Neverwinter Forest The man who's a dreamer and never takes leave

This forest seemed fine.  He'd take it.  His trip back to Elysium and the discovery that he was alone had opened a door or two.  Now when he thought of Bramblepoint -- which at the time had seemed like such a nice little hideaway -- seemed claustrophobic.  This was better, now.  He'd spent some time wandering around beneath the trees before walking to the edge.

Where the pines thinned, he stood in the shadow of one that's lowest branches drooped near the ground.  Nobody nearby this instant.  He took that moment to pee on a few of the trees that made up the edge.  He was mostly operating on instinct and obvious logical leaps there.  It wasn't like he was ever taken on patrol or anything -- really, all he'd been taught was as a child he was not to cross the borders (which he ignored at least once), so there was a fair amount of luck to the fact that he picked somewhere smart and was doing the right thing to tell people to go away.  Not that a single grumpy yearling was much of a defense -- or really able to do much to defend it.

It was just the idea that it was his that was so comforting.  So he dawdled, sniffing along patches of wet earth from a drizzle earlier in the day.  Other wolves had been through here in recent history, but soon they wouldn't, because it was his.

what ARE timelines anyway -- also mals new profile img/av is gorgeous!

the reality that finding mali is nearly an impossible task had already begun to sink in, taking some of the shine out of their adventure for okeanos. still - he's happy to be with @Ibis, and oh- they still need to go visit her friend, that's a task they can do. after that... maybe they should assess their options. he knows his sister wants to improve her scouting skills; perhaps they could courier messages from packs, like how elysium would send invitations.. or perhaps something else.

he's mulling these ideas over in his head, trying to predict what his sister (who is, he assumes, nearby but not in his line of vision currently) might like, when he picks up on an unfamiliar scent. after months apart, and a childhood not particularly closely spent, he can't recognize mali's scent immediately. still, there's something compelling enough, maybe just the idea of meeting a stranger, that makes okeanos trace it -- and suddenly he's confronted by an unmistakeably recognizable silver dapple coat.

in the split second it takes for him to register that yes, there's no way this isn't mali, who else has a coat like that, panic descends upon him. this part he hadn't planned for -- hell, mali hates him! for a beat he stands there, jaw parted, like a bumbling fool, before his mouth snaps closed with an audible clink. weakly, he calls out: "mali --" but any other words he could say die in his throat. 

well. here goes.

His gaze snapped to the source of the call.  If he hadn't chosen this place to settle, Mal would have probably yielded and walked away, made himself scarce and tried to obliterate the trail.  Neither of them were children any more but Mal's only memories of the other youth weren't particularly positive.  Okeanos had been one of the nagging babies that seemed to never grow up, even if both of them now were at their full size (give or take a few pounds for final maturity).  But this was going to be his home, so what did that leave Mal with?  It was forcing him to confront someone he didn't want to deal with.

So, he stalked forward, confident and not looking like he was wanting to deal with any sorts of jokes.  Okeanos' presence was potentially infringing on Mal's right to exist in freedom, as far as he could tell.  The name had sounded more distasteful now than it used to.  Maybe it was just that bit of distance and his independence -- the clear break that had been allowed to him.  Mal, he corrected.  And I'm not going back, so you've wasted your trip. It's not like there's anything there for me.  Because in Mal's eyes, that was just about the only reason that Okeanos would be here -- he'd obviously been sent to retrieve him, and that was just not gonna happen.  At all.

mali - mal - starts to speak. okeanos lets go of the breath he'd been holding, letting his gaze sweep over the other boy. still the same surly, spotted boy he'd known, but different somehow, leaner, more powerful, maybe. he can't help the way his eyes crinkle in a mix of relief (that he isn't being outright attacked, and, more importantly, that he's found him) and a little amusement (yeah, of course mal would think he was here to drag him back to elysium, huh?). "i'm not here to try to make you come back," he says, taking a step back -- a shy display of deference. "actually, i -- i left too. i should have -- well, i mean, i think you would've been mad if i followed you when you left at first, but i should have. it wasn't, um, it wasn't right," belatedly, he realizes he's babbling, the various speeches he'd prepared in advance to convince mal of his intentions all muddled together. he stops abruptly.

"what i mean is, i left elysium. ibis is with me. i wanted to find you to ... i guess, not apologise, because it's not like i could have done anything to stop what was going on, but to say that i think what happened with you and your sisters was really shitty, and i couldn't... i don't know. stay there and act like i was okay with it." it's hard to put into words -- he loves his mothers and he doesn't want to come off as condemning them, but in a way, he does. it's hard to hold both ideals in his head, the loving warmth they gave him, what was going on outside of his family; he knows they tried with delight's kids, he mainly thinks it's delight's issues, not his moms, but still. family, huh. he suspects that mali - mal is just going to tell him to fuck off anyway,  but he doesn't add any more yet, just licks his lips nervously and watches the other boy for his reaction.

Mal was right.  Maybe with the witches abandoned by every child of their year, they'd realized they'd done wrong.  Or not, that was probably giving them far too much credit, as they'd much rather stick their head in the sand and pretend nothing had happened.  Either way, regardless of how smug that made him feel, he had an attitude more befitting a steel wall.  He was tired of bending to the wills of others, of watching them do nothing.  And now we're all gone.  Some more than others.  Both his sisters were missing, and whether they would ever return looked grimmer as the days passed on.  He was alone out here -- though he didn't realize just how alone he actually was, that to top off his MIA sisters, both his parents weren't just elsewhere, but actually dead.

Maybe it was the fact that Okeanos had said that Mal and his siblings were the ones wronged by the pack that made it so he wasn't just telling the other yearling to piss right off.  But that didn't mean that Mal was ready to drop all his bad memories and suddenly be friends -- the emotional callouses were far too thick to let him just forget. They couldn't keep Brillo safe either. She's missing -- wasn't where I told her to meet me if something happened.  Not a sign.  They weren't children any more, so her being gone felt more permanent in some way, that maybe she had chosen to make herself scarce, or that she was just plain dead.  He would rather believe the former than know the latter.  It was just the fact that he was planning to go back to retrieve her at long last that was the thing that hurt the most.  Like somehow he'd missed a deadline by hours that he hadn't known existed.

and now we're all gone, mali says, and okeanos fights the urge to grimance. will they think that of him? he hadn't exactly told his mothers the truth when he left; he hadn't wanted them to think he was angry or judgemental. but mal looks so content with that answer -- really, the first time something okeanos has said hasn't pissed him off -- that okeanos just lets it go with a thin smile, dropped when brilliance is brought up.

"i'm sorry," he says quietly. brillo and he'd maintained a truce of sorts, but had never really been friends, and he hadn't made enough of an effort to keep track of her. where she left, he couldn't begin to guess. he tries to imagine how he'd feel if the same thing happened with ibis -- if when he'd gotten to the hollow to pick her up, she'd just been gone, with no answers as to where or why. it hurts to think about. "i hope you find her again some day--i mean, i wasn't sure i'd ever find you, and here we are, so.. anything's possible," he finishes lamely, his ears twitching back. before they can dwell on okeanos' inability to be useful in regards to mal's missing sister, he continues, "what are you planning on doing next?"

Why did Okeanos care that Mal still existed?  The whole thing seemed weird.  He squinted just a little, questioning, but said nothing about it.  It's not like Solomon's come back. -- Or my mom.  I thought she had but... Don't think so.  The farther he went in time from that memory, the less sense it made, the less real it seemed.  He was at times a dumb boy and it seemed much more likely that he'd met some kind of doppelganger than accepted that somehow his mother had changed and been ailing.  No, in his eyes he was certainly alone here -- there was nobody he needed to impress, care for, or anything like that.  Just him.  Perhaps after everything that had happened, after months wandering around trying to find a place for himself and his sister to live only to have her just be gone had sort of broken him.  That after all the work he put in, he was done trying.  If they were gone, it was because they wanted to be.

He shrugged, Staying here, I think.  I explored around all over, there's a lot of nothing, and a lot of people who shouldn't be trusted.  So it's better I make my own pack or something.  He'd done his best to bury the memory of the freaky coast wolves, but there was still Ramsay the maybe-monster, the weird guy he met on his way here, the weird chick who made the deer run off, his mother that maybe was actually a  ghost... Was he missing any?  Honestly the only wolf he met that seemed to be honest was the guy he hunted with that one time.

if okeanos had waited one week longer to depart, he could have been the one to deliver the news of ariel's death to mal, that final nail in the coffin (so to speak). but when okeanos had left, ariel had been alive and well and seemed happy. he opens his mouth, thinking to tell mal about his new siblings instead, and how, funnily, their birth ties him and okeanos together, both half-brothers, but thinks better of it.

instead he says, "your own pack? wow," because it seems to him to be an impressive thing to try to do on your own. okeanos, whose natural lack of ambitions were pretty well supported by elysium's emphasis on comunity over hierarchy, can't really conceive of what it'd be like. "d'you want to start it here?" he asks, and there's a hidden question in the edge of his words, a question he isn't sure how to put outloud when this -- whatever it is -- between them is still so fragile and, frankly, possibly entirely conjured from okeanos' end. that mal has not sent him off into the woods does not mean he is somehow in mal's good graces; he knows this. still... still. it's gotta count for something, right, the reduced sting of mal's words. he watches for mal to pick up on it, though he finds himself hoping that despite himself, mal won't: if he wants to ask it, he'll need to earn the right. and in the meantime... he'll just have to be careful, won't he.

But let's be real, Mal would have a hard time seeing any questions besides the obvious unless someone went out of their way to make things suspicious -- or it just involved people conspiring against him in general.  Probably not the case here. Still.  The whole pack thing just came about more because the question seemed to be, "Well, what else would he do?"  All the experiences he'd had weren't particularly positive.  The wolves that he'd met had either been other lones or not really doing anything to entice him into the pack.  He had to do better, not that he particularly knew how.  His education on how a pack should properly be run was pretty lacking.  Elysium wasn't a typical (or necessarily good) example, but at least he was pretty sure he saw the problems with it.  He might be able to fill in some blanks. Yeah, I guess.  I dunno, I didn't want to stay a lot of the other places I saw... Seems fine here.  The places that were open treeless seemed especially unnerving to him, so he'd nixed those off as a permanent residence real quick. Will see how it goes.

still, mal does not lash out against him, and okeanos relaxes by degrees. he almost doesn't know what to do with this mal, who is not exactly, you know, pleasant, but whose prickliness seems more like a character trait than a knife held specifically to okeanos' throat. "okay," he says, a little relieved the implied question goes unanswered. but it does mean he has to be direct, doesnt it. "you'll need members, then, right?" he prompts, "packmates and all of that?" 

he pauses and then decides fuck it. "i - we could be that, if you want. ibis and me, though of course i have to ask ibis, uh, what she wants." it seems hes only capable of two modes: too subtle and entirely unsubtle at all.

Yeah.  Quiet.   It was supposed to be for him and his sister at least.  He honestly didn't have much of a plan now.  Everything was pretty much uncertain and he was just drifting along hoping things would work out.  And it was better than trusting that people weren't crazy.  He was pretty sure a lot of the people out there were monsters of one kind or another.  This was thus safer for him.

Mal shrugged.  The pair of them weren't the wolves who he'd prefer, but it wasn't like he'd tried to find anyone.  Let's be real, he hadn't been involved in any recruiting ever in his life.  He had no idea what it entailed or anything.  It was yet another thing he was just winging.  To a certain point, Okeanos was probably lucky that Mal was now alone in the world -- the apathy and surrender that seemed to periodically cloud him made it so he didn't just tell them to piss off.  I'm not having stuff be like Elysium, if that's what you want.  A lot of the decisions that got made there just seemed... Wrong.  Weird.  It was only by being out on his own that borders had come to mean something as a concept -- thankfully he figured this out by just thinking about it rather than crossing a random territory, but there were a few other things like that which just seemed not right to the youth, though not all of them he could put words to.  Directionless?  Flighty?  Both too pitiful and cruel at the same time?  Something.

he holds his breath until mal says yeah, and even then is hesitant to let it go. maybe that's "yeah but not you, obviously, don't be an idiot"-- its hard to tell. but when mal speaks again he has to fight to hide the doofy smile that threatens to take over his face, though he can't stop the corners of his mouth from twitching upward.

okeanos knows mal has always had hangups about elysium. privately, he likes rather a lot about how his mothers and lily ran things, but to say so now wouldn't help his case. instead he makes a vague noise of acquiescence, ducking his head. "as long as i don't have to be a soldier," he says with what he hopes is an appropriate amount of cheerful self-deprecation, "i wouldn't be any good." (though, truthfully, if mal instructed him to learn to fight... well, shit. he'd try, at least.)

There was that silent voice that agreed and added something about how Okeanos' words were plenty unsurprising.  Yeah, Mal was the bad kid, the one that was willing to do dirty deeds that the other pair of siblings would probably be terrified of.  But that was why everything had been a problem in the first place, wasn't it?  Maybe he'd grown feral in these days where he was ignored, or some excuse like that.  If things had been different...

No point thinking about it too hard.  Did bring up a good point though, and Mal gained a sort of skeptical-curious kind of look.  What kind of stuff do you do?  It wasn't like it had mattered when they were younger, not that Elysium had been keen to give them anything resembling a responsibility.  Okay, maybe it was different for the Favored Ones, but he doubted it.

same energy

what kind of stuff do you do? mal asks, which is, well, entirely fair. okeanos scrunches up his face for a moment -- what he does, mostly, is keep an eye on ibis, but that's not what mal is looking for, probably. "i know a little bit about medicine," he offers instead, "and i want to learn more -- herbs and what they do, all of that." the little bit he knows from olive is already stretched thin, though. he needs to find an appropriate tutor -- maybe that girl ibis told him about, at easthollow? or maybe he can go back to elysium briefly, just to ask olive for more information.. hm. he tucks that idea away for later and adds, "and i'm good at stargazing." realizing after a second that may not be the most functional sell, he hastens to amend, "which -- helps for navigating and that kind of thing," even if really, mostly he knows the stories.

But hey, it wasn't like Mal had some huge list of skills either.  He was probably a little lucky that he'd sort of figured out how to hunt -- thanks, instincts.  Stargazing, huh?  The last time that came up was the weird lady at Elysium.  He couldn't remember her name.  But she was watching so she didn't get hit by falling stars or something like that.  It was just a fleeting memory, barely worth a second or two of thought.

Mal also wasn't sure what exactly a pack needed to be not garbage.  Okay, having people that could hunt and fight seemed pretty obvious, but he wasn't sure if there was stuff beyond that.  Okay.  Yep, he totally knew what he was doing.  And totally knew how to direct a conversation from here.  Well, uh.  Anyway, I was going to do stuff,  read 'wander around aimlessly,'  but you know where to find me I guess.  Just standing around seemed really awkward and he wasn't sure he was up for some extended conversation.  Asking about past history or something didn't interest Mal at all.

he doesn't know if his answer is suitably impressive, though he suspects he could tell mal he's a champion prize fighter and still be met with the same somewhat awkward and careless disdain. at any rate, he seems to have earned his keep for now. when mal signals the end of their conversation he hesitates, months of unspoken questions and apologies suddenly bubbling up under his tongue; after a moment he releases them with a barely audible sigh. no, for now, this has to be fine.

"yeah, sounds good," he says vaguely instead, "i'll go talk to ibis -- and, you know, you can call me if you need me for anything." that's the least of what packmates are for, right? with that, he carefully peels away, leaving space for mal to call after him if he wants (but suspecting he's doing the other boy a favor by being the one to end their stilted conversation before it becomes unbearably awkward.)

It was probably good, mostly because too much more would be, well, too much for Mal.  He needed his space, and to come to an understanding about things on his own.  Okay, just waiting on that he'd be hiding off in the darkness by himself for ages, but at least for now... He needed some space.  Partially to make sure that he wasn't making the wrong decision about them.  To wait, to watch.  Maybe give himself a chance to figure out what words to have prepared if something went wrong.  The only thing he knew for sure was that he wasn't going to bend any more.

Even though right now, he was totally about to slink off and hide.  Great backbone there.  Okay. Uh.  Yeah.  Seeya around then.  And stuff.  Things.  Oh god get him out of here.  He dipped his head, turned, and started trotting away, trying to seem cool about it all.  What was he doing?  Probably should figure that out, huh?