Broken Antler Fen like a black hole

though the earth has begun to quiet — though praimfaya would much prefer the rumble over the eerie silence that settles in its place — the lapse of prey has her growing worried. the herds have taken flight, no doubt startled by the angry trembles of the earth though she has not felt them here in the sanctuary of roangeda and what small woodland creatures remain have taken shelter roosting high in the treetops or below ground in their shelters. the thought sends an involuntary shiver down her spine. after what has befallen her mother the thought of being surrounded by earth that could so easily give way and crush her is one that brings with it pressing claustrophobia.

a weakness, as linkoln calls it.

praimfaya presses on, glad to see that the fish that inhabit the fen's water sources have not fled ...not that, truth be told, they have many options. it isn't exactly optimal but she hopes it is enough to keep them from starving to death. though she has yet to experience winter for herself yet she has heard that it can be particularly harsh and unforgiving. so can we, she thinks both optimistically and decidedly.

a forlorn glimpse skyward is cast by the worlida as she pauses in her patrol and border marking, noting the thick grey clouds that conceal the normal pastel colors of dawn she looks forward to; and that is when she sees them. the small white things drifting lazily from the sky. having not ever seen snow before: praimfaya is taken by surprise, briefly forgetting she was patrolling and border marking as she studies the sky and the snowfall ( though she does not yet know thats what it is ), momentarily enraptured with unfettered wonder.

Snow served as nothing but a sore recollection for Dacio. It meant the coming of Winter and the promise of hardship. He recalled so vividly the ice storm that robbed him of his mother and so as it came in soft flurries from the sky above, all he could do was exhale in a sorrowful sigh.

Still, he dipped his head and carried on, and his dark ears lifted curiously when he caught sight of the young she-wolf who was to be his ward. She studied the flurry with wide-eyed wonder, reminding Dacio that despite her brave face and maturity, she still carries with her the innocence of a child. Dacio moved in closer, emitting a soft chuff to alert her to his approach, and offered a knowing smile to her before he rose his muzzle to peer up at the clouded grey canvas above.

"It is snow, Wanheda," Dacio began, returning his pastel gaze to the pewter cub who was to be his ward. He was aware that, considering she was a whelp of the most recent season, this could very well be her first experience of what was to come. "Soon it will settle on the ground, and the world around us will freeze. Did your mother teach you of the cold season?"

it is snow, wanheda; the sound of dacio's voice cuts through the moment though it does not ruin it for her. she looks away from the sky with a quick movement of her head, so that her frostbound silver gaze can fall upon her setnes with an expression that is equal mixture of sheepish and embarrassed. sheepish, for she is meant to be patrolling and border marking and embarrassed that she's been caught staring at the snowfall. to claim that it is mesmerizing to her sounds girly and childish even in her head so she does not admit it aloud to him ...but there is a good chance, she knows, that he could likely determine thats what she thinks of it from expression alone.

a bit, she admits. i know that a snow storm is how my mother and father met. the result of such being her ( but she doesn't know that bit about it ) and though she is sure if she'd have asked ingram about winter and what she and roangeda could expect he would be more than willing to tell her but he grieves her mother's death and praimfaya does not want to burden him with her never-ending barge of questions, especially about things that might remind him of her mother. i was told that prey migrates but, she peers wryly towards the wilds outside of roangeda's borders. they've already seemed to have fled. spooked by the angry tremors of the earth, she doesn't doubt.

His gaze is soft upon Praimfaya with her response, that small sliver of insight into Eske's personal life rousing some curiosity but mostly a quiet sorrow. He knew that her widower remained, having followed their daughter to the place she'd hoped to found Roangeda, though Dacio was yet to cross paths with him. That was an encounter he was eager to initiate, but he did not wish to pick at wounds that would still be raw.

"We noticed that too," he carried on, and frowned deeply as he recalled sharing such concers with Opalia on their travels inland. "It is much too soon, but we will get by. Come," he beckoned to her, turning away so that they might carry on with a patrol together.

Truthfully, he worried for the coming cold season. While he'd only faced one in his lifetime, he and his sister's survival relied heavily on Drageda. He was an adult now, better equipped but significantly less prepared. All they could do was push to bolster their numbers, work to bring them together and hope that the world would not crumble around them as its tremors threatened.

"In Drageda, we all denned together in a place called Hougeda," the ashen yearling shared as he trailed the length of his body along a rugged rock face, depositing his scent. "It brought us closer, helped maintain a bond with our kru. How would you feel about creating something similar here?" It is better to curl close to other warm bodies when the frosts arrive than to shiver alone in some lonely hollow.

dacio points out that this is what opalia and him have noticed on their travels and it does not ease the small gnaw of worry in her chest, though she suspects there are areas of the wilds that will suffer worse than others. all she can ( selfishly, perhaps ) hope is that greatbear is one of the regions that have it easier. the fen is self-sustaining well enough and she thinks that not every herd could have fled. there would be stragglers and she hopes that the stragglers are enough ...and worse case scenario there is still the fish. dacio, though, assures her that they will get by. it works to soothe the worst of her concerns; for now she tucks them aside.

at his beckoning, she resumes the patrol she had paused, tucking her moment of wonder away as well with the scratching of her paw against the ground, utilizing the scent glands in her pawpads. he speaks of a communal denning place, offering that it helped to strengthen the bond of kru. praimfaya is attentive but quiet for a beat as she bows her head to investigate a scent trail: a fox's fading to deeper into the fen, before she replies,

i would not be against the idea, she tells him, breaking her contemplative silence at last. we will have to search for a place that will accommodate everyone's wants and needs. but she does not doubt that the fen harbors an ideal communal denning area ...she just hopes that it is not a place entirely underground, in light of her new found claustrophobia she isn't sure she can force herself to seek shelter in a underground den night after night.

She did not respond at once and Dacio, feeling himself trail ahead of the young Wanheda, paused to look over a peppered shoulder to investigate her quiet contemplation. He blinked at her, curious as to what he said that may have stalled her, though his concern was promptly cast aside when she announced that she held no aversion to the idea.

"Everyone can appreciate time alone," he rolled a shoulder as he allowed the necessary moments for Praimfaya to catch up, then carried on. He veered to one side to cock a hind limb and deposit a fresh stream of urine at the base of a scrawny sapling, carrying on the conversation as he did so: "and it's likely that not everyone would use it. I just think it's... good to have the opportunity, sha?" 

Hougeda had been the heartbeat of Drageda's territory. Without their communal densite, he doubted he'd have built such a close relationship with Silkie and Tux. The thought of them was enough to quieten him for a beat, as he wondered solemnly if they missed him as sorely as he missed them. "How are you handling all this change, Praimfaya? You've had a lot to process recently." Dacio asked, a little awkwardly. He knew she was comfortable talking about her mother, but his own reaction to losing a parent so suddenly had differed entirely from hers. Dacio's own experience had forced him to want to shut everyone out, to turn against the world. He remembered the anger and not knowing how to channel it. How was it that this kid could be such an adult, yet Dacio - an adult! - could sometimes be comparable to a child who didn't get his own way?

Surely, he thought, her version of a spoiled brat was in there somewhere, buried beneath layer upon layer of wanting to live up to her late mother's expectations 

absolutely. praimfaya agrees readily: it does sound like a good idea and maybe, she thinks, they wouldn't even need to den underground per se. maybe someday she'd be willing to share her recently acquired fear of mountains and dens with someone other than her father but right now it's too raw a fear ...and it was something she felt she needed to keep as closely guarded as she could.

dacio's next question comes out a bit awkward sounding and praimfaya considers it with a flutter of her ears as she squats to mark the borders before moving a few feet towards a tree trunk where she rubs her shoulder against. how was she handling it? in truth, she was sort of numb to it. part of her believes that blodreina will appear in the confines of the fen at any moment but she also knows from the image of her mother crushed, struggling for breath beneath the weight of the boulder that she was gone. she remembers it every time she nears a mountain or thinks about a den.

she quietly struggles with the guilt she feels despite ingram's reassurances that it wasn't possibly her fault. for his sake, she has dropped it but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel it every now and then; its a little easier if she tells herself its the spirits of the commanders past will, as linkoln has told her. what was that saying he was fond of using in her dreams? the dead are gone and the living are hungry. this was how it was always meant to be just ...a lot sooner than anyone could expect. praimfaya's throat feels like its closing and she takes a small breath as if she could hide the lump of emotion that has lodged there. in other words, as well as she could even if her methods of processing her grief wasn't exactly healthy.

blodreina wouldn't want me to give up on my destiny or on roangeda because i am grieving her. then again, had blodreina ever been anything but utterly fierce and immovable? she would tell me to use my head and not my heart. praimfaya tells dacio, assuming that her mother's death is what he was referring to without coming right out and saying it.