Cassiopeia's View Grass is greener right?

@Farrah? He'ssss baaaack

Once more the obsidian furred brute was in the Teekon wilderness, roaming around by his lonesome. This time was different for him though. He was not the goal driven,built like a tank, muscular and handsome brute he had been when he ran during that storm. His black furr was dry and listless, clumps of furr missing in certain areas. His ribs stuck out far more than they should have, and his leg bones were prominent making him look like a skeleton. The scariest thing by far though, was that his electric blue eyes that were once filled with fire were now glazed over and distant.


He had entered far from here and caught his first succesful meal though it had exhausted him and he slept for almost twenty four hours. Then he started walking, roaming through the places he had been before and reminiscing. He seemed to have developed a masochistic side to him, suffering through the pain as he made his way to the closest nuetral area from where he last Saw Olive and his children choosing a spot on the Moonspear with quite an ironic name. Cassiopeia's View. Cassi.....She must be so big by now. Teaghlaigh was missing, he had been there too and they were nowhere to be found so he couldn't even bring himself to think of Aries. Exhausted by the travelling and overwhelmed by the memories of all he had lost he collapsed onto the ground, blue eyes staring out at the sky and taking in the stars.

The waifish woman was slowly gaining the confidence she once had, and this amelioration manifested itself almost entirely as an intense desire to travel. It felt nice and familiar, as if it was some last vestige of the wolf she was before the Teekon Wilds, so Farrah was inclined to oblige. In the mornings she would depart and would warfare for hours, feeling stiff and tired in her delicate frame, but oh she loved it! Even though she traveled no farther than half a day’s walk from Moonspear’s summit, the lands immediately surrounding the territory still provided a kaleidoscope of beauty to explore. For just a moment, Farrah found herself able to distance herself from the small, depressed thing that existed upon the mountain. There was little reason for Farrah to return, but she always did — in the daytime, the mountain’s confines were stifling, but during the night her soul cried out for the familiarity of those rocky soils and the den she once shared with her family.

It was a intimate place that had called her, the altar of twilight, and she spent the better part of the afternoon laying amongst its crisp, fall grasses and breathing in the autumn’s air. Soon the afternoon faded into dusk, then to twilight and finally to night. Time to leave. The lamb pulled herself from the ground and made to leave the area, heading to the beloved mundanity of the mountain’s heights. She felt light and happy —  almost out of no where, a scent entered her consciousness. Her breath was pulled from her body. It was different now, but her faculties would always recognize that familiar scent. 

The pale sylph took one stumbling step in the direction of the scent. “Baby?” she called out, half-certain that no one was actually there to respond. Surely, this was her imagination — this wouldn’t be the first time it had played this trick on her.

He had closed his eyes to block out the stars,not wishing to see them feeling like their twinkling happy brightness was the god's way of mocking him. He had come to accept that there must be some sort of other power due to the fact that he had poisoned himself and fallen into the sea, just to be washed ashore and survive off of crustaceans he found along the sea shore. He was regretting coming back to Teekon now, it had been far too long for things to be how they were before. Cassi had to be grown and he wouldn't be surprised if she barely remembered him, Olive had to have moved on in life whether devoting herself fully to the pack and gods or finding another man.


It was rather funny how at times when he thought of her he could almost hear her voice calling to him. Like now, the memory was so strong he could smell her and hear her call out to him in her sweet tones. "Anthousai....Stop tormenting me." he said out loud. If he hadn't been so ill and weak it would have occured to him that he was rather close to the old pack and it was highly likely that the voice was actually hers and not a mocking memory.The familiar pain that had been gripping his stomach ever since he ate those berries came back, and he heaved a couple of times before becoming silent once more releasing a weary sigh.

The wind changed directions and blew the perfume away — just as quickly as his presence had wafted past her, it was gone. To be completely honest, this was no different than any other night when she felt Dakarai’s phantom presence, so Farrah lingered one moment longer in that spot before continuing on, his sweet taste still tingling on her lips.

The spirit, however, was not ready to leave her alone. It spoke to her, its dulcet tones carrying towards her from far away, a song carried upon the loneliness of the night. It echoed her very thoughts, as if it had manifested from her own consciousness. Stop the torment? Oh, how she wished she could! A little bit offended, Farrah stopped her departure once more and turned to face the specter’s direction.

“I — I’m sorry…” she supplicated softly. There was not much else to say to the spirit, who was only as real as the wind that stirred the grass beneath her feet. She did not listen to the voices in her head, parading as gods or ghosts, as easily as she did before.         

Dakarai chuckled, the sound a low sad wheezy noise but it was still a laugh all the same. The memory was sorry? What an odd thing for a memory... Suddenly Dakarai pushed himself to his paws, and scrambled in the direction of the sound of Olive's voice his flanks heaving with his panicked breath. If she was here he had to know it, had to see her, had to spea- stopping in his tracks he stared at the woman in his sights drinking her in. After all this time and all this moping over the pain, the sight of her still brought an eerie sort of calm to his troubled thoughts. "I know you are, but I am the one who should be sorry. Abandoning you and the children..." his voice was a faint rumbling as his electric blue eyes scanned over her body, and he shook his head a faint smile forming on the lips that had been set in a scowl for a long time now.


More spasms shook his body and he turned his head to the side coughing and heaving for a longer period of time before finally falling still again and having a moment to catch his breath. "I got what I deserved though. The gods punished me this time, I nearly died and I am still Ill with these coughing spasms that seem to be staying with me" he contiued hoping that the longer he spoke to her the longer she would stay. He wasn't sure what to expect from her at this point, they had been apart so long it was entirely possible that her personality could have changed.

For the next moment, the world was still. The air settled, the je ne sais quoi of the moment passed, and it was normal again. The woman’s feathered tail flicked longingly between her hocks; she had not truly expected a response and this nothingness was, for all intents and purposes, just like any other night. Silently, she berated herself. The spirits liked to be heard, but not conversed with! The moment she spoke back to them was always the moment they suddenly became unreachable, and their meanings, opaque. She shouldn’t have even tried — and despite the demure, quiet nature of her communication, for some inexplicable reason, the effort has exhausted her. Farrah let out a small sigh, sat her hips down and cradled them upon the earth.

Farrah always felt the dark knight in her presence, even after he left unceremoniously and all their children had fled and she changed her name to escape the pressure that came from all that… but this time, she could see him; smell him; almost as if he were real. Rarely, did spirits materialize before her — her gods had always been the invisible, omnipresent kind — and Farrah was skeptical. A shiver rippled down her spine [it could not be helped] and her maw cut a critical scowl. Why did her mind have to play tricks on her this way? 

Had she gone truly mad?

Tossing her head side to side, trying to rid herself of the vision, Farrah refused to listen. The dark spirit frittered apologies toward her, the apologies she had always imagined receiving. It was beautiful and Farrah wanted to believe, to give into her insanity that somehow made her feel whole. But that cough — it was too real to be a figment of her imagination. 

Peeling one emerald eye open, Farrah intoned softly “Died?” Very few ghosts were self aware enough to comprehend their aliveness or their deadness… So if he hadn’t died, was he real? She just had to know, even if her forwardness drove the specter away. With little hesitance and several bounding leaps, the small face had closed the distance between him and made to run right straight through him — but she crashed into him, shoulder to shoulder, the tangibility of his being causing her to crumple her to the earth with a thud. He was real.

This discovery [coupled with the pain of her thwarted, final attempt to shoo the ghost] sparked rage within the tiny woman.  At that moment, she felt things towards her once-husband that she had hoped never to feel for anyone. The words came hot, but they came true. "You didn't die — and you didn't come back." Farrah seethed from her place upon the ground. She wasn't sure if she could control her limbs at that moment. ”This is what you deserve?” she snapped, clipping her teeth together and staring up at the bony, frail man above her. Her once-husband even looked still looked like a ghost, even though the physics of the situation spoke otherwise. Surely he had suffered, but her mind and tongue could not help but lash out. She had wanted him to hear these things for so very long, now. “You left — ” Emotion now rose quickly in her throat — and knowing it would soon overcome her — the fiery shewolf tried to organize her harried thoughts and string them together into words. “You… " she gasped, "You promised me…”  Entirely unable to reckon with these current happenings, crystalline tears pricked at the corners of her eyes and percolated down her delicate. cheeks. “I couldn’t do it…” 

“I couldn’t do it alone.”        

She stared at him like he was a ghost, something she couldn't believe was real and really there. In return he stood there silently to allow her to process it, but what he didn't expect was for her to come shooting toward him and slam into his shoulder. With a wheeze of surprise and pain he stumbled backward from the force of it, losing his balance and slumping down weakly onto his hindquarters. He blinked once in shock and opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by the angry words of his ex wife. While they were true, they stung. She had no idea what he had been through while they were seperated, just like he had no idea everything that had passed for her. "I fell off a cliff and hit my head. I washed up on Wheeling gull isle. Due to the rain I was unable to cross the land barrier back to Teekon immediately." he explained in the calmest tone he could use, his blue eyes flashing between hurt and anger.


"I was there for two weeks. The first week was spent healing, the second was spent trying to decide whether or not to leave you be or come back. I wanted to keep my promise so I was going to return, but I found some berries that I misjudged as safe to eat. I was fine for a while so I crossed the land bridge and started climbing the cliffs above the sea to return but the poison started kicking in.  My muscles spasmed and I vomited profusely, Lost consciousness and fell into the ocean again. When I woke up I was on the shore somewhere far from Teekon." He continued his story in the same Eerily calm tone. Judging by the anger in her voice she would not be forgiving him anyway. He gave a weary sigh and slid his forepaws forward so that he lay upright on the ground. 


"For days I couldn't eat, I was in serious pain. I had vomited out the berries but the poison ran through my system. I found small crustaceans that I ate but they were just barely enough to provide the nutrition needed or me to survive. Once I could walk more than twenty feet without feeling exhausted I began to come back to Teekon. I entered near the old Teaghlaigh territory. The reason it took me weeks to get here was because I returned to some of our old spots. I spent a few days where we first met, I went to where that blasted elk gave me a kick to the head, and I went to where we last saw Sirius" he finished his eyes flashing with grief. This was something that she would have to know but first he would see how she reacted to him now. If she was still angry with him, he would apologize profusely and deliver the two pieces of information he needed to, and then he would move on. It was unlikely that he would live much longer anyway, the poison had weakened his health a lot. A year or so at the most was what he figured he had left by the way he felt.

As much as Olive did not want to, she listened to Dakarai as he spun his tale of woe and misery — she seethed and raged, but she listened — and her tongue sat twitching and virile in her mouth. Though she lay still and pressed up against the earth, energy moved through her veins and gave life to the passions that had laid dormant for months. No longer was she a shell, but something hot and unforgiving! She thrust her gaze up towards him, jade eyes aflame, enjoying the intensity of her emotions and finally have an outlet onto which she poured her emotions; disappointments; frustrations. Finally, the loathing did not fall back upon herself. 

That felt good.

When Dakarai finished, Olive was almost too excited to continue her spiteful repartee. His story was a sad one indeed, but it was not enough to reason with the she-devil. Instead, his happenings only fueled her fire — as if it had all been his choice — and she knew it wasn’t at all his fault, and in her gut she still felt love for the man… but to return, now, with nothing but excuses and stories for her to reckon with? It angered her, yes, but for the first time since their unsettling reunion [but many, many times before that], Olive felt a sharp pang of guilt. Dakarai had returned, but what did she had to show? Their children were not grown, yet all had decided she was not worth their staying. The fae was clearly worthless without him beside her.

Olive huffed and pushed her petite posture from the ground, shaking her pelt to rid herself of the dirt — but also to distract her mind from one second longer. “and you thought you’d just… come back?” she hissed. 

“There’s nothing to come back to.” 

The silvered woman wondered if she should tell him about their children; considered keeping such an embarrassing failure to herself, but she could not — not to Dakarai. He had the strange ability to see straight through to her soul to glimpse the truth that lay underneath. He knew her better than she knew herself. Even if she was truthful, didn’t mean she wasn’t still shaking with anger at his betrayal. “You left your family to rot…” Did it occur to Olive that she, too, might have contributed to his leaving by keeping him locked into her rollercoaster 'will they, won’t they?' scenario? It had been the only reason she could think of, before now — but, at this moment, all the blame fell upon Dakarai’s broken shoulders.

Her frenetic mind flitted back to Dakarai’s wanderings — to all his favorite spots, except by her side. She, too, had visited the Altar of Twilight on more than one occasion, but had never seen him. “It might as well be the last time you saw Aries.” The boy had been gone for so long now. He had only been a pup when he disappeared, and now he was surely a man… if he was still alive. Olive did not like thinking of that. “He left when you did.” No, the coincidence could not be ignored. “Cassiopeia’s been gone…” The star dusted child left soon after her mother’s fated, suicidal bout of depression. Perhaps she had driven her own daughter away with her incapacities… but this, Dakarai did not need to know yet.“... for a long time, too.”

“They’ve all gone...”

Then, with the breaking of her rage, she saw the pain writ upon his gaunt features — the way he held himself so gingerly — the sharp angles of bones in his hips. The pain he wore on his exterior, she felt keenly in her heart. In this, too, they were together.

Olive’s voice was soft, shaky, and cracked at her sadness. “I was alone, baby...” Her eyes shimmered with a fresh bout of tears, but she did not know if these tears were of anger or of sadness anymore. Olive had spoken in the past tense, without meaning to — for her dark knight was here now and everything would be better, wouldn’t it?    

He watched her shake with the rage and simply slid down onto his belly flattening his ears against her angry venemously hissed words. He kept silent until the next words hit him like a slap to the face: There's nothing to come back to. A shaky gasp left his maw as he read the underlying information in her words, seeing the pain and rage that lay in her eyes. This wasn't just about him leaving, something had happened to them when he did. His eyes widened as she continued to accuse him and her words caused a low growl to leave his maw, sharp in tone. It was something he had never dared do to her before but he was not fully to blame here, he was her ex husband not her baby-sitter she should have been able to care for herself and their children in his absence.

"I have been alone since the minute you chose the gods over me. You shoved me away and refused my care and love over the same gods who did this to us. Beings jealous over the love we shared, that chose to destroy it!" he shouted tears streaming down his face as the grief for their children shook him to the core. He stared at her with fire reignited in his eyes but it wasn't anger at her, he could never be truly angry at her. He shakily pushed himself onto his limbs and moved forward his flanks heaving with sobs and sickness "Olive....Please....I didn't mean for this to happen. You broke me. You forced me away so that I couldn't be happy. I was going to come back if all of that hadn't happened." he pleaded with her his deep voice breaking with emotion. "If I had stayed and gotten sick and died, you would have had to face being alone anyway Anthousai...Being alone is something we all are in the end" he murmured as he looked at her. This was a side of her he had never seen and while he hated that they had been pushed to this, he had to admire the fire in her spirit that he saw. As a last attempt to soothe the woman he admittedly would still die for, he rolled onto his back and turned his neck to the side, a submissive and apologetic gesture and one he had never used with anyone before. "Please....I will look for Cassi...I will go look for her just...please forgive me. I doubt Charon and Amekaze will have me back after I simply disappeared....but I can hang around for a while." he begged her openly still holding the uncomfortable position upon the soil.

sorry for the wait!

Dakarai’s emotions grew alongside her own, but that was something Olive found easy to love about the man. He was sensitive, well-spoken and honest to the core in both his meanings and intentions. As the quicksilver fae watched the man break into tears and shout to the heavens, she found her own begin to subside. She watched him, head tilted entreatingly, as he cursed the gods and belabored his brokenness. No other man she ever met was like this — acted in this way — and Olive absolutely just ate it up. If she could inspire such passions in a man, there could be nothing but the truest love behind it. 

“No, we’re not alone,” she debated once the dark knight fells quiet — though his silence was shaky and, Olive assumed, short-lived. “...not anymore.” Her voice was particularly flat and with it, a strange sort of confidence was conveyed. Olive keenly understood the attachment that the salt-and-pepper lovers had to one another; and somehow, though they had only been in each other’s presence for little more than a moment, she knew she would never leave his side again. “I’ve seen what life is like without you...” Clearly, they were not made to live without each other. Dakarai was destined to die if she were not around to bring him back home, so it seemed — but she, very obviously, could not find anything but the deepest depression in his absence. “I didn’t like it,” it was abridged, but honest.

 Olive sighed and crawled to him, gripping the chilly earth with her claws and pulling her small body along its crust. In his vulnerable position, she found comfort — specifically, in the crook between his neck and his collarbone. She placed her maw delicately in his curvature, careful of his tender bones, and breathed deep. That scent… it was intoxicatingly deadly to her “Where ever Cassiopeia and Aries are, they will be fine for a few more days. We need to make you well…” Her words came out nearly as a moan, a hopeful [yet hopeless] sentiment that stung as she spoke it. A few days would not make a difference for their star babies [as far as she knew],  but it could be life or death for Dakarai.

“You cannot pour from an empty cup, after all.”

Olive picked up her visage, only to lay her head and neck across his chest. It felt so eerily familiar, and she very easily fell back into old routines. Dakarai asked as to Charon and Amekaze; whether they would welcome him back into their ranks or not. Though the Moonspear wolves were strangely charitable [she had since known the wolves of the Teekon Wilds to be anything but], but they were in not position to be asking the alpha pair for any favors. “We can talk to them…” she guessed, seeing no reason for them to ever be parted again.

His heart stopped for a few beats as she spoke to him in a calmer tone. His eyes were still ablaze and his breaths came quickly, the force of his emotions having taken a toll on him. He stared at her curiously and remained silent through her softly spoken words and tensed as she crawled to him.When she lay her chin into the crook of his neck he sighed heavily, his eyes falling shut as he leaned his cheeks against her skull. He drew in her scent, savoring the earthy scent of her fur that he had ached for so badly. After a few moments he lifted a foreleg and draped it across her shoulders gently holding her close to him.

"If they do not allow me back in, I will go in search of Cassiopeia and Aries. I will return to you Olive, I do not think I can bear to be without you again." He whispered into her ear. Unable to help himself he placed a single kiss to the shell of her ear. If it were possible he would lay here with her forever until their souls drifted away to become one with the stars, unfortunately that was not how life worked. 

So Moonspear's ranks are full leaving the option to join out. I'll have him attempt a search for the kids but I'll pm you on that further. Sorry for the shitty post.

A firm forearm draped over her withers and Olive felt her body melt into his. She laid heavily against him, giving him the weight of her body, and reveled in the sturdiness of his support. It was then that she realized the power of touch — of his touch. It was almost as if every one of her problems had evaporated, or taken a backseat, or were put on the back burner, or something but few things in the world matters as much as the dark knight, embracing his pale lover. They were bent, but not broken. 

Dakarai, bless his heart, continued to worry about the things that Olive gave no thought to. He mused on Moonspear’s unlikeliness to reaccept him and proposed an alternate plan — one that involved him leaving her side once more. That was not going to happen.  The fae’s pulse quickened at the thought of her impending lonliness, and she knew [at that point] that she would have to voice an unpopular opinion. It was one that she continued to reckon with every night as she laid alone in their den, and still was incredibly painful to admit… but, as far as Olive understood, it was the truth.  

“Baby, no.” she pleaded, pejorative eyes reaching deep into his own. “They didn’t have to leave. It was… both their own decision.” That’s what was so painful about the entire situation —  no one had forced Aries and Cassiopeia from Moonspear’s borders. They had left on their own accord, just like Dakarai had mere weeks before. It just wasn’t safe to assume that they wanted or needed to be found; perhaps this was just how her children grew up and how they decided to fly the coop. If they hadn’t come back by now, they likely weren’t coming back — and there was little the two lovers could do about it.

Olive huffed, her own thoughts creating a very uncomfortable reality. She struggled to maintain faith that she and Dakarai had raised their children well enough to survive on their own, but there was nothing to be done about past misdeeds. “We can make them stay no more than I was able to make you stay. If they want to come back, they will.” Olive regarded Dakarai carefully when she said this, uncertain about how he would handle these truths. The man was hot blooded, after all, and she was not keen to anger him so soon as his return. She turned down her gaze and preened the velvet fur on his chest for a moment.

“We have another chance, my love.” Olive picked up her slender head, as if to signify that her next words were not just hopes and wishes born from a lovelorn heart — she had though about this, too, for some time. “The weather turns colder by the day…” With a sweep of her muzzle, she managed to capture the movement of the autumns winds. “My heat will return. We could… try again.”