Arrow Lake meant to be a mother

@Stigmata. Set after this. Babies referenced but not obligated to post (only if you want to <3)

Her tithely quest with Liri had, in all manners, seemed to have gone over well. The moment she was freed of those daylight bonds which kept her suspended in the deepening springtide, Aurëwen did as she was promised of both magisters — relay what she knew of Nauthiz, and to tell Stigmata of Liri’s request. She feathered on through the gloaming and into the dawning, until when the presiding and falls thrummed through her winter bones once more.

She wanted to sculpt herself into those voracious, insatiable, endless falls — and realized it was the first time she wished to wade through water — willingly, at that. Rattle her mind’s wanderings and worries so they’d take flight right from her head; as it was, though, she knew better than to take personal endeavors at this point. Aurëwen was a mother, first and always. And being the mother that she was  ( she hoped she was a good one )  Aure wasn’t quite inclined to take to roaming for some time.

The plummety little ache arrived and gnarled within her belly even as she arrived to her thicket, thanking whoever’d fed and seen to them in her time away. Mother’s breath and mother’s milk-and-meat were dealt readily to her restless children, and Aure hadn’t addressed the so, so painfully poignant absence left in their wakes. But, there had to have been reason for it, and... she’d left it at that — lest she become lost within the labyrinth of her mind and heart once more.

Whenever thoughts of how ill and unresolved things had been left between them, Aurëwen cradled her children just a bit more closer. Whenever that incessant ache began to tug tug tug in her breast, she lingered just a little bit longer. When she began to worry, she instead kissed and lullabied to her brood, a bit more tender. He would return, in one manner or another, and so she’d left her musings at that, too.

Heavens.

Rather than let this fidgeting of her taut heart remain so, she eventually parted from the thicket in favor of the spring air once more. Keeping a diligent yet allowing eye on Dragomir and Isilmë — should they make due with the morning, too — Aurëwen sent up a wispy beckon for Stigmata. Put her meager woes aside for the favor, too, of the information that’d be more pressing for the General.

toting with him the freshly dispatched carcass of a hare originally intended for takiyok, the ironclad general found himself altering his morning routine in favor of tending to the soft summons of aurëwen, who had news of the task he'd sent her on. because he tried very hard not to disturb the starlit mother and trusted that the father would handle whatever it was his family needed, stigmata had been operating under the assumption that she remained in her densite as often as takiyok did hers. he had no reason to assume otherwise.

he was not aware of her frequent forays out of the territory, or even that she had been hurt, and would not have sent her to the vale if he had known. he thought he'd been doing everyone a favor - giving her time to be free and social, as he knew her to be, and sending a kindly ambassador to lower the vale's guard - but it had never once occurred to him that she might've been spending too much time gone already. what he had noticed was the fading of vercingetorix's presence on their borders - and he burned with his own observations as he approached aurëwen now.

he dropped the rabbit between them and greeted her with a friendly sniff; noting on her scent that she had recently been outside of diaspora's claim. "i see you have made short work of your task, my lady," the wolf smiled slightly, reclining back neatly onto his haunches, and nudging the dead treat towards her. "for your troubles."

It wasn’t long that she had to wait for the basilisk to slither his way towards her herald; presiding over her children, though, she wouldn’t have minded waiting an eon for his arrival. She supposed that Stigmata had had his own errands to attend to in the past month; and though, in the past, dwindling two of her own, the silver would cease all this fading and forthcoming of her own presence.

If a member needed help with recruitment or some patrol, then, yes, she would aid them. But she needed to be here with her children and would need to curb this adamance for wanderlust in their favor — at least in this next previous month. So, she penned this decision down, marked it, and moved from it with a blink.

A blink that had her peering up into the pewter face of the General; would that she wished it were deeper, stygian, her own façade might have softened. But now was not the time for such moments  ( would there ever be again? )  yet Aurëwen gave a wry curl of scarred lips all the same. It was good, in a hesitant sense, to know that the past moon hadn’t worn at her alone.

”A task such as ze one you had me tend to had all ze more reason to make short work of,” Aure mused airily, an inscrutable turn at what may have been praise. She’d only done what was meant of her to do; seeing after her work as she saw to her children. Nothing more to it, of course, and her emotions on this matter... no, the many was more at stake than the few. 

At his offering of rabbit, though, she gave a start from the old ache in her throat from a drudged up... happening. Pawing it nearer, though, with every bit of graciousness she could muster, the silver instead proclaimed, ”There seems to be no strife at Nauthiz, ser. However, ze matriarch, Liri, has proposed a congregation.” Winter-thin claws tugged absently at rabbit-soft hide. ”She would rather parley with Diaspora, than wish for conflict.”

"of course she would," the warhound snorted, unable or unwilling to keep the derision from his voice. regardless of how she or anyone else felt about his claim, and his ability to hold it, stigmata had no such reservations. his only problem was disloyalty. which included having no faith in one's leader. he looked distantly towards the vale, and sighed: "she will know diaspora soon enough."

with a flick of his tail, stigmata's muzzle drifted back down so that he might watch the seraph-twin pluck daintily at her reward. he blinked slowly, once or twice, and then assumed a very steely expression. "could you determine how many were in her stead?"

Brows quirked in a rise at the iron-clad’s quip, and the dramatics, but kept quiet until Stigmata turned his regards to her once more. She met his eyes just as evenly as when they’d first met, one silver eyebrow crescenting higher than the other at his appraisal of her aversion to rabbit.  ( A story for another time, maybe. )

”I could,” came the absent trill, then a prolonged pause, and a start of mock-surprise, a bit of impish gleam, ”Would you like to know? Well...” Aurëwen looked out to her children, gaze ever-soft. ”Aside from Liri, it seems there are five others of her supposed Nauthiz. Less, perhaps, even though the scents seem sturdy enough.”

The optio wouldn’t give her express opinion unless asked, but she turned to Stigmata all the same, ”There is a likelihood that Liri intends to make ze Vale a peacekeeper’s place; as Elysium is, I think. Usually, I admire such aspirations, but...” Eyes listed to the rabbit, remembering Eastwood’s words, ”But, if I were Liri, I would use ze Vale to my advantage. I am no, ah, military-lady, and yet even I know that it is not becoming to become comfortable for too long.”

”She made it seem as if they were thriving. And to scent so little...” Eventually, a shiver drew her from her reverie, and she hesitantly set to nibbling at the hare Stigmata’d gifted to her, patient when it came for another to retaliate with their own thoughts.

as the winterwhite twin continued to meet his eye, stigmata reacted subtly, and with intense silence. he prepared to reprimand her, but found the slight momentarily forgotten as her pale gaze incidentally withdrew and she at once began to expound on what she knew on the activity of liri's wolves.

the hellhound looked away, briefly encased in his own thoughts, though his attention settled upon aurëwen once more as she divulged her own introspection on the matter. "your advantage?" he asked, pressing for clarification. "you would act differently in her position?"

Ears flurried forward at Stigmata’s insistence, and the silver studied him for a moment beneath a scarred brow, before drawing back up into all her earth-tethered petiteness and readied a reply. ”Not so differently from a presider who knows how to dole out their sentinels, I suppose,” Aure hummed, laving at the corners of scarred lips. ”There seemed to be no sentries posted along ze ridges, nor ze foothills leading down into ze Vale itself. I’d have thought she would have met my encounter with guards trailing at her hocks, but...”

’But there were no such procedures,’ her narrow shrug said. ”There should have been wardens posted along ze high ground. A much more favorable vantage point, and yet, so easily seen by those who would prey on them as well. It is only common... common decree, if you will.” Most of what she bumbled about was drudged from the more earlier memories of her life; by what she’d been taught and told. It all seemed eons ago, now.

Eager to get the focus deviated from her — always tending to fidget under particular attentions — Aurëwen knelt to the rabbit again, and eventually asked of him, ”Is there anything else I may do for you? Even domestic,” a wry inking of her voice. But she would be as available as could be, lest she needed to head out once more.

Whether there were elusive orders or not to what she would or wouldn’t do just yet, Aure eventually excused herself (politely, of course), feeling the time had come to turn her focus to her children for the remainder of today.