Ankyra Sound and that the only real beauty is order and love and light

@Rosalyn <33

he could not shake the heavy weight of depression that had made a home in his bones. he had thought that there would be a way to wear it out of him. he had believed that if he drove himself to the point of breaking, he would cleanse himself of any foul feelings that lingered there. instead, he had only made himself weary. it was a heavy weight to carry the sadness that lived inside of him as well as the absolute exhaustion. he had started to dream of losing himself in the sea....

that was where illidan found himself – on the edge of the earth with his legs dipped in as far as he could stand. the chilling touch of the sea was enough to keep him standing upright. as his hawkish sights stared out across the seemingly endless expanse of ocean, illidan wondered just how far it managed to go. frozen there, the young ghost endured the frigid brush of the wind against his lean frame and the cry of gulls overhead fell on deaf ears.

quick work break to get this bad boy in my threadlog

Though Rosalyn had encountered Raleska a few times since her return, the other two of Caiaphas' children remained somewhat more elusive.  Likely it was her own fault since she was somewhat pinioned the last weeks.  But recent days had left her feeling stronger (lucky, she had reached and passed the end of her season in higher spirits) and so she finally ventured to the northern strand.

When she spotted Illidan, she didn't think much before approaching him.  Normally she might have had some quip about his expression and position on the edge, but her good mood actually made snark seem somewhat unnecessary right now.  Instead she stepped up to the edge a ways down and breathed in, deep.  Nothing quite like the sea, is there? She asked, conversationally.  They hadn't spoken much even before she was taken, had they?

idk what it is about my threads with u but i get so carried away....

the sound of a voice shook him from his thoughts and forced his frame to jump. the young ghost turned his head around to latch it onto the reddish figure of rosalyn. instantly, he felt an overwhelming sense of shock to see her. something in the back of his mind still associated her with the kidnapping and the war. it mattered very little to him that she had been returned. illidan still felt like they had failed her, just like they had failed erzulie. no matter what he said to the others about their attempt at a rescue, he could not shed the weight he felt in his chest regarding her capture.

“i was born here but... i'm not sure i'll ever be used to it,” the young ghost remarked to her in a sullen tone. his gravelly voice seemed to hitch against the back of his throat on the way out. there, his sharp yellow gaze turned toward her. he drew his crown upward just slightly, but even though he was ranked as second in charge, illidan did not feel as though he had the room to put his rank into play.

a heavy sigh escaped from between his dark lips. “how have you been since...”

since all of it. since you were returned to us. the words did not seem as though they could come from him. he left his query hanging without a proper ending, hoping that she would simply fill in the blanks and be able to provide a response. the haggard young thing did not seem as though he was any better than she was. perhaps that was a testament to their endurance. was he even strong enough to experience what life had to offer? the more he trudged on, the less he thought he was capable of.

Wow, and she thought she'd been a mess this past month.  This kid was a downer.  Though, not a kid, she reminded herself as he seemed to straighten slightly.  Technically higher in rank than she, if she cared at all about that sort of thing.  Now, at this moment in her life, she did not.

She was used to it, having been born to it as well, but in the same way you got used to an old friend.  Comfortable but never unappreciative.     She thought for a moment to ask about his father (because yeah she still didn't know that shit wasn't Vlad thanks phas) but he beat her to the question.

Fine, all things considered.  She was moving easier, if not naturally yet, and her leg could hold some weight finally.  Would take a great deal more than that to keep me down for long.  That wasn't quite honest, but it was true enough.  She could be a good deal worse.  She would be if it weren't for her wife.  She looked at Illidan then, intently.  Feel like I should be asking you that.  You seem less fine.

the boy had not been fine for a long while. there was a chance that he had never known what it meant to be, but that was neither here nor there. the young ghost was not capable of talking about his feelings with others, so it wasn't likely that he would change and open his heart to her without a major readjustment of his character. it wasn't that he distrusted the members of his mother's pack – his pack – but that he did not feel as though he had room to speak about his own issues. why, when there were so many things plaguing everyone else?

“i'm just tired,” he told her in half-truth. the sharp glint of his gaze latched to her face for a moment and he breathed a soft sigh before attempting to form a ghostly smile on his dark lips. before she could follow up with anything else, he turned his attention toward the blackpine and motioned with his muzzle for her to join him. “you hungry?”

WHY AM I AWAKE

Mmm.  She didn't buy his bullshit, but she also wasn't about to pry.  She cared as far as to ask and no farther; if he didn't feel it was worth mentioning then she probably didn't want to hear it.  Most of them were made of the same stuff anyway; she didn't like spilling her feelings either.

I could eat.  May even be able to help snag something, so long as it's slow.  She huffed a laugh.  Had to pull your sister back from a Drageda wolf a while back, and she wasn't exactly thrilled about it.  She glanced over searchingly, the comment not without purpose.  She wanted a read on his feelings.  Were all the youth intent on conflict, or was he like the elder seemed to be and content to let things lie?

/puts you in bed

she agreed to eat something, and so he nodded his head softly and motioned in their intended direction; the blackpine. the dark woods always seemed to house some of the best prey in the pack. as much as his mother wished him to become a good man of the sea, he was not altogether good at catching prey from the water. he was much keener to stretch his limbs beneath the boughs of the looming pine trees.
 
when he caught what rosalyn had said about his sister, the young ghost seemed to transform. his attention snapped to her sharply, ears pricked. the glint in his yellow gaze was intense, as was the clenching of his jaw. only the slightest narrowing of his brows could have been noted. “what do you mean? what was she doing?” he asked her in a tone that was a bit more demanding than it should have been. the very thought of raleska getting taken by one of those fiends was enough to boil his blood.

Rosalyn followed as he led the way.  The choice of forest wasn't odd to her as she often went there for a change of pace in food - seafood, while great, tended to get old after a time, and sometimes red meat sounded too good to resist.

She noticed the change and smiled - so there was something he cared about - but tried to tone it down.  She tried to jump a Drageda wolf out of borders.  I stopped her, told her we didn't want war, but can't say I don't regret it a bit.  She didn't regret it fully, but remembering the way the woman had just stood there yelling made Rosalyn's neck prickle.  After everything her pack had done to her, to have the audacity..... anyway.

Unless some of us do want it?  She knew where she and Erzulie stood, and she thought she knew where Caiaphas did.  The rest were loose cannons in the hold, and she wondered if any were preparing to go off.

there wasn’t a single moment that he wasn’t intently tuned into what she had to say about his sister. the burning yellow of his gaze bore into her like a wildfire that had grown wildly out of control. if it weren’t for the dismal expression on his face, he might have appeared frightening. instead, when she had concluded her recounting of raleska’s feat, illidan lowered his head and breathed a heavy sigh of relief that she was alright. he wondered what she could have been thinking doing something like that alone… until he realized that he had come close to doing it himself.
 
the subject of war was passed so casually from the woman’s mouth that he thought he’d misheard her. no, he had not, but he was still surprised by the quiet wondering that she had left to hang in the air. how was he supposed to confess that he wanted war against them just as badly as the next guy? how was he supposed to confide in her about the pent-up rage he felt toward his brother. “yes, some do,” he confirmed in a solemn voice, unwilling to speak any further on the subject.
 
“thank you… for tending to my sister.”

It was hard to believe that Raleska and Illidan had both come from the same place, and that that common place was Caiaphas.  She found his solemnity a little unnerving; generally the wolves she surrounded herself with were an expressive lot, and with that sort it was easy to see there was nothing to hide.  Wolves like Illidan had depths, and that led to secrets.  Rosalyn wasn't an overly intuitive wolf - and she didn't completely trust what she couldn't read.

But that was for herself, not to bother him with.  She did find his phrasing funny, and laughed.  Tending?  Not even a little.  Stopping, yes.  She was the one who helped me back here, after.  She let a little fondness enter her tone.  She's a good one.  You don't have to worry.  Besides, by the time Rosalyn was done with her, he'd have a right pirate for a sister.

She wasn't exactly satisfied with his answer to her previous question, but didn't want to press too hard because, as before, hard to read.  So she simply gave a little shrug.  And as far as war goes, well... count me in the ones hoping we never see it.  And the ones who might not make it to the ranks if it happened, depending on what was to be gained vs what was to be lost.

“heh… i do anyway,” the young ghost admitted in a quiet tone. she told him that he didn’t need to worry about raleska, but he did not trust the outside well enough to adopt this mindset. illidan could only imagine the kinds of terrors that the drageda wolves would inflict on his sibling if they were given the chance. in truth, there was a portion of him that actually believed they wouldn’t harm her. the alternative was something that seemed to bother him more. he imagined that they could very well turn her against her family as well, and that was the worst thought of all.
 
when she admitted that she was one who favored the pacifist life in this scenario, illidan looked to her with some surprise on his face. the knitting of his brows was enough to see that the comment had perplexed him. “don’t you want to… punish them for what they did to you?” the dark-hooded ghost asked her directly. it was a moment in which he imagined the question was probably too much, but he could not stop himself from asking it anyway.

As he spoke, she was reminded a bit of Smokestep.  He too had shared a bond of siblings that the red woman couldn't comprehend - there'd never been another in her life who had held that place.  Perhaps her closest approximation was Erzulie, but it was different.  She did not worry after her wife regularly, or feel the need to watch over her.

She snorted a laugh at his second question.  Of course.  But anger makes you stupid, and I haven't lived this long by being stupid.  Besides that,  every minute I spend thinking about them is a minute they spend winning.  She glanced at the cliffs and her lip curled.  I don't gain anything, and they aren't worth my time.  There's better things to want than their blood.

She had enemies all over this goddamn map and if she swore vengeance on all of them, she'd never get any sleep.  Better to forget them and move on, find happiness and allow them to live or die as they would.  Most of them she doubted would make it as long as she - they didn't hold the same views, after all.  Few did, she found.

illidan wasn’t certain that he would ever understand the need to verbally overcome something. he had picked up on a similar pattern of speech that his packmates shared. they spoke of how they were better than the drageda bunch – how even thinking of the cliff wolves was like letting them win. if that were the case, rusalka would have fallen long before. illidan spent more than enough time festering over their neighbors. he knew that it was a means of overcoming what had happened. he had no place to argue with the woman who had bene tortured by the hand of their enemy.
 
“i suppose you could be right,” he ventured quietly. his dark head bobbed forward once before he fixed his hawkish gaze on the woman and squinted thoughtfully. “you could also be wrong.” as though he was attempting to save himself the lashing he might receive for having been so bold, illidan flashed a toothy smile at her and offered a soft chuckle.
 
“either way, i should not want to risk the wellbeing of rusalka to find out…”
 
not entirely true, but enough honesty that he could pass it off as being genuine. there were some that he would not have cared to risk losing. it was a wicked thought, but he had no allegiance to them. it was the few that he had actually built a relationship with that mattered. without ever having spoken about it, illidan had adopted a similar mindset as his father had when it came to matters of war. it was going to take place whether they wanted it to, or not. illidan only wanted to be prepared for the worst.

She wasn't opposed to being questioned, even if she knew he was wrong in thinking the same of her.  It was absolutely correct that Drageda was not worth their attention, and that giving it only flattered them.

Her opinion fell a bit of him with the answer either way.  He was obviously a wolf with few strong convictions of his own, and diplomats who spoke like that were hard wolves for her to trust.  It gave her no clue where he personally stood.

But she returned his smile, if a little smaller, and shrugged.  I don't think so.  But I am not going to lie and say I've never been wrong before.  I just hope that everyone has thought long and hard about what war would really gain us.  Didn't seem like a whole lot compared to what they might lose.

it was difficult for him to stand with his own beliefs while still listening to the strong wishes of those around him. if he disagreed, illidan had realized that it was challenging for him to directly state so. he needed to be careful with how he presented himself. it was all at the risk of allowing his emotions to overtake him. he knew that if he lost his cool, there was nothing that would stop his honest reactions from being set free. he had buried himself more than enough times to realize when it was happening. he simply hadn’t learned how to completely reign it in.
 
“i don’t know many people who would willingly risk their lives without thinking long and hard about it,” illidan could only think to answer her remark with this. his tone was solemn, and his gaze was resting on the stretch of ocean that seemed to disappear in some mixture of sea and sky. “but, yes. i too hope that everyone had thought long and hard about what they believe is the correct course of action.”

More half answers, with no real conviction.  She thought perhaps he disagreed, but then he would walk it back, an able diplomat.  His manners would serve him well with others, and on some level Rosalyn knew this.  But it was when the tricks were turned on her that she took issue, because she did not like to feel as if another was playing her false.  Whether it was actually true or not didn't matter.

We'll see, was the only response, and it came tersely.  Then she rose to her feet (assuming she sat somewhere along the conversation's route) and slowly began to depart.  If there was anything else he wished to discuss he could catch her, but she didn't bother with a farewell.  It wasn't as if either of them were leaving this place.

figure we can fade and have another up to date one eventually!

well, that was awkward. illidan did not respond to her curt words. instead, he shrugged his shoulders and watched as she trailed away from him. he had a feeling that they saw many things differently, but he did not know her well enough to speak any further on that. instead, he was more interested in how erzulie had found love in someone like rosalyn.
 
after a few moments of thought, he scolded himself for having wondered such a thing. it was not for him to understand. as long as they found happiness in each other, he supposed, that was all that would matter. as he turned away from where she had left him, he trailed back toward the blackpine at a comfortable pace. illidan wondered faintly what it was that caused people to love one another.