Horizon Ridge Black honey

@Deirdre @Emaleth Yours if you want it. :)

@Harlyn Tagging for visibility (and so you can slap me if I made any mistakes).

It was very unlike Larkspur to stray from her family's (namely her mother's) side, particularly in the dark of night. But when she stirred awake, tummy aching, she couldn't ignore the instinctual urge to find something to eat. Slowly, she stood and began sniffing away from her sleeping mother and brothers. Of course, there wasn't even a scrap of food to be found anywhere. Larkspur paused perhaps a dozen yards from where Harlyn, Silas and Pippin rested, stifling a hungry whine that clawed its way up her throat.

Looking at them reminded her of Mordecai's absence. Her little heart throbbed in her chest. She wanted her daddy back almost more than she wanted something to eat. Swallowing her whimpers, Spur began to creep further away from her family's resting place. Her heart beat an anxious cadence in her chest with every nimble footstep, yet Larkspur did not give in to the urge to turn back and flee back to Harlyn's side. The little girl couldn't bear it anymore. She needed to find daddy and she needed to find food.

By the time the sun rose, Larkspur was far from anything familiar and she was exhausted. Despite the welcome warmth of daylight on her back, she slumped at the foot of a foreign ridge and finally let herself cry. Hiccuping sobs wracked her body as Spur mourned the aching emptiness in both her body and soul.

today, the young cub wandered from donnelaith to check the status of the world. as she traveled, she saw hints of the earths return everywhere; her heart moved to her throat, and joy gripped her. her magics reach must have been far, and she could not help but wander further than she ever would to admire it until its end. and perhaps young deirdre would have wandered until the ends of the earth to see, so enticed and enamored with the young plantlife she could smell and see as she was! but she came to, awakening from the spell she had cast that had taken her in; her moving lips stilled as her ears gently pressed forward.

she heard the girls cry here, and deirdre moved toward it gingerly. the young, pale beauty moved toward the ridge until she saw a girl that reminded her of the nectar bees so loved, and equally so of the honey they conceived due to it. why, she could smell it now! ah, and the crying, it broke her heart so to hear it! deirdre drew nearer to the girl, slowly, worriedly, and began to sing a song her athair sang to her when she was sad, a sweet and ancient song that, as she sang it, evoked the love she had for the man.

at length her song ceased, and her mellisonant voice could not be heard at all but for the echoes against the cliff-face they stood beneath. why do you cry? she breathlessly asked, moving to her belly. how deirdre wished to coddle her, and stop these tears, and see her smile!

She might have cried herself to sleep, if not for the arrival of a stranger. Larkspur did not notice her at first, though her wet eyes flicked up sharply, widening, as the sound of a singsong voice reached her ears. She sucked in her lower lip with a final, muted sob and pushed into a partially crouched position. Her small body trembled as the sylphlike she-wolf drew nearer, her singing giving way to a lilting question as she slung herself down on the warming sands at their bellies.

Larkspur just stared, blue eyes wide and watery, then shook her head and began to inch away. She was lost, hungry, sad and scared. There was nothing left to do but weep. But Spur could not find her voice to explain. Although there was nothing innately frightening about the white youth, little Larkspur couldn't help the apprehension that afflicted her when faced with anything new, strange or both.

deirdre felt for the mute cub, for if she were the girl, what would she have done? and deirdre was infinitely aware that she was the stranger here in that moment, and rose only to move backward a couple of feet before reclining onto her haunches. i do not mean to frighten you, deirdre spoke, her own nerves bringing to light her subtle brogue earned from lasher. she continued, i saw you alone, and heard you crying--can i help you?

she tilted her head, noticing simultaneously the youthful features the other had. distinctly young, in fact, whereas deirdre, although seven months, appeared to be a woman already! where is your mother? your father? she looked left and right, sniffing the air absently but sensing nothing that aligned with the girls scent that meant her family was nearby. she worried all the more for it, and looked back to the cub.

The pale young lady also retreated, quite obviously giving Larkspur her space. The younger pup kept chewing on her lower lip as the stranger reassured her, then in the next breath offered her help. She shook her head again. She wanted food, she wanted her family, she wanted to go home... but not to the place where they had been staying recently. No, Larkspur yearned for the carefree days back in Lost Creek Hollow. But she could articulate none of this.

The other pup queried after her parents. Larkspur blinked and sniffled. Harlyn and her brothers were safely asleep back at their makeshift residence, of course, but where was Mordecai? Her over-sized blue eyes filled with fresh tears, which brimmed and streaked down her fair cheeks. "Daddy..." she muttered under her breath, which hitched in her throat. Suddenly overcome by everything, she sank back onto the ground and buried her face against her forelegs as she bawled.

her heart broke as the young girl cried; deirdre was anxious, wished to sweep the babe into her arms and whipe her tears away! but the cubs devastation could only mean one thing--that she could not find her daddy, and such a thing shattered her heart further. to imagine a life without lasher within it was to imagine the world remaining as it was, forever--colorless, and bringing about an insatiable hunger.

she waited a moment, and then decided. maybe i could try and help you find him, she offered, lowering her head some to study the crying babe, unsure of if her soft voice would even be heard over the girls sobs, but the clear quality of it would perhaps be heard nonetheless.

Larkspur felt like she would break apart, crack into pieces and just shatter on the sand. Of course, that didn't happen. But she continued to vent her grief against her forelimbs, until they were sticky and wet with tears and snot. She should have been embarrassed, weeping like this in front of a perfect stranger, but Spur didn't have any room left in her heart for shame. Besides, the other girl wasn't poking fun at her or otherwise making her feel bad for her tearful display. In fact, she was still trying to console her.

Spur lifted her head a few inches at the offer—those magic words—once more blinking moisture from her eyes. She swallowed, several times, and whispered, "You can?" Sniffing noisily, the little girl gingerly sat upright. Spur desperately wished Harlyn or one of the boys was near at hand, so she could snuggle against them, drawing comfort. In their absence, she wrapped her tail around her haunches, hugging into herself, peeking hopefully upward through soggy lashes.

deirdre noted the lull in the sound of the others weeping, and blinked fresh tears from her own eyes before larkspur met them. they bled between her thick lashes, and her charcoal lined lips drew into a shy smile. i can try, she promised, nodding slowly. shall we look around? she invited, but awaited the other to make her move, first, not wanting to shake the tentative relationship they were now beginning to build. her head tilted some, and she observed the girls body language. it was still so very closed, and that was alright; it had always taken deirdre an ample amount of time to warm to strangers, if ever she did.

It wasn't much, yet after so much hardship, the words of hope loosened some of the tightness in Spur's little chest. She meant to say, Okay, but it barely whispered past her lips. Still moving slowly and hesitantly, she lifted her hindquarters and stood. She swayed there, almost indecisively, and then took a tentative step toward the other girl. Her tongue flicked out to nervously wet her lips and her blue eyes remained almost humorously wide, still shimmering.

"Okay," she said, this time loud enough to be heard (only barely). She shuffled her feet a little bit, feeling as if she should say something else. Even if not for her shyness, Spur hadn't met many strangers in her day and so her social skills were a little lacking for it.

the sweet girl before her said something she hadn't caught, but fortunately, eventually, repeated. were it not for her attentive nature surely deirdre would have missed the shy acceptance, but she heard it then and nodded while the other rose. deirdre too stood, slowly, so as to not frighten the coltish girl before her.

deirdre looked 'round as larkspur rose and then looked back to the cub. what does he look like? she presumed he smelled as larkspur might, herself--that there was some sort of genetic tag to all wolves that would bring the notion of familiarity to any when they met the relative. if not that, then certainly he would smell of where larkspur had once come from! continuing on after larkspur (presumably) responded to her, deirdre shifted her weight slightly. which way shall we look, first? she wanted larkspur to feel at ease, certainly, and perhaps larkspur carried with her some sort of knowledge that would aid in her decision.

It was a simple enough question, not to mention an important one, but Larkspur didn't know how to answer it. She felt her insides quavering with uncertainty as she struggled to come up with something to say. Finally, she softly blurted, "Like daddy." Spur felt her cheeks grow warm. She wasn't stupid, just inexperienced, and so she knew that wasn't much to go by. Trying to keep the shakiness out of her voice, she added haltingly, "Um. B-big. Brown. Yellow eyes. Some s-scars."

Next, her new acquaintance wanted to know which direction they should go. Spur's widened even more and she shook her head to say she didn't know. "I'ono," she muttered as much. It then occurred to her to look around herself a little and what she saw was a cliff on her left, some naked trees in the distance and then a wide, bare plain beyond that. Spur thought she saw something moving along the horizon, yet she couldn't be sure, and her blue eyes returned to the other's face.

deirdre was patient with the girl, not pressing her for more; from this, more came. yellow eyes, brown, scarred. large, too. that would be enough; any yellow-eyed man who was brown and scarred would now be stopped when deirdre came upon them.

as the babe looked around, deirdre did, too. her eyes caught the same thing as larkspur's did and she looked back to the girl who reminded her so much of a sunflower! even down to the tufts of red deirdre now spotted, that sometimes stained the petals of the flowers she saw, burnt from the sun. i saw something over there -- perhaps that direction, first? she invited, turning slowly. deirdre knew well not to make any sudden movements, as this had always caused her fear to renew itself when with others that she did not know and love. she gestured to her side, hoping the other would come there if she wished; she did not want the other to feel as though she were being left behind in the search, after all.

The instant her companion mentioned seeing something, Spur's attention snapped in that direction. Her heart jumped into her throat. Was it her daddy? She squinted but saw nothing. Lips pursed and brow knitted ever so slightly, she glanced back at the pale girl. She had started moving and Spur had no choice but to blink and then shuffle after her, her legs feeling a little wobbly and weak from all the physical and emotional exertions these past several hours.

As they strode unknowingly toward the seaside, Larkspur suddenly wondered about her new acquaintance's name. She wanted to ask but found her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth, her nervous shyness holding her back. Instead, she let out a breath and followed silently in the other wolf's wake, all the while keeping an eye out for any sign of Mordecai's familiar face.

the two of them moved together, though the little sunflower followed more than moved alongside of her; deirdre did not begrudge her this, or try to match pace to force the other to her side, but instead kept at the leisurely walk she had begun in the first place. deirdre was exhausted, herself; hunger plagued her as the locusts plagued the land, but it had not left her so bare as the world had been after the first few weeks of it.

into the open stretch they went, and far ahead was a wolf trotting toward the direction that deirdre herself had come. he was brown himself, tawny, even, though from this distance did not look large. she glanced to larkspur for a look of recognition toward the creature ahead, wondering if this might be the man she sought. impossible for deirdre to know for sure, for even as she inhaled a draught of fresh air, the only thing she took in was the scent of the sea and the sand surrounding them.

The younger pup didn't notice the distant figure right away, as she was caught up staring at the shifting horizon, wondering why and how it did that. But then her big blue eyes drifted to her companion's pale face and she followed her gaze. Spur's heart nearly burst when she spotted the faraway silhouette. "Daddy!" she cried out without thinking, suddenly veering in that direction and running as fast as her spry legs could carry her.

But the wolf that glanced back at her, brow quirked questioningly, was not Mordecai. As soon as Spur realized her mistake, she dug her heels into the earth and ground to a halt. Her tail fell between her legs and she began backpedaling. If the stranger made to call out to her, she didn't hear, as she turned back in the other direction and scrambled to the elder girl's side. Thoughtlessly, she threw herself against the juvenile, clinging to her and hiding her face in a milky white shoulder.

deirdre felt relief as the other proclaimed daddy, and very nearly believed that this was the man. when larkspur paused, deirdre noted the man who turned when called to had eyes the color of dirtied swampwater, with no hint of yellow within them. and so deirdre met the backpedaling larkspur halfway. she was shocked when she felt the other bury herself into her thick white furs, but did not step away or otherwise respond to set the others nerves off.

the brown wolf in the distance merely shrugged and continued on his way. deirdre let out an anxious breath, glad the other did not seek a fight or was otherwise angered for being disturbed. it was fortunate, and deirdre knew she was not much of a protector for any, weak as she was and not at all a fighter. deirdre leaned lightly into larkspur, waiting for her to be ready to begin the search again.

She couldn't have said what was worse: the disappointment or the embarrassment over running up to and shouting at a total stranger. Spur quivered against her companion's shoulder, face still hidden, swallowing back an urge to wail. She gulped in a few deep, steadying breaths and eventually withdrew. She could not bring herself to look in the direction of the brown wolf. Instead, her huge blue eyes hoisted to her acquaintance's friend's face. It grounded her.

"Wasn't daddy," she murmured unnecessarily, eyes closing halfway as a small sigh bloomed in her chest, nudged up her throat and escaped from her mouth. And though it was a non sequitur, she finally found the gumption to ask (albeit quite nervously), "What'syourname?"

deirdre let the other linger there for as long as she wished. when the other removed herself, she looked to her; she felt that staring would only serve to make the other uncomfortable, from her own personal experience on the matter of strangers. as the other explained, deirdre nodded in understanding. and at the next question, deirdre smiled.

i am deirdre mayfair. what is your name? she recalled aria, who she had not seen as of late, and felt a distinct pull in her heart as she realized she missed the white woman greatly while she was on her adventure. ah! aria would see that her magic had worked, and return soon, surely?! she thought for a moment, and then said, you know--any time that i have lost someone, they have returned to me. each time because of a spell i have cast. some took more time than others... but they found me. i could never find them when i looked for them, the epiphany was one that struck her in the heart. 'twas true--and her father had once said, sometimes lost things did not wish to be found. she did not think this true of larkspur's father; sometimes, lost things needed a guide. a wind that shifted at the right moment, or a familiar tree that suddenly was struck by the proper light that had been missed a thousand times over beforehand.

after a moment, deirdre looked to the girl. she wanted to be trusted, but equally, did not want to make the girl nervous by her admission. a great owl once told her that some feared magic and witches, and such a thing only occurred to her then. she was a powerful witch; she knew that if the other permitted it, she would cast her magic out to the man the other sought and he would, eventually, return. this she believed wholeheartedly. if she could make the earth return, surely she could bring the man of larkspur's heart back home.

"Spur," she whispered, lips barely moving. A little louder, she clarified, "Larkspur Ostrega." She gulped in another breath, still trying to steady herself after that unpleasant if brief encounter. At least she was getting more used to her companion's—Deirdre's—company now. It was still very new and strange to Spur, as she'd never made a friend in her life. Wolves were either family (her parents and brothers) or strangers. There had never really been anyone in between, until today.

Larkspur sipped in quiet breaths as Deirdre changed tack, explaining that those who were lost tended to return on their own terms, rather than being found. She understood that part, though Spur didn't have a clue what Deirdre meant about casting a spell. She wanted to ask but she didn't want to look or sound dumb (again). Her lips pressed together as she tried to gather her courage. Deirdre meant well and hadn't judged her so far, so it couldn't hurt to ask, could it?

"Spell you have cast?" she wondered quietly, standing still but shifting her weight from foot to foot. It sounded like Deirdre thought they should give up on the search and the younger pup would defer to her. Still, she felt restless and like she wanted to keep moving, despite the chronic, gnawing hunger and exhaustion that always threatened to consume her.

larkspur ostrega. the name was beautiful, and deirdre was smitten with it. larkspur! she said with a smile, finding the name fitting for the other, pretty as the pixie she appeared to be. the girl looked to be a child of the fae creatures she had dreamt—weren't they dreams?—of, and the cub carried with her a piece of deirdre's heart, as all those she swiftly came to love would. what a lovely name! we are well met, she smiled sweetly, dipping her head warmly to the strawberry and creme child.

as for the next question, she knew it would be difficult to articulate. yes, a spell--magic, she elaborated, and after a breath, she asked, have you heard of witches? she waited for an answer before offering, we can still continue to look as well, if you would like. it could not hurt. the pale beauty observed the others features to see what she would like to do in the moment.

Trying not to be taken aback by Deirdre's enthusiasm, Larkspur focused on the questions being asked of her. She felt as if her mother had mentioned the word magic a time or two, though Spur couldn't really place it or its meaning. And she was pretty sure she'd never heard of witches at all. She shook her head no. Then Deirdre said they could keep looking for Mordecai too. Larkspur stilled.

She desperately wanted to locate Mordecai and bring him home to Harlyn, Silas and Pippin, but the youngster was running on fumes. And she was intrigued about this mention of magic and witches. It was more hope, even if she didn't understand what it entailed. Biting the inside of her cheek, Spur shook her head and looked down at her feet. Although she was curious to hear more about these spells, she also felt like she was giving up on her daddy and the rest of her family by not continuing the manual search.

"Spells..." she repeated a little inanely, eyes lifting beseechingly to Deirdre's lovely, pale visage.

the others repetition had deirdre believe that larkspur was taken with the idea, and deirdre nodded. i will do this for you, she responded without pause, though i must do it at donnelaith. my home, she explained. for it was there her stone-circle rest, and though she could cast one loosely here and now and her magic be just as powerful as ever--for her power was with her, always--she wanted to do it perfectly for her friend.

we can continue to look here, for a while, she suggested, and then looked behind larkspur. where do you stay, larkspur? your mother...? do you have sisters, or brothers? deirdre would invite her to donnelaith with her, if she, too, was a lost thing.

She swallowed when Deirdre said she could only cast the spell from her home. Would Larkspur have to follow her there? Before she could worry her little head about it much, her friend asked her about the whereabouts of her mother and siblings. She looked around, attempting to orient herself, and experienced a moment of wild panic when she realized she had lost her sense of direction entirely. But then she spotted the ridge behind them and she calmed somewhat. Her pulse still throbbed, heart decelerating slowly.

"I came from that way," she said, motioning toward the lands south of the ridge. She wasn't entirely certain of the way back, though she figured she could use scent to retrace her steps. If that failed, she suddenly realized she could call out to her mother. The thought settled over her like a warm, fuzzy blanket. Her heartbeat slowed further, nearly normalizing. "We stay in a cave. I don't have any sisters, just Silas and Pippin." She paused, not including anyone else as they were all still strangers to her. "And mommy."

the others panic nearly panicked her; but ah, the other seemed to literally find herself in the span of seconds. alright, she breathed. can you return here, after the night of the full moon? deirdre would perform her magic that very night, when she was sure she would be heard and heeded by the spirits old and new. and, to tell larkspur of herself as a comfort, she smiled. i have sisters and brothers both. they are wonderful; perhaps one day you will meet them, if you would like. her tail waved slowly at the thought, and her heart was full with the idea.

Her lips parted, anxiety ratcheting up a few notches as she prepared to tell Deirdre she didn't know the first thing about the moon. But then a thought occurred to her: perhaps her mother could help? Harlyn was a very intelligent wolf, not to mention very attuned to the natural world. Spur was suddenly sure that when she told her about this—and she would offer up every last detail to her dam—she would know exactly when to return. Perhaps she would even come with Larkspur and bring along the boys as well. Perhaps it would be a family reunion, if Deirdre's spell worked.

Hope blossoming in her chest, the child nodded. "Okay," she said simply in response to it all. Deirdre hadn't said it out loud, yet Larkspur sensed that it was time to part ways. It probably was best to return, especially now that she had some sort of lead on Mordecai. She didn't want her family to worry (unaware that they probably doing just that right this very moment). "Thank you," she added shyly, hovering awkwardly, not entirely certain this was goodbye and waiting for an official cue from her new friend.