Sun Mote Copse here comes my baby, here comes my man
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#1
All Welcome 
@Wraen but others welcome as well <3

two weeks since his brother had been killed.

fourteen days for revui's eyes to darken as they sunk back into his skull.

fourteen days for his gut to bloat, his teeth to bare in a deathgrin, for the maggots of the spear to wrestle under his hide.

fourteen days for arcturus' wounds to heal, for his hopes to wither, for his heart to fester.

hydra's snarling face held ever in the burning of his mind, her dark face looming from the black like the flare of a hellish fire.

he resolved himself to avenge his slain brother and topple the tyrant that had struck her kin down. day by day arcturus' grief was forged into vengeful hatred. he felt a foreign energy fuse in his bones, in his blood, in his mind -- it made his limbs restless and his mind wakeful. it kept him on edge.

today would be the last day he took advantage of wraen's hospitality. his wounds were far from closed shut, but he knew this burning energy would not last long. he must strike while the iron of his desperation was still hot-forged, while he was still wholly under the grip of his loose-cannon grief.

hydra, how could she?

how could she have defiled the very image of the mountain by killing her family?

it had damned them all; it had damned him. it had dragged him into a black undertow that he had spent the last two weeks just barely staying above.

today would be the first day of arcturus' new life.
when you come down to take me home
send my soul away
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#2
Wraen had given Arcturus the space he needed. Now and then she found herself lingering in his vicinity, wondering, if she should approach and offer him to talk with her, yet the moment never felt right and she busied herself with other things. She visited Towhee and Meerkat and found great joy in the little ear-chomper, she was pleasantly surprised by Bronco's maturity (watch out, Wraen, in a year's time you might consider him a target worthy of conquest) and looked forward to spending more time with him, she scouted, she checked upon other pack mates and, whenever possible, stole little moments with Maia. 

Therefore it was quite coincidental that she happened to intercept Arcturus, while he was plotting murder in his mind. She sensed that something was very off about him - either the tension or the barely contained anger gave him away - and thought that if this was not the right moment to talk with him, it would never come. "Going somewhere?" she asked him, approaching him in her usual calm and confident manner, ignoring the adrenaline that he reeked off, intruded his personal space, and touched him gently at the base of his ear. Then retreated and looked him in the eyes. 

Took some liberties - PM me, if I need to change anything.
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arcturus' demeanor shifted perceptibly as he came across wraen -- he had hoped before he left, he might find her -- but all the words he had practiced in his mind were swept away by the power of her gentle touch.

he stepped back, ears folding and a contriteness briefly coming to light in his sunny eyes. "wraen," he started, trying to conjure back all of those words he had hashed in his mind over and over. they slipped through his tongue like water in a sieve.

"i have to go." he did not expect she would understand, or even agree -- but arcturus knew in his mind that there would always be a shadow -- shackles -- cast over his back if he did not do what he knew in his heart was right. "it's starchaser -- it's," he fumbled, gesticulating helplessly.

how could he explain the futility of doing nothing, of doing everything -- when in the end it would all turn out the way fate ordained it?

"it's what i have to do."
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send my soul away
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#4
"What are you going to do?" Wraen asked, being no mind-reader. She had a vague idea of, where Arcturus was heading, but she did not understand, what he intended to do. What was there to do anyway? 

"If you plan to meet Hydra... I would rather have you here alive and well, and in one piece than... injured or dead," she tried to guess and felt that she should say something more convincing than that, but did not find the right wods. 

"Or... let me come with you then?" she suggested. "So that I can see to that you do not do anything you would regret later."
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what was there to do? only everything.

arcturus could see it so vividly in his mind -- the spear, and a blackness come to settle over it. a dark shroud, a malaise -- his father and mother's legacy, come to a shrieking ruin..

he had to turn it back.

he had to take it back.

"i am going to dethrone her." he announced through gritted teeth, not caring that to do so might cost him his life. "i have to protect my family." or what is left of it, he thought bitterly.

he had to protect kukutux, dragomir, atlas, osiris, jarilo -- maybe even dirge. dirge. a spearpoint of guilt lanced his chest -- he would likely lose that friendship forever..

but he had to do what was right.

wraen's suggestion elicited the sharp prick of arcturus' ears, followed by a forbidding gaze. "no! you can't." he softened once he met her gaze, realizing he could not tell her anything at all.. she was free to do whatever she wished, only.. he hoped for her own sake, she would not insist. "it will be dangerous -- it is one thing if i get hurt.. but i can't let the same happen to you."
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Arcturus statement did not surprise her so much as the fact that this guy, who was a bit slow to make decisions and from whom one would never expect a thunderstorm, was now going to overthrow Hydra. An Ostrega going against his own kin. He was not joking, his calm determination scared her, because she had not seen this side of his. This was no longer the young boy she teased and played with, considered a little silly and naive. 

"Are you sure that's the wise thing to do?" she asked him finally. "Does your family want to be saved? If... if they thought the same as you did, they would have left earlier, they would have come looking for you," Wraen pointed out, trying to find a good argument, why fighting Hydra would be a good storch arch in fictional world, but not, how politics worked in real life.

She let his last words slip past her ears. Wraen would decide about this herself. "I don't want you to get hurt, Arcturus," Wraen explained and regarded him softly. "And I don't see a way, how your plan is going to end up in you not getting torn in too many pieces for me to pick up and put you back together again," she tried to joke, but it sounded flat and humorless.
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wraen's reservations were justified, but the mountaineer could not see it.

all he could see was revui, and hydra's snarling face. hydra, hydra - how had he not seen the monster for what she was sooner?

he shook his head. "i have to do it." the resolve in his voice was gritty and immovable. he couldn't even spare a smile at her joke; instead he looked upon her long and affectionately, his irises darkened by sorrow. "i'm going."

and then, the ostrega was off -- though he turned back once with a wave of his tail in farewell. "don't follow me."
when you come down to take me home
send my soul away
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So, that's, how we are going to discuss things now? Wraen thought, feeling annoyed by Arcturus stubborness and inability (unwillingness) to see reason in her words. She watched him go with a deep-set frown in her features. While grown up and strong the young Ostrega was such a kid in other ways and, while the senior and adult in her, whose pride was slightly wounded, told her that she should leave him to his own devices and get the necessary number of whacks to learn a lesson, the side in her, who felt responsible for the guy's safety and well-being won. She considered briefly, if she should take any back-up in her rescue mission, but decided that it would cause too much of unnecessary trouble. So half-an-hour or so after Arcturus had left, so did Wraen.