Dragoncrest Cliffs claw at my walls, i come when you cry

Having nomi home has done something to him he didn't expect.  The rage that had been building quietly and dangerously inside him, simmering beneath the surface soon to explode had dissipated in an instant, leaving behind an empty space.  Dissatisfied with this, he left his patrol in order to seek @Thuringwethil's company, prickly and crackling with energy.

After lengthy travel, Thuringwethil is like anyone else and desires a place to rest her tired body. She dismisses Ephraim and Vercingetorix for the rest of the evening, feeling comfortable enough in their own domain to not need a constant guard. Bobby goes about his business, likely searching for his siblings to catch up but she does not stick close to him. She misses the rest of her family even if something feels amiss among them, but when she spots her son up ahead she offers a slight smile and swish of her tail.

Something about the way she gently beckons him causes his chest to squeeze.  He can't summon the willpower to move his legs which feel like jelly beneath him.  He bites it back, bit by bit, and forces himself towards her.  Heda, he says first, then more gently, nomi.  He wants to tell her that he missed her, that he never thought she was coming back and now that she's here it's like a dream because he barely remembers her from when he was younger.  He thinks she's changed but he's incapable of seeing that it is him who has grown.  Instead, he blurts, Wildfire left.  Sequoia and Kiwi, too.

Something keeps Tux in his spot instead of approaching and her ears fall back against her head, feeling weight press down on her body. Something is wrong. Thuringwethil inhales a sharp breath and waits, her own feet remaining firmly in place. A front leg buckles when he speaks and she can’t help the need to take a step forward, meeting him when he calls her nomi.

So much has changed in a few short months that she wonders if this is how Wildfire felt when she came home last year, rebuilding, but the quake in his voice sends a tremor down her spine. He calls her Wildfire.

Wildfire left.

Thuringwethil stiffens, tightening her jaw as she process the information. Sequoia she hadn’t seen that long ago. She’d wanted to continue exploring instead of returning with them. Her stare hardens, trying to sort the information but she straightens out her shoulders and dips her head, slightly. Sequoia must have found a quicker way home and told them, for the coincidence is too great.

“Left?”

It is the duty of heda to put Drageda before matters of the self.  He almost does not catch the way she smoothly transitions from her leg buckling beneath the weight of their reunion (for too many had been present at the homecoming for it to be so genuine) into a real step towards him.

And then she hardens.  He steels himself — he knows her confusion and hurt is not directed at him, but he doesn't know if he can stomach to see the look on her face sour their conversation.  He wishes he could rewind back to before he'd said anything.  Left, he says, just yesterday.  He didn't know Sequoia had seen Thuringwethil, otherwise he would be even more angry at her than she already was for leaving.  She told me and Silkie and Kiwi we could come with.  I — his words falter.  I didn't want to.  Silkie stayed too.

I'm glad you're home, nomi.

Left.

Thuringwethil neatly sets aside the sudden rush of plans swarming her party and in its place a small, frozen meteor sits in her center. The cold concentrated in the rock expands and encapsulates her entire body with a heavy, sinking feeling.

“I see,” she says carefully. “Bat? Did she say where they were going?” What will she even do with the answer? They’ve chased after her once before, spent countless hours in search and revenge. Everything had been fine when she’d left as she scours memory after memory since before her last war. She has questions she is sure Tux won’t have the answers to, as much as she wants to press for them.

His quiet voice is met with another step, pressing her nose to his forehead, and taking in a heavy breath. Wildfire is strong on him still and maybe, if she wishes hard enough, every harden feeling sealed inside the frozen meteor will reach its way to her.

“Me too,” she says softly.

He begins to fumble with his words, but nothing even comes out of his mouth other than a sorry, No.  He doesn't think they've gone after Bat — he didn't even know where they had went.  If they were coming back.  Part of them feels like they aren't, but with no way of knowing that...

It dawns upon him then that Thuringwetil had left before Bat had even disappeared.  He observes her for a second, racks his brain.  Bat went missing a long time ago.  Once with Kiwi, but we found them both.. and then she left for real.  He looks down at his paws.  Silkie went missing once, too, and he got hurt.  Tux was the only one who had always stayed and been good.  I dunno, he mumbles as she presses her nose to his forehead.

He pushes past and buries his face in her chest.  He's almost too big to do it now, almost as big as heda herself.  What're we gonna do?  He was big enough and old enough now, their scent trail still fresh.  He had it in his brain that he could go after them and demand that they could come home and prove himself as rauna in the process... but he didn't know what nomi would want.

Thuringwethil pulls back only slightly when Tux mentions that Bat has been missing for a while. If her jaws tighten any harder, her teeth will shatter, and it takes a conscious effort to try and relax. The whirlwind that should be her emotions happens outside her body while the dark pit pulls her to the ground.

When he presses into her chest, she lifts her head slightly and curves around the boy. He’s gotten so big since she’d last seen him but she can still see the sweet child in his face. “I don’t know,” she says after a loaded moment and closes her eyes. Her duty got in the way of her family, something Wildfire signed up for on day one, but she’d been blinded despite all the problems they had over the seasons.

“It’ll be okay,” she adds and sighs. It is not the first time she’s been left with their children but she is certain it will be the last time. “Let’s go find Silkie?”

He wants to say no, wants to keep her here with him and just him for as long as he can manage.  Even if she doesn't know, even if she has no solution to offer, at least she is here and holding him and how he has wanted and wanted and wanted for this as the absence of her stretched to weeks, stretched to months.  

He is stuck somewhere wrestling between his waning need for comfort and his want to submit to his heda.  Once, he had been half boy and half soldier, but the lonely hours of building himself, raising himself, often stifled the boy that was left.

Once you grow up, you can't grow back down again. 

He pulls himself from nomi's chest and by the time he has moved away the fear has been bitten back.  Okay, he says in Trigedasleng (color will be fixed when i'm on desktop), taking a step towards wherever Silkie is hiding today.

thuringwethil doesn’t know what to expect when she finds silkie. does not understand the tension between her young sons. they are home, they remained. they’re loyal. they’re drageda. she should have seen this coming long ago, perhaps, but she does not dwell on it. instead, she lets the cold harden and sink and leaves part of frozen. all she wants is to be with those that mean the most to her and she doesn’t question how easy it is to write off the others, for distance only pulled them further apart—