Silver Creek here we stand

@Lio

In silence he moves deliberately to nowhere, the sky bare and violent like teeth just pre-veneer, naked tungsten sparking in a bulb, the brightest day in recent memory even in the shade of the woods. In Silver Creek, as the end draws upon him, the trees seem to want to talk. 

An adolescent hunching to his shoulders, his neck coltish and corded, this morning's grooming leaving his dark hair slicked close to his skull, the light tracing a perfect cuticle curve.

As he walks he imagines a hydraulic hiss escaping him. There was Déorwine smell on the wind. What it smelled like was old money and other leftovers from a bygone era evoking images of passenger pigeons and Victorian theatres that were quaintly lovely but were lightyears away from standard fire-safety regulation.

His nostrils flare. The search was over.

// Thank you for getting this up ^^

The sun is bright and shining even through the trees as Lio winds their way toward the silver river. They know they're close to another pack's territory now, but they haven't crossed any borders and certainly aren't going to cause trouble. In truth, they just... like it, here. It's just as pretty as the frozen creeks back home, though the water there was often standing, lacking the lustre and movement of the liquid silver in these woods. 

The yearling settles by the edge of the water once more, watching the fish and water move along. Perhaps they'll never know where they're going, and perhaps Lio won't either. But they move with purpose nonetheless.

Lio rested their head upon their paws, rose eyes flicking up from the peaceful stream to seek out the sound of footfalls across it. Another wolf - long, spindly, smooth; the opposite of Lio in many ways - walked parallel to the smudged yearling.

It was unlikely that their white fur would go unspotted in the bright light - truly, they stuck out like a beacon - and Lio could see no reason not to greet their counterpart. The distance between them was so short, after all.

"Hello," they called, rising to their feet and angling ears toward the dark form. "Are you one of them? The pack nearby." Lio hoped they weren't intruding too terribly by giving in to the fascination that they had of this river. "I do not want to intrude. This place is just very beautiful and I wanted to... to stay, for a bit longer."

Halfway between him and the creek, a stranger calls out. Wymond looks up and the face he sees immediately breaks him out in a cold sweat. An alien and mathematical look -- spotted, strange vectors that run across his cheeks and nose, symmetry as an afterthought. His face is very white and very still as if molded out of paraffin. 

Cursed, he thinks, far beyond saving. When he says Hello, back, what he's really thinking is you are damned, you are damned. An intense pity washes over him. This is only a fraction of martyrdom but it is martyrdom nonetheless. 

No, but I will be. Just as you are not intruding, but you will be.

No threat in his voice. Axiomatic, just as two and two equal four. Inflectionless, reptant. In times of distress he thinks, I am nothing more than an unthinkable idea. A noumena. Not even flesh and blood. The High Elk has blessed me with this and this only.

They are my family. Remember their smell.

The boy was scarred - his poor face melted down partly and his reddened eye partially obscured through the tissue. It must have been painful, Lio thought as they regarded him. But he was tall, like their family back home. Slender and elegant, in a way that Lio had never been. Would never be. 

Not intruding. Lio understood that much. They had crossed no borders, taken no food. Had not even fished from the creek they so enjoyed. 

"Your family?" they questioned, offering the other yearling a small smile. "Have you been looking for them?" It must be nice, if he'd been searching for them. Perhaps that was what the first part of his statement had meant - no, but I will be.

The smudged youth angled their ears forward a bit and took a few steps into the shallow water of the creek, approaching him politely. "Our eyes," they began, tail swishing back and forth in slow semicircles behind them. "They are very similar in color." Red for him, pink for Lio. Much closer than most eye colors came to their own. Even within their own family they had not seen reddish eyes - Lio had been told that it likely came from their father's side.

Had he been looking for his family? Ravinger, Aethelstan, Rohesia, Eadwulf. They're all faces in a rearview mirror. There are three stages to memory: encoding, storage, retrieval. Wymond is a poorly written program caught in a loop that never quite reaches the end.

I miss them, he says, but in truth, he has trouble recalling what they look like. A dull seismic pain expands in his temples, his eyes are running, his face's a holocaust. 

Through the tears he can't see the stranger's face too well, a black-and-white smudge shifting like bokeh on a camera lens, like moiré, dizzying, his stomach wrenching close to vertigo. Eyes, he chokes out, anchoring himself as the last of the pain passes by. He watches its stern disappear. 

Steadier, now, I've never seen markings like yours. It's like they're moving. 

I see -- a rabbitskin. A butterfly. A skull. Or I'm just crazy. He smiles for the first time, the sunlight passing by against his teeth's low isotonic glimmer against his dark face.

The boy is crying now, and Lio is immediately panicked. Of course, they do not register that the tears are from physical pain and not emotional. All that would make sense to them is that the other teen is crying because he misses his family. And truly, they can relate. 

They splash, splash, splash across the creek, coming to a halt on the other side, fully intent on consoling the other yearling. 

"I miss my family too. But yours is close! There's no need to cry," they attempted to reassure, eyes round with worry and head tilted slightly to the side. Concern settled deep in their chest.

It wasn't long before the tears dried, and the tall wolf seemed to collect himself. Eyes. But that was not what he focused on. 

Lio's markings had been most of what set them apart from what their family usually looked like, but they'd never been... focused on. It was unimportant, after all, what they looked like. But from time to time, they had tried to make sense of the mottling across the youth's face. 

A smile stretched across Lio's own maw. "You are not crazy," they admonished lightly, stepping back just a bit from where they were sure they'd invaded the other's space in their attempt to comfort. "I believe I got them from my father. I've been told that they look like many different shapes." Flowers, butterflies, skulls. Lio could only see spots. 

"My name is Lio," they offered, remembering that that was typically something that people would offer up in conversation. They needed something to call one another, at least in their heads.

Just realised I've been referring to Lio with he/him pronouns. Sorry about that, I'm just illiterate lol

He waves her off with one, two, three flaps of the hand. No, I just— I just had a headache. Happens sometimes. In response his temples constrict with the promise of future pain. He hasn’t unclenched his jaws ever since he was born and his master muscles are killing him for it. 

I’m okay now. Thank you. A small smile, dimpled.

You are not crazy. The smile turns wry. He can feel it on his face in the twelve muscles it takes to smile. They torque along the pitch, yaw, roll. Every axis has an incredible capacity for nuance, so what a tragicomedy it is that Lio cannot read them, and that Wymond cannot use them.

She mentions a father. He cannot extricate that word from a bitter taste in his mouth. Blame the synapse-neuron trees for that. You could go down the list of sons made disillusioned by their questionable fathers ad nauseam. You would die from hypoxia. He considers standing up and going I got nothing from Dad except these shitty headaches and two bastard siblings. Again, he tries to bring up their faces. Rohesia and Eadwulf. But they are eroded and featureless by wind, abraded down by the Coriolis grindstone. 

Wymond Déorwine, he replies. My family leads a pack called Kingslend. We lost our home in a fire. He wondered if it was still burning or if it had consumed all that it could before dying of suicide by gluttony. He could still feel the soot in his lungs. But they're here, now.

No it's fine! Lio is pretty in the middle in terms of masculine or feminine, so they can be viewed as either ^^

A headache? That would... make more sense. Carroch wolves were not criers, back home, and so Lio was not experienced in how to deal with emotional pain. They tried! They really did. And they would get better, perhaps, over time. But their register for emotion was... limited, to say the least.

"I'm... sorry that your head hurts." That seemed the right thing to say, though they wished that they could aid further. Spotted brows drew up ever so slightly in concern. Lio was not as good at emoting as this boy, they noticed. Their expressions far less stretched and molded. 

It's not their fault, truly. It was just that they had had so little to go off of, growing up. Their family had designated them a therapist, for their... interest, in emotions. Pitiful that they could hardly emote, themselves. Hardly read the emotions on others' faces.

Wymond Deorwine. A much more fanciful name than simply Lio, though the youth was determined to recall every foreign syllable. Names were important, after all. "It is nice to met you, Wymond Deorwine," they tell him, offering a slight quirk of their maw in a smile. But really their emotion registered in the eyes - it was truly a pleasure.

"I have never seen a fire," they said after, tone taking on a confused note. "It's... my family described it to me, before. That it was a light that eats everything in its path. But I've not seen it." Perhaps that was what happened to his face?

Lio seems to be as uncomfortable with words as he is and he indulges himself in a little bit of schadenfreude. 

Wymond is the type of person to shirk off a stranger as soon as possible without a twinge of guilt. He'll laugh with the talk-show audience and point fingers like the rest of them as the key grip and his best boy zoom in with their LED's. 

He mirrors their smile which is small and controlled like an oyster spoon. Call me Wy. When he's not thinking about the dull ache in his head he's thinking about why the High Elk is doing this to him. He lets his skin prune up and pucker lying in the caustic pool of frustration followed by guilt followed by confusion. Let's pray that you don't, he says, while thinking, it's probably better off if you do.

You'd be cleaner if you do.

Are you planning on staying around here? My family'll want to know your business if you do.

Wy. What a fun name. Shortened from Wymond, Lio assumed, and immediately wanted one of their own. "Call me... Io," they respond, tail swishing once or twice behind them. 

Praying was a slightly foreign concept as well, but Lio understood it decently well. Pray that they don't experience a fire. Hopefully they never would have to.

"I'm not planning on staying around here," they responded earnestly. "Not... close. I do not want to cause any problems with the pack here." They cleared their throat and tipped their head to the side. "Will you be joining them?"

Okay, Io. Listen close. He leans in. His eyes tremor like Brownian motion. 

You're right. What he's about to say next he wants for it to be altruistic but Wymond can't help but derive a hypocritical satisfaction from it -- I'm in the in-group, you're unfortunately not, you can't stay here. They don't take too kindly to wolves like you. One look at Lio and some of the more devout Déorwines would thrash and flail like they were going through toxic shock. 

He thought he knew for sure that he was going to join them, after all, it was the only home and family he had ever known, the only god -- but a thought purrs on in his brain, the prospect of mutiny thrills him and disgusts him. To hell with the Kingslendists, he wants to say. He wants to be the righteous woman with the flag in Delacroix's painting of the French Revolution (Lady Liberty!) and more than the glamor of it all, he wishes to be free, whatever that means.

He feels selfish, and struggles not to embrace it. Was it family if he couldn't even remember their faces?

All these emotions, he fights to condense into a few words. I don't know. They're so goddamn... bourgeois, if you get what I'm saying.

Where are -- where are you planning to go?