Stone Circle Woulda been gone like a wayward wind

@Adeline <3

It hadn't gotten any easier to put the kids to bed. Ever since he'd told them about their impending departure, they'd been bouncing around like they had springs for legs. It was both frustrating and endearing, but Grayday leaned perpetually toward the latter. The innocent excitment of his children helped to ease the tightness in his chest - something that wanted to be pain but was more like indegestion.

He'd plaed chase and tag and yeah, yank on daddy's ear until they were both too exhausted to go on, and then he'd hummed to them, to himself, as he watched them drift off to sleep. This would be the start of something good; he knew it.

There was only one problem.

With a soft sigh, the silvered male had dragged himself to his paws and lumbered forth from the den, intent on finding Adeline before she could speak to Steady and find out from him. He was susprised he hadn't seen her yet, though it was not so late that it was odd she was still out and about.

"Adeline?" he called, knowing that he'd probably miss her, if she was napping or deep in thought, or anything else that kept her still.

Adeline had taken most of her time near Phiipa if she can, learning about a new herb when she can and she even started her own little cache. It doesn’t have much that is useful but if anything looked interesting peaking up through the snow, she’d grabbed it just in case. The next time she sees her mentor, she’ll ask her about each thing she picked up along the way. It is a long time that she sits there, not too far off from Grayday’s den, and stares at the work she’s done.

When she hears her name, she breaks out of the daydream and turns her head. She doesn’t see him at first but a big smile plasters on her face and she nearly knocks herself over to get her feet going.

“Hey!” she shouts from his right, curving into view. “I was just coming.” Well, not really, but he doesn’t have to know that.

His tail began to wag without his permission when he heard her voice. Day whipped his head in her direction, a stupid grin already growing on his face. "I don't mind if you stay up," he told her, privately thinking that he would rather stay up with her than sleep without her. "I just wanted to talk to you about something."

Now that he was standing in front of her, the subject seemed so much more difficult to broach - and it had already seemed difficult. "Let's go to the circle," he suggested. It'd become something of a town hall to the pack, and sometimes a church or ancient shrine. Grayday always felt peaceful when he visited, and for this conversation, he needed that peace.

Adeline opens her mouth to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind but she quickly snaps them shut. I just wanted to talk to you about something. Her ears instantly fall back against her head and she swallows a giant lump that’s grown in the back of her throat. Why does this keep happening? She forces an air out of her chest but it only tightens more when he instructs them to go to the circle. Her legs don’t do much of anything for a few moments before she dumbly nods her head and tags along with him, hanging only slightly back.

The standing stones did nothing to comfort him. For a moment, he could only think that he'd be gone soon, away from this place that'd come to be his home - far more than what he'd had at Silvertip, and almost reaching what he'd been searching for when he left his childhood home. But it will not be forever, he reminded himself, and he turned his head to Adeline with a determined look in his eyes.

"I'm going to take the kids on a scouting trip," he told her, tail wagging briefly in an attempt to add a bit of levity to the words. This isn't goodbye, he reminded himself, reminded them both - but though his head knew the words, his heart was not convinced. "It's time they start learning about the world beyond Easthollow."

When they get to the circle, Adeline feels a lot more nervous than she thought she would. His apprehension doesn’t seem to help, either, as she searches his face for answers. Even when he speaks, she feels a void where her anxiety had been sitting and this time, confusion further warps her expression. “Okay,” she says carefully, expecting something else to come out of his mouth but there isn’t anything else beyond teaching his children what lies on the outside world. That isn’t such a big deal, is it? And still, with innocence, she adds: “Are you leaving in the morning?”

Adeline hums quietly for a beat before quickly adding on. “You’ll be back by nightfall?”

For a moment, Grayday simply sat there, blown away by her airy response. Hurt and confusion punched through his gut in the moments before she tacked on her second question, and then Grayday could only wince as he realized that he would have to make himself say it all over again. It'd been bad enough the first time, and considering how much he'd thought about this, he probably should've settled on something more expansive to start with.

"No, we're not leavin' just yet," he replied, slowly to buy himself time. By the time the sentence was over, he still hadn't quite struck up the nerve to say more, and when he'd finally composed himself, he had to clear his throat to get the words out. "It's gonna be a long trip," he said, and then quickly realized that still wasn't enough. He cleared his throat again. "A few weeks. A month, maybe."

He made himself look at her when he said it, not wanting to miss any hint or cue. This girl had been his everything for so damn long, now, but he still couldn't predict her. "You can come, if you want," he said, not wanting her to think he was trying to leave her behind. "I always want you with me - but I understand if you don't want to leave Easthollow again for so long."

She is glad to hear he isn’t leaving yet and she wags her tail several more times, but nothing more than that. The words seem heavier than usual and his expression doesn’t give her much to go by. How long of a trip did he need to go on to take Sunny and Dawn to see a few things? Her brows knit together in confusion as he explains just how long he’ll be gone; she droops her ears as she considers the length of time as best as she can. It mimics the length of time she spent away and she remembered how miserable she was for so long without those close by.

“You said—” she has to pause when a lump lodges in her throat, sucking back a breath to find the right words. Adeline clenches her jaw in tune with her pule in order to release the breath slowly and without out trembling. A few weeks, a month, is a long time and spring is around the corner. When she opens her mouth to speak, nothing comes out. Her mouth turns to cotton and she clicks her teeth back together, resisting the urge her legs are craving. It would be easy to turn and leave, to run away from him so she doesn’t have to be the one to hurt. Again.

Adeline closes her eyes to fight the pain that develops behind them. He gives her options and understanding and calmness and all she wants to do is rip apart her chest to pluck out her heart. Still, the girl cannot find the words and she balls up everything she feels into a mess of unpredictable electricity. “You said you’d take me to Silvertip,” she finally says, breathing as calmly as she can mask the explosion inside, “you said you wouldn’t leave.”

It was a mark of his reverence to her that he didn't interrupt - that he waited until all her thoughts were on the floor before letting out what he'd swallowed back from the start. "I said we'd have to wait," he reminded her. "This was why. And I said I'd never go where you couldn't follow - and I won't, Adeline. I'm not gonna run off and tell you that you can't come with. I'm standing here, asking you."

Grayday meant what he'd said - that he wanted to be around her, that he wanted her to come with. He meant it, but already, there was a part of him that cried out in desperate, agonized sanity: Maybe this is for the best. Maybe it's better this way. Maybe I can get over her. Maybe I don't have to feel like this anymore.

But a larger, more dominant part of his psyche rejoined: I love her. I need her to be with me. I love her, and this is the only way.

"Come with me, greeneyes," he wheedled, edging closer to the red girl, the forbidden girl. (Somewhere near the back of his mind, he thought of Phiipa and finding her in the meadow that day, and how - for an instant - he'd thought it was Adeline.) "Please? I can't be here anymore." But what he really meant was, I can't be with you here. Not where Steady hung like a white veil over Adeline's face.

He responds to her anger and frustration with something calm and logical and it only made her angrier. She doesn’t know what to do with everything bubbling up in her chest. Even though he reiterates he’s asking her to come with, this time a little more directly, the charge doesn’t neutralize. They’re feelings she’s ever really experienced and she can’t make heads from tails that matches how she feels to what’s been asked of her. It doesn’t make it easier that whatever decision she makes, she’ll be losing something and trying to decide which is more important than the other.

“Okay,” she says after several agonizing seconds. If Steady were here, asking her to say, she imagines her answer might be different. It is Grayday in front of her, though, asking her away from her home, from her family. The lump in her throat thickens and she slowly releases the breath. The voice repeats in her head, the single word of acknowledgment, and it doesn’t sound like her. Adeline tightens her jaw again, the tension building into soreness. “Okay,” she repeats, this time with uncertainty but she moves forward to try and mask any doubt.

Again, two wolves fought against each other in the back of Grayday's mind, the pit of his stomach, the marrow of his bones. You have to leave her, this has to stop, one was screaming, and the other snarled back that he couldn't, that he had loved her for days and weeks and cycles of the moon. For seasons he had loved her, and he would love her for years to come.

Because she was coming with. She'd chosen him.

Something joyous and ugly writhed in the beta's gut. His heart seemed to pound right against his throat as he swallowed back a victorious shout. His face twisted through triumph and grief, worry and fear, uncertainty and solemn acceptance. A thousand thoughts and a thousand emotions that all flashed by too quickly for the eye to follow - he'd learned too well to play his card close, to keep his face set.

"We'll come back, greeneyes," he said to her, knowing that this would weigh most heavily on her mind. His expression settled into a small, resigned smile. It hurt him to see her hesitance; his every instinct told him to relent and think things over. Tell her that he wouldn't leave, that they'd stay here, together.

But he pushed that back. The wolf he thought he'd been whined in submission, too tired to fight back any longer.

We’ll come back, greeneyes.

Adeline’s lips twist in thought, eyes flickering down to the ground. Her tail wags a few times to show her appreciation for the gesture but it only puts her stomach in knots. Come back. She’s leaving again after she’d vowed to herself she wouldn’t but she can’t explain the tug on the anchor that sits in her breast.

“I think, um,” she begins, catching herself over her words. “I need to go do something.”

The girl steps back, resisting the urge to bury her muzzle into his fur. She’d been embraced by him on more than one occasional, enough times that the warm embrace could probably fix everything, except this. Hesitantly, Adeline leans forward to press her nose to his cheek before she back pedals a few steps to go.

The look on her face made it hard for him to breathe. He'd known this girl as a child, and it was plain to him that she was hurting, uncertain, afraid. He wanted to comfort her, but it was impossible to close the gaping distance between them. Once, he would have pulled her close and groomed the tears out of her eyes, the same as he did for Dawn or Sunny.

"Hey," he said, taking half-a-step after her. But the air was punched out of his lungs, and he had no words to fix this that didn't release her from the commitment she'd just made. All he knew was that he loved her, and that he wanted to erase the tightness in her shoulders, the anxious lines of her face. He missed the happy girl she'd been, the easy affection they'd shared. "I love you," he eeked out, the words bitter on his tongue. But he did, and he knew that she loved him, too. Not the way he needed, but enough to make this okay again.

She freezes when he calls for her, taking a step forward but the distance between them remains. She doesn’t turn to leave or dart off or anything her legs are trying to get her to do. Instead, she stares across the way and tries to figure out the words that are about to come out of his mouth. There are a thousand things she expects to come from him but the three words he offers are not it. Her green eyes widen in surprise and she tries to stiffen her features and stifle the surprise that covers her face. Her mouth opens a little to say something but only clicks it shut a beat later.

Adeline opts out on saying anything, eyes turning away to try and hide whatever emotions she can’t help but slip from her canvas. Quickly, she pivots on her heels and, without trying to seem too eager, trots back the way she’d came to the circle.

Grayday stood there long after she'd gone, telling himself that he needed to follow. But his paws felt too-large and unbalanced, not suited for movement of any kind. Her silence resonated in his chest, deafened his ears.

He felt, keenly, that he'd just commited a sin too large to be forgiven, too deep to overcome. The wolves in his breast no longer fought, but stared sullenly as the spot where Adeline had stood like a stone against the ocean. This is not right, they said, for once in accord.