Sun Mote Copse And now my dreams, are nothing like they were meant to be

It took him some time to track his mother down, as she'd been meandering along the border with her lengthy stride carrying her along, and she didn't show any signs of slowing down even when he caught sight of her in the distance. He called out with a bark, and she glanced over her shoulder, her expression somewhat muted, though she did gesture for him to join her. Unimpressed, and feeling a bit insignificant (even Phox greeted him with more affection than Niamh did), he hastened his pace to catch up with her, and strode with sheepish self-consciousness to her side. "Uh, hey," He said, unsure of exactly how she felt, given the fact he was visiting again. "Bet it's nice to be back in the Copse, eh?" He asked.

Truth be told, she'd forgotten about the whole new-moon visit that Meerkat and Bronco had arranged. She'd not spared Bronco much time the last time the two had visited, and she felt a bit bad now that she realized that time had come again. Maybe she'd plot out some time to actually catch up with Meerkat, and see how she was doing- she was such a likeable kid. But she hadn't expected Bronco to want her attention. 

So, when he called out for her, she responded somewhat stiffly, trying to measure how to act with him. He was such a sensitive young man, and even in her peripheral vision she noted how he approached her as though he thought she might shock him with some sort of electric current. He even began their conversation with small talk about the Copse. It was almost as bad as commenting on the weather, though he inferred as much. She nodded briskly, and turned her head to gaze at him for a moment; he'd grown. Filled out. The corners of her mouth twitched downward, but not in disappointment. 

"Mmhmm. It is. We relocated to the Glade when it flooded," She said, filling in information he'd potentially already heard from whoever had greeted him and Meerkat at the borders. She loathed the thought of confessing tot he fact that the pack had lost Alyx. "But that's all sorted out now," She said, with an uptight frostiness that she hoped would discourage him from asking about the drama that had ensued from their relocation. "Got a girlfriend yet?" She asked, putting him on the spot.

He'd heard- and he opened his mouth to ask exactly how Alyx had managed to wander off when he caught the sharpness in his mother's tone. She cut the topic short, stating that everything was fixed now, though he wanted to know more about who it was that Alyx had stayed with when she'd been rescued. The peacekeeper within him wanted to go, find them, and thank them for having taken care of his little sister while she'd been lost- but maybe he'd be better off asking Phox or Towhee about that. Niamh didn't seem too keen on discussing the matter. 

Oh!" He interjected, caught off guard by the complete change in conversation. "Uhm, I, well, I don't-" He said, and stopped, as his charm finally warmed back after having been surprised. "I don't have a girlfriend, I have a few," He gloated, flicking his tail in a confident sway from side to side, trying to add a bit of conviction to his claim. But he couldn't hold up the guise for long. "Nah. But I got a lot of friends. And some of them happen to be pretty," He said.

Niamh snorted and cackled at her son's response, but the grin on her features wasn't wry- finally, her son showed some semblance of having a bit of a backbone. This was reassuring, and she found his cockiness reassuring. It reminded her of the way Colt used to be, so bold and full of himself, but not without softness and kindness, which Bronco illustrated next. It was what she loved about him the most; for all the faults she saw in him, she adored every bit of him that reminded her of Colt. 

She gave him a sidelong glance, but as they stepped into a sunbeam that spilled down through the yellowing leaves, she stopped in her tracks. He continued on for a couple steps, describing his friends as being pretty, and she shook her head. There was another sunbeam just to his left- so she stepped forward and deftly gave him a bit of a nudge with the bridge of her nose, just enough to make him side-step into the light. 

"Oh for grapes' sake, Bronco-" She cried. This was almost as startling as the day she'd realized that Primrose was more of a peach hue than blonde. "Why the fuck are you sparkly?"

He'd noticed that his mother had balked, but hadn't expected her to reach out toward him. Instinctively, he flinched and stumbled to the side, squinting against the sudden beam of light that flittered across his muzzle. Was this was some technique she was using? Blind him in the sunlight and then pin him down? But she didn't. All that met him was a stunned stare- and an interrogation that made him pause, at first, before laughter burst forth from him, releasing the tension he'd just built up. 

"Ahhh, so Meerkat an' I live in a cave, an' it's got that sparkly mica stuff in the walls; the dust from it covers the floor, an' I kind of get covered in it," He explained. It was his mother, after all, who had told him what mica even was, when they'd been on their mother-son trip when he'd been little more than three months old. "You remember, like that cave you showed me?" He asked.

Niamh's ears flicked back when Bronco laughed at her, but any offense she might've felt melted away when he explained why it was that his pelt reflected the sunlight. She reached out to brush her muzzle against her shoulder, and then against her leg- and noticed how the shimmering dust was easily transferred. "Well, better be careful with all your girlfriends," She warned wryly, tilting her foreleg from side to side to show off the shimmer. "This stuff'll be a dead giveaway if you start foolin' around with more'n one of them." She said. The image of two females, bearing traces of shimmering mica dust in their pelt meeting, and recognizing the truth it meant made her smile a bit. Yeah, that'd be funny to see. 

"So. What news?" She asked, gesturing so that they could continue their conversation along the orders.

"Oh!" He exclaimed, again. He hadn't thought about how the shimmery mica dust might transfer from him to other wolves- leaving a traceable link from him to one wolf and the next. "Looks good on you, though," He admitted. He wasn't entirely sure how he looked all shimmery, but there was something really pretty about the shimmer of mica dust on his mother's blonde pelt; it made her look almost golden. 

He moved along with her, though, when she began to walk and he sighed. What news? Lots. "Ok, so," He began, as though to prep her and warn her for he influx of information that was about to pour out of him. "I dunno if you guys've run into any problems here, but up North there's a couple packs that're up to no good. One of them's called the "Saints," and they pretty much go around attacking people, especially lone wolves, an' they send out spies to check out other packs too. They got one named Nyra- tall, pure white fur, yellow eyes- that we know of that they've sent out, but I have a feeling she prolly won't be used as a spy again. We got her to spill the beans on all her plans," He said with a nod. "Then there's this other group of wolves, I think led by someone called....Merrit? Er...Yeah, maybe Merrit. Merrick? Ouf," He felt guilty now- how had he managed to forget what the wolf's name was? "We think they're potentially banding together, though, the two packs. Not sure, and I haven't met any of them, aside from that "Nyra Dyrefang" one, but they're trouble." He said

"And thennn," He continued, "There's a kid who's gone missing from Neverwinter Forest; little fella, prolly same age-ish as Alyx, Prim and Q- an' his name is Asmoses. His Mom and his pack've been looking for him for like a month-ish now, I think," he said. "You seen him?"

Niamh was surprised that there was so much information to take in. Rival packs banding together, and picking on lone wolves? Something dark and seething within Niamh wondered what that lifestyle might be like- to be able to take her ire out on strangers, while having packmates who would back her up....It didn't sound like a bad way to live. Exciting, if nothing else- but not for the wolves of Moonspear or Neverwinter. "What's Hydra's response? Stay on the mountain and wait, or drive a pre-emptive attack to force these "Saints" away?" She asked, curious to know what Hydra was planning, though she already figured she knew the answer. 

He went on to mention Neverwinter- a pack Niamh had never really heard of, or at least didn't remember hearing about- and a missing child. She felt a dagger of pain press heavily against the bars of her ribcage, when she remembered what it'd been like, having lost Alyx- but a moment later, her expression went stark. A missing child? She pictured Rasalas, his sweet, marred face and mismatched eyes. He was quiet, gentle- but she had already grown protective of the young one. Was there a possibility that he was the one who'd gone missing? 

But the name was wrong. So it wasn't him. 

"Asmoses you say?" She asked. She wanted to get the name right. And Neverwinter- a pack that had to be somewhere near Moonspear, for Bronco to have had affairs with them...A place for her to avoid, likely. She shook her head. "No. No one by that name, but I'll keep an eye out," She said softly, distantly.

Of course his mother would want to know what their plans were. And while he didn't figure it was her business to know, he still considered the packs to be allies, and felt that Hydra had never told him not to deliver a warning to the Firebirds. So he shrugged- as he didn't have the information to give her. "Not sure. We're doing a lot of training, an' sent out a couple scouts a while ago to check things out. I...Kinda doubt Hydra wants an open war 'gainst the Saints- oh, an' Ursus, that's the other pack-" He said, adding in the other detail he'd forgotten. At least this time he was fairly certain he'd gotten the name right. "Also kind of...Watching out for each other, in the unclaimed territories. Rumour has it they like to roam around and attack wolves when they're on their own, or somethin'" He said. So many details- it was hard to keep straight. Mal had given him information, Hydra had given him other notes, and Nyra had tossed a couple other names their way...All he knew was that those packs were bad news, and were to be avoided. 

He felt bad when he mentioned the lost child- he could see the strain it put on his mother to hear that another Mom had lost one of her children. From what he'd gleaned from the others, Niamh had not taken Alyx's disappearance well at all, so this news seemed to make her extra intense. But of all the wolves, he figured his mother would be the likeliest to have come across a wandering child; after all, she'd been out searching for Alyx, so the chances were greater that she'd find Asmoses. She was a skilled tracker, and wouldn't have turned away from a needy child; but if she hadn't seen him...He probably hadn't wandered this far South. "Okay. From what I know of him, having met his parents and sister, he's kind of grey, sort of marbled. An' he has two different coloured eyes." He said, offering his mother some identifying points should she spot anyone who matched that description. A kid with those traits would be hard to miss. 

Not wanting to dwell on a topic that obviously made his mother uncomfortable, he switched gears. "I been training a lot, though," He said. "It's a lot harder tryin' to patrol borders on the mountain than it is here, that's for sure," He said. "I even chased a black bear out, an' fought off a grizzly," He said, hoping that something in there would impress Niamh.

Strange. Niamh would have thought that Hydra might have been inclined to choose to make a strike against these two packs- a show of strength, and a sign that the Moonspear wolves were not easy targets. Training her packmates would at least prepare them, though, so perhaps she had other plans in mind for the future, once she whipped a few of her softer packmates, Bronco included, into fighting shape. "Well. If she does decide to make a move- remember she has allies here. No sense beating around the bush and waiting for them to strike when you're unprepared," She said stiffly. But she wasn't about to tell Hydra what to do, nor was she willing to overstep boundaries and assume that Towhee would agree to join forces and battle the rogues in the North without talking to her about it. "I'll speak with Towhee and Phox." She said, simply, as a conclusion. 

She said nothing in response to Bronco when he offered what he must have considered were helpful descriptions of the lost child. Marbled grey fur, odd eyes...Any amount of conviction she'd managed to muster in telling herself that Asmoses wasn't Rasalas faded; but she was quick to justify her earlier response. If Rasalas was Asmoses, it didn't seem like he wanted to be found. And while he matched Bronco's description perfectly, she was more content telling herself that this Asmoses was a different pup altogether. She wondered if she should ask the boy- but decided against it. If he didn't want to be found, then he could stay with them. She could claim ignorance if she was ever challenged because the boy had called himself Rasalas, not Asmoses. They had to be two different kids. 

She was still lost in thought when Bronco began to tell her about his training but she interjected deftly. "Bronco, don't brag. Bragging makes you ugly. And so does lying." Said the pot, calling the kettle black.

He stopped when his mother dismissed his accomplishments, and claimed that he'd been lying. True, he didn't have the scars to show for the fight- given the fact that he'd been smacked, rather than being bitten or scratched. Would it take visible scars in order for her to finally take him seriously? He weighed that idea, wondering if he was even willing to go to whatever lengths that would take, and get himself injured just for his mother to take him seriously. It was a ridiculous notion. He huffed silently and picked up his pace again, tagging along at her side somehat dejectedly. Sourly. 

"Well. Hydra's actually a great mentor," He said. "She's like," What could he say that would best get under his mother's skin? "Super buff, and can run up an' down the mountain without hardly getting out of breath. Same with the other wolves there- like all of her kids end up becoming guardians and hunters. She's got four there that're my age, an' they're all like mega-wolves," He said, oozing admiration. "With any luck, I'll be as fit as them, with her help," He said.

She felt triumphant, having knocked her son down a peg or two- at least that might keep him from telling her silly lies about fighting off bears. If he wanted to lie to her at all, he'd have to be a lot more convincing about it and here- he didn't even try to dispute that he'd been telling the truth. She felt disappointment carve its way to the forefront of her mind. All she wanted was to have childrne that were strong and loyal; why was it that her first two were cowardly liars who ran away from everything?

He began to boast Hydra's skills then, and with such vehemence that she saw through him. That didn't mean that she did not feel the jab of his remarks- but it wasn't enough to ruffle her outwardly. "Well then," She said, and for a moment, she sounded impressed. What stung the most about what he'd said was the fact that Hydra had apparently managed to raise four children over the past year who were faithful and strong. Niamh had failed to guide even one of her own. So she sought to jab Bronco with a barb of her own. "It sounds like you found everything you've always wanted. Good for you." She remarked, before she continued, dispassionately. "I'm sorry you had it so bad, here."

For a moment, he felt that his approach might have worked, and that his mother had fallen prey to his wit. He didn't see it show on her face, but when she soke, it was with a fair tone- at least, at first. Maybe she would finally let up on him now that she realized that Hydra had had more success with last year's litter of children all serving as loyal and humble guardians of the mountain realm. But then she dropped it. 

The guilt. 

Bronco sighed softly, feeling a pinching sensation in his chest as she brazenly- but with the coolness of a spring stream- placed the heavy bough of guilt upon his shoulders. He became frustrated, tired of these games she played just to hit him where it hurt. Well, two could play that game. "When did you get to be so mean? How did Dad ever put up with you?" He asked, with a soft hiss. "An' how does Phox put up with you, for that matter? He deser-" And that's as far as he would get.

The soft silence in the wake of her words informed her that she'd potentially pacified her son, or that she'd stoked his ire. A moment later, he spoke, and it was with an ineffective jab about how mean she was, which caused her to cackle briefly and roll her eyes. Her? Mean? Of course. She'd never intended to coddle him, not when she saw the mean streak that he had in him when he'd been a toddler. And it emerged now- clearly unscathed by a year of training from his mother- to strike at her with the keenness of a viper's fangs. 

He should have known better than to bring the mention of his father's name into their quarrel...And she was shocked, similarly, when he insinuated that she didn't deserve Phox either. She lunged toward him, cutting him off and yelling in his face with her fangs, dripping saliva, only a hair's breaths from his muzzle. "You little sh-" She snapped- realizing only then that Bronco wasn't a 'little shit' any more. No- he was as tall as she was, and carried more weight on him. "You fucking shit, how dare you come here, of all places, and talk about your father like that," She said, and she paused. They had, after all, meandered along the river- and had ended up at the site of Colt's grave. She stared at her son for a moment. 

"You don't belong here. Just go."

While the hot air of his mother's breath blasted him in the face, Bronco remained calm, and didn't flinch. He squinted slightly, to avoid getting spittle in his eyes, but his mother's volley of insults was cut short anyway, when she realized that she was staring at someone who was now her equal in size and strength. He didn't use it- though part of him wondered if he could simply end their dispute if he should manage to defeat her in battle- but as soon as she drew his attention to their surroundings, his courage failed. 

Had she led him here on purpose? The area had grown, had been flooded, and had re-grown- but he recognized the trees, and the shape of the bank nearby. With something akin to dread he realized that they'd arrived at his father's grave just in time for him to bring him up. Bronco choked. With his mother's words, he stared only for a moment at the ground, where he knew his father's remains would lie peacefully, tucked his tail, and left.