokull, and Valtyr's loss was too great for Tuwawi to bare... but the doubt - the fact she should have stayed by Maera and Njal's side - haunted her constantly. It was, at the same time, overwhelming. Truly, there were no rights or wrongs in these situations but Tuwawi would not - could not - blame her child if she thought otherwise.

Suddenly, Maera pulled away and uttered a cursed exclamation. "Maera!" Tuwawi scolded, shocked. She moved forward automatically with the intention to grasp her muzzle - discipline for such language - but stopped short when she realized where her daughter's gaze was fixated. The metal and leather tugged painfully at her ruff as and she swallowed hard, breath suddenly scarce.

Tuwawi was a strong woman and a proud creature, but in that moment it became nearly impossible to maintain her composure in front of Mae. Her ragged lip pulled into a tight frown, maw quaking with effort. Children should never be burdened by their parents strife... but she had a right to know. "They took me," Tuwawi said with shuttered breath, still horrified by her abduction, "and I lost them. Your brothers. Your sister." She paused to collect herself, "Your father."

sorry for the delay momma

[size=large]"lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones"[/size]

[size=small]
The same cries were emitted by the child who despite the constant abandonment never found even a tinge of anger in her heart. Her mother, in spite of the distance and the tousled fur, was still her mother. Besides in between the frantic excahnge of kisses and desperate ear-nibblings there was no room for accusations.

Finally, the precious shrine written to Tuwawi's name could be closed. There was no need for red feathers now that she was back. And as much comfort as she had found among those inanimate objects she did sincerely hope that never again would she have to turn to them.
In time the flames between mother and daughter would rekindle and again they would create a never-dying fire. A fire that despite having been put out would again, like a pheonix, have its rebirth from the ashes.

Luckily, the child's respect had not been extinguished just yet. Having been without the guidance of her parents, the teen's ettiquete and manners had sloped down considerably. Not only had the female adopted some bad words here and there, but she had also allowed a strong sense of vanity and defiance, she had not yet shown as a child, to invade her.

With mild reluctance the teen braced herself for a scolding that ultimately never came. She had instictively flattened her ears at her mother's movement, but was quick to raise them again as her mother stopped herself to speak, this time with an eerie tone that chilled the young flame to the bone.

They.
Who were they?
She asked herself as she allowed her mouth to gape and the fur on the nape of her neck to bristle. If they had been the ones to abduct her mother, could there be a possibility they had also been the one to reap her siblings?
Where they all somewhere dark and unknown under their grasp?
And if so, wasn't there also a chance that they, like her mother, could one day return too?
By the horrified look in her mother's eyes, it was doubtful.

"Who...?" she ventured, uncertain of whether she wanted to hear the answer.
[/SIZE]

what probably happened

A hesitant tongue rasped across Tuwawi's lip when her daughter pried for more information. The experience was hard to stomach, second only to the Sveijarn's cataclysmic tragedy. The whole harrowing ordeal had felt like a reverie, and it hadn't been until the steel doors of her enclosure opened that reality's bleak truth set in. The mother was reluctant to divulge the specifics to her child, wanting so badly to protect what shards of Maera's innocence remained. Yet, as a pale eye drifted across her smaller twin, it became clear that hardship was a familiar guest in their lives.

"I don't know who it was," Tuwawi murmured with an audible gulp, eyes narrowing as she recalled the experience. "I was following Jokull's scent through the forest and there was... a hum in the air. Like a million bees. I looked up, but saw nothing near the treetops. So I ran." The chopper's metallic thrum was nearly indescribable - how easily the buzzing shook her core. "I just made it past the lupines when a felt a sting in my back," Tuwawi's brows furrowed, "and then... my legs stopped working. My whole body felt paralyzed." She recalled her drunken stumbling quite easily. The heaviness in her head... the drowsiness of her lids. Only the fright of having an incapacitated husk kept her semi-conscious, and she struggled against the sedative with a valiant effort.

"Then they came. It wasn't wolf who put this on me. No animal I had ever seen. They were... shadows. Upright shadows." The human's back lit silhouettes were fuzzy in the ember's mind, body under the influence of tranquilizers at the time. Perhaps the research group had underestimated the dosage needed to immediately knock the mother out.

Tuwawi's voice became strained and horse as she fought to speak. "They tied me up! Wrapped my muzzle!" she said, affronted by such treatment, "put this thing on me! Stung me!" The volume of her words increased with every offense, "and lifted me away."

She paused, "I blacked out then... but awoke alone in a cold box." How long had she been asleep? Long enough for the human research team to transport her to the fringes of Chinook in the Northeast. "When the door opened... there were others like me. About four. In their own silver boxes." Unknowingly, each wolf had been abducted as a reintroduction program to revitalize Chinook's dwindling population. "Nobody had any idea what had happened. And most hadn't seen the shadows." Tuwawi's mania cooled, "I recognized the mountain Storm King. I have made the journey to Teekon before and knew the way, so I left the others and came home - to Duskfire."

The ember flinched, remembering Njal's tired expression upon her arrival. The stress of every transgression battered his psyche, and somewhere along the way fire and ice had become estranged. A thirst for the unknown often took her husband away to distant lands, but this time Tuwawi was uncertain he would return. Jokull, Valtyr, and Njal slipped away from them as easily as Larus had, leaving the smallest daughter alone to be battered by waves of abandonment. I don't think he's coming back, she wanted to admit to Maera. However, Tuwawi suppressed her confession for another time.

[size=large]"lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones"[/size]

[size=small]For once in the adolescent's short life span her gut had been right, she had not want to hear. But the words had been pronounced and her ears, unable to fall deaf to her mother's monstruous narration, had caught everything. The malicious nightmares that had plagued child's mind for weeks after the matriarch's departure were petty and empty besides what her mother had to endure. A living nightmare.
With her lips curving downwards into a frightened, yet concerned, grimace she looked allowed her eyes to fall over her mother's body. Though she was undoubtedly Tuwawi Sveijarn there was something that had been lost as the final words of the gruesome story were pronounced.
Something that had been left with those wretched creatures she spoke of with such fear.

The silence that lingered around their heads was not interrupted by the girl. No words could express her feelings. There were no terms capable of describing the level of fear that rose in her chest. So without a word, but a chocked sob the girl craned her neck to bury her nose in the mangled hairs that guarded her mother's shoulder.
Soon her tears would merge with the flaming coat she wore once so proudly.

Never had the Glacier seemed colder.
Even if the two flames were back together the solitude and the terror had drained their heat from them. With quiet shrieks and drowned whines Maera pressed herself tighter against her mother, wanting to make the contact of her skin against her own erase the ardent remains of the sorrow that hung from each other's skin. That however was something that could not be erased as easily.
It was not a fever they could sweat out.
But it was one that they could go through together.

Sickly and broken, mother and daughter would forever be.[/SIZE]

Last post for me <3 Let's wrap this puppy up!

Even though Tuwawi was bereft with loss and pained by her capture, Maera's acceptance granted respite. Her daughter flew back into an embrace without hesitation, face flushed with hot tears. Tuwawi's neck arched to hold her there, teeth gingerly combing through the fiery locks of her daughters crown. She crooned hushed nothings to Maera as she became wracked with lament, broken down to the very core by their equally troubled past. Their reunion was poignant and divine, though steeped with tragedy, and the wood felt silent in sad observation of such burdened beasts.

They stayed that way for some time, Tuwawi letting her daughter cry into her mane while rocking to and fro. Though Maera would not see it, tears burned her mother's cheeks, too. She was hopelessly sad, despite the optimistic we'll manage she had told Malachi. Manage was only about half of what Tuwawi could muster. At what point had she stopped living and started merely surviving?

"My baby girl," Tuwawi whispered as Maera openly wept, a warm dampness matting the finer hairs of her mother's shoulder. The ember groomed her ears softly, finding solace in her company. They had endured pain separately thus far, but would hopefully mend together, reunited as rekindled flames of Duskfire.

"lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones"

[size=small]The silence that had engulfed the young female was not voluntary. While only the sobs and whines managed to make themselves heard, the comforting words of 'i love you' she really wanted to speak were smothered by her own cries. The lumps that had been formed in her throat did not allow her words to materialize so with the impotence of it all weighing her down, and making her melt right then and there. Luckily she now had someone to melt against.
Someone that despite it all, would not discard her ashes but rather light her up again.

So in the inability to speak she decided to act.
With her eyes still glazed with tears and her nose fighting hard against the running snot that threatened to come out, Maera reached her nose to her mother's face, and with the same delicacy she had used as a child that one time they had laid together under the sunshine in the distant times when they were still part of the Creek, she planted a kiss upon her mother's scar.
[/SIZE]