Otter Creek it was alright just to be alive
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All Welcome 
all welcome, tag 4 reference<3<3

it's late when they finally make it past the mountains. okeanos is slowly realizing his imagined scale of the teekons was much, much too small. the journey from bracken sanctuary to elysium as a child had seemed impossibly long, but even that was nothing, because the mountains hid a whole new world away from them, one that seems to go on forever. for the first time since leaving, okeanos feels a little overwhelmed by his quest. he has no idea what direction mali's gone in, no way of tracking that.. well, beyond finding other wolves and asking about it, he supposes.

and there are other wolves. he can smell them, their paths, old and new, though he hasn't seen any yet (besides tristan, and he doesnt wanna think about that). well... no use getting discouraged. "we should rest," he tells @Ibis, coming to stop beside the creek and drink. there's a lot of fish here, which is good for food -- and overhead, the stars are beginning to twinkle. he feels a twinge of regret for not asking his dad about the stars while he visited, but there's nothing he can do about it now. instead he wanders a little bit until he can find a good vantage point and settles, trying to remember what his mom and dad have told him about the little pinpricks of light above.
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She doesn't want to complain within earshot of her brother but her feet are throbbing and sore by the time night settles around them, their first break in what feels like ages makes her sigh wearily, but Ibis slinks alongside her brother and keeps watch while he drinks. She isn't nervous of the area because she is too tired to think about it, yet as her gaze slips across a swatch of ominous black upon the horizon Ibis' spine shivers. She thinks about the cute boy from before - Tristan - and feels warmth spread in abundance across her wind-weathered cheeks; she wonders what he is up to, where he has gone, if he has found what he was looking for - and if he ever thinks of her. 

Then, as she turns towards the water to sip and satiate her own thirst, she catches a glance at herself in the ripples left by Okeanos. His reflection warps and bleeds in to her own; neither face is recognizable at first but she blinks away her sleepiness and focuses on the water's surface as it calms, and observes herself. Ibis knows she isn't a child anymore. A study of her features makes her think of mom; they share a symmetry and structure, but there's a new wild quality wrought across her youthful face. She smiles thinly down at her reflection and then quietly dips down to drink.
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ibis looks tired -- okeanos feels a little bad for pushing them both so hard. he hadn't meant to, but it makes sense that his littler sister can't match his pace so equally. making a mental note to set a gentler pace in the morning, he reaches over and lays his head across her shoulders as she drinks, watching their reflects as well. side by side, broken by the ripples, they do look an awful lot like their parents. it fills him with a funny sort of warmth and unease.

looking up at the sky instead, he says, "d'you remember what dad used to tell us about the stars?"
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Maybe its because she's been more active lately than usual, but she's definitely overworked herself and doesn't anticipate the physical affection of her brother; she tenses as his broad head lodges itself across her shoulders and she feels her spine begin to bristle, not that it'd be noticable to either of them. A deep part of her - this new found wild sensation - tells her to warn him away, but Ibis cannot flash her teeth at Okeanos. She braces against the weight of his wolfish hug, but is silent. Her gaze traces their mingled shape in the water and having something to focus on takes away that immediate knee-jerk defensive feeling.

D'you remember what dad used to tell us about the stars? Okeanos asks, and she tries to shrug her shoulders but -- it'd be better just to speak, even if she'd rather be sleeping. She opens her mouth to respond with a negative, but pauses, thinks. There were a few moments buried deep in her memory of Terance, but Ibis couldn't recall them with enough clarity. It seemed as if Okeanos kept them strong within his own mind while Ibis had let them slip, focusing on the parent that remained present instead of the one that had moved on. I remember... Gelman, and the uh, the fox. Vaguely, but that was all.
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he can't help the laugh that escapes him at gelman, rumbling gently against her shoulders. he'd almost forgotten about his beloved gelman. it'd gotten lost in the move to elysium, hadn't it? pulling off of her, he smiles, and points up above them. "we used to sit outside the den and he'd tell me stories," okeanos explains, "but i don't remember what they were, really. i've gotten olive to tell me some more, though." curiously he looks at her, trying to gauge her interest. he doesn't think of himself normally as very sentimental, but something about being on the road with her, looking for mali, makes him want to revisit their shared childhood. does she feel the same as him?

maybe it's too late tonight for that sort of talk. instead he says, "i could tell you some, if you'd like. unless you just want to go to sleep?"
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As he laughed, she felt the weight of her subtle, confusing bitterness fade away. As he withdrew she felt the physical absence of his affection and wished she could recant the mental admonishment she'd felt, but it was too late. She was tired, maybe a little cranky, and chalked it all up to the long road they'd been travelling. As her brother spoke, Ibis reclined upon her haunches, but soon found herself rounding and curling in to a bundle by the riverside. She wasn't going to let herself go to sleep yet, even if it appeared as though she'd silently decided to camp out.

Once she was settled, her forelimbs outstretched so that she looked a bit more attentive, Ibis watched as Okeanos looked skyward; he had mentioned of a shared experience with Terance, and for a second Ibis felt envy, for she could not remember the same moments or lessons from their father. Tell me, she called to him, please, I don't remember dad doing that. A small smile hid her feelings, and she watched her brother as attentively as she could.
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he smiles at her gently, unaware of the brief bitterness in her thoughts. she looks tired; he thinks maybe he shouldn't have offered to keep her up still, but she encourages him. "i think you were asleep then," okeanos says softly, trying to remember if ibis were there at all with them, or in the den with their mother. shyly, he adds, "i don't remember what dad told me, but i've asked mama olive for some stories." those he can share freely.

he takes a second to look up to the sky, orienting himself to the twinkling stars above. right. "um, so, oh -- you can see gemini," he says, gesturing with his snout to where the constellation glitters. "gemini is the twins constellation - they were both born to a wolf named leda, but had different fathers - one god, one mortal. they grew up inseperable and did everything together, but when they grew up, they got into a fight and the mortal one died. his brother was so distraught he asked his father if they could be immortal together as stars..." he trails off. okeanos doesn't think he's a gifted storyteller, but still, the gemini twins fill him with a sort of sentimental longing. he understands, he thinks, what it's like, to love someone so much you'd rather live forever in the stars than be stuck here, alone without them.
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None of what he told her was familiar, so she must have been asleep at the time. The girl had very few memories of staring up at the stars and try as she might, she couldn't focus enough to bring any pieces of her childhood to the forefront of her mind; she certainly couldn't recall Terance teaching her anything about constellations, but that was alright. She had Okeanos. He seemed to know what he was talking about.

The timbre of his voice was soothing, familiar.

She tried to trace the shapes as he described them. Gemini was a pretty word; the story behind it was intriguing and made her think fondly of the siblings' days and nights spent together, travelling. They were like the constellation -- - a yawn lifted from her chest again, blocking her ears the way that deep breaths sometimes could, so Ibis missed some of the story. But she focused as best she could and said, That sounds nice... What's that one? She nodded, flicking her snout at a random patch of sky and hoping for more stories.
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he smiles at her as she yawns, shifting closer to offer himself as an oversized pillow. it's nice, being like this -- it's home to him, and he missed it. he follows her gesture toward the unruly sky and tries to pick out something he recognizes, but, well: there's a good many stars and not all of them, as far as he knows, mean things. or maybe they do and that's part of the fun, trying to learn all the stories.

running his tongue against his teeth thoughtfully, he says, "not sure, but i can make it something. that's all it is, i think, stories that someone made up once and they stuck." he'd not inherited olive's (or seabreeze, to a lesser extent) stedfast trust in myth and spirituality, but he likes the stories well enough, he can invent something. after a moment he selects one particular star, bright and glittering, and says, "see that one there? that looks like its winking? if you squint, it looks like it's an eye -- a wolf's eye. cerulean's eye," he tries, hoping using part of ibis' name will make her smile, "and cerulean is a big, beautiful wolf, i bet, keeping watch over us. maybe she's looking for someone, so she has to keep watch all night, a long lost lover..." he trails off, leaving space for ibis to add if she wants, or point him somewhere else.
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He was right, as far as she could tell. The stories of the stars - these things that Olive had always subscribed to, put her faith in, coveted - had been mere stories for the pair of them as kids, but that was alright. They could make it up as they went. Maybe one day, if Ibis or Okeanos had kids of their own, they could share their own folktales — but for now Ibis was happy to listen to the warmth in her brother's voice as he concocted something on the spot. He was creative, well-spoken. She could listen to him for hours.

As he included a piece of her in the story Ibis smirked, her eyes shining as they caught the starlight, and when prompted she tried her best to add to the tale: she has to keep watch all night, and there — that cluster, that's the drake; the mighty dragon who guards her, keeps her safe. She loves her dragon very, very much. The girl is watching the stars but her eyelids are heavy, and she cannot sustain the observation of the stars - or the telling of the tale - and nests against Okeanos.

But she tries to stay awake, mumbling a few more pieces. A long lost lover comes to call on her, but -- cue yawn but, mmn, cannot face the... the drake, she's quickly dozing against her dusk-furred pillow, her breath steady and body finally relaxing from the toils of the road.
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brilliant ibis of course understands, identifying the closest cluster of stars as her drake, which brings a giddy smile to his face. where she trails off sleepily he leans over to groom her cheek briefly, nosing against her. his heart is so full it could burst.

"the lover lives on the ground still," he murmurs, filling in the rest, "he didn't win immortality like she did -- but in every reincarnation, he comes looking for her, until he'll finally be worthy to get past the drake." pause. "then they can be reunited in the stars," he adds, wanting the story to have a happy ending, or happier, anyway (still feeling a sting of embarrassment over his behavior toward tristan, after all.) laying his head across ibis's shoulders, finally, he mumbles, "g'night, ibby," and lets his own eyes shut, surrending to his own fatigue.