Blackfeather Woods meet me on the battlefield, even on the darkest night

@Damien. This one won't be hijacked! <3

It is late when Qilaq wakes. She’d fallen asleep after her evening meal and slept for several hours. The only light in the den is the faint moon illuminating the small space. She turns her head to see both her mother and father sleeping, tucked near each other. When she moves, Nemesis makes a sound, but Qilaq freezes in response until she’s sure the dark woman isn’t waking up. Carefully, she untangles herself from the mess of limbs and slowly creeps out of the den.

It isn’t the first time she’s snuck out in the night and she’d yet to be caught, always sneaking back in several hours before either of them wakes up. The young girl doesn’t go far, feeling the wool wind blow through her fur, and she makes herself comfortable several years away in a clearing. The trees opened up, allowing the light to shine down from the moon and stars, and envelops her in a softened glow. For a while, she rests here, enjoying the quiet and stillness the night brings.

Damien would deny it, but he was curious about the newest recruit in Blackfeather Woods. It had come in the form of a pup, some sort of replacement to what Burke had both forced into and stolen from the pack. It had turned out to be true, tough, all of it; the Dark Brotherhood needed to breed their own recruits rather than hope many more would come willingly and take the culture. It was much more secure that way, it almost gave him a warranty that they would become of use to the brotherhood.

Silently the wraith walked into the clearing of Spiderlings' Glen to find the little thing laying silently under the stars. He watched from a distance, trying to measure the girl's age. She was probably not older than two months, just about the time they started talking. He came a little closer to inspect the seemingly sleeping creatire, and ran his cold nose over her fur as he sniffed his way up her spine.

Perhaps she should have learned from the last time sleeping outside the den but she had been alone before, her parents gone from the den. This time, they were a few feet away tucked somewhere nearby that she’d originally felt safe when she plopped down on the ground for a few hours. She’d fallen into a deep sleep, as she often does, and tunes out her surroundings easily so she can get through without much disturbance. Heavy eyelids and twitchy limbs until she wakes up a little while later.

Until a firm nose touches her back and nudging her an inch or two across the dirt.

Qilaq twists and jerks to attention with a gasp that takes her breath away. Sucked into her throat, she struggles to release it while her eyes travel up the dark male that is most definitely not her mother and instead someone she doesn’t even recognize it. Her exposure to other wolves has been minimal since she’d come in and it hasn’t been until recently that her health had picked back up enough to resume her puppyhood. The little, dark puppy lowers to the ground and curls herself into a ball until she can remember how to breath properly again.

His nose pushes her just a bit too hard, and in a second the little girl gasped, freaked out and curled up in around herself in what seemed a desperate attempt to shield her face from Damien. He pulled away and observed, blinking curiously. The girl had gained some weight from the first time he saw her, and now she looked less like a wet rat. Maybe she did have something in her to bring to the brotherhood, it was only a question of solidifying it through hard work.

"Xivilai," called the shadow prince, "I will not harm you," he promised, and allowed his nose to hover close to her again, this time with a rare tenderness to his moves to avoid scaring the spiderling again.

The large wolf says something. A word that should be familiar but only causes her to blink a few times. The rest goes unacknowledged, unfocused, as she plays with the first word in her head. Even in her thoughts, Qilaq struggles to form the sounds to make it happen. She quickly gives it up, slowly uncurling her limbs to peer upward at the dark male. 

He resembles her mother, perhaps only in color, but that doesn’t make her limbs open and welcoming. Her ears press back against her head and she shuffles a few steps away. The night sky does little to offer any illumination and the wind has died down so the thick, humid heat of the night makes her struggle for air. She swings her head around to look at the den in the distance, wondering if she can make it before he’s able to catch her, but her legs won’t propel her forward enough to accomplish it.

In a leap of faith, or perhaps pure curiosity, the small one dares to look up at Damien and recognize his face. The Dark youth notices her discomfort, and takes one step back to prevent making it feel like he was trying to harm her. So far she hadn't spoken one word, and Damien realized it was too soon for her to do so.

Her head spun around, trying to locate the safety of the den, but couldn't make herself stand up to try the run. Damien leaned down to touch the ground with his belly, and settled himself in a similar position to that of Xivilai.

"Do you know where the stars come from?" asked the dark master with added warmth to his voice. He looked up, eyes gleaming with a thousand reflections, and soaked with memories of his mother. "They were made," he assured, remembering one of Meldresi's epic tales, and looked down again to meet the pup's eyes once more, trying to gauge her interest in the story.

The dark wolf doesn’t do anything other than lower to the ground. Even on his belly, and at her level, he still seems big, but at the same time he doesn’t. Something so large is able to make themselves smaller and an unsettling feeling disrupts her stomach. Qilaq releases a heavy breath and a large gulp but none of it really makes her feel any more comfortable. Even when the other speaks, she doesn’t look directly at him for more.

Qilaq mumbles something beneath her breath in puppy gibberish that she only understands before she takes another step back, now standing half in shadows and half in the moonlight.

She takes another step back, and although she seems to be less frightened by Damien than before, the shadow prince knows that she doesn't feel comfortable around him at all. He sighs and observes as Xivilai hides herself in the shadows. She mumbles something in a low voice, something Damien didn't quite understand, but that reminds him of his own brother at Xivilai's age, talking to himself like there was someone else inside. Much like the Speaker, this girl was a mystery.

"You don't care, do you?" he asked, not really even expecting a response. He got up and looked at her for a moment as if trying to decide what was best for her. There were no other thoughts than that Xivilai had a home now, and that if there was a place for such a peculiar girl to become something meaningful it had to be Blackfeather Woods.

Damien took a step forward, keeping his head at the pup's level, and nudged her back towards the den. By that point he had understood that speech wasn't probably going to help, so body language would have to do.

Her ears flatten against her head as comes forward, her legs bending to put her closer to the ground, and soon he's nudging her away. Her breath lodges in her throat and she isn't entirely sure what to do but she knows she doesn't like it. Her nose wrinkles and she tries to find where he nudges her with his teeth but they snap on nothing but air. With a defiant hmph, she staggers backward until she's turned around and a giggle escaping her lips as she teeters off with her tail waving behind her. 

It takes a moment of Qilaq lingering at the mouth the den to look back, tail still waging, and drops into the den to sleep.