As she paused at the edge of a well-overgrown clearing that seemed nigh impossible to navigate, she found herself yearning for the ocean. To sink her toes into the sand and let the seawater wash over her legs, to embrace her siblings within the salt-laden Bay… To wander down the coast of the Seahawk and meet with the Siren Queen, Galateia, of the Nereides. She would've given anything for those things now, for the power she had wielded and the connections she had forged, but she was too afraid to return. Too afraid what destruction would come about if she did. She had to settle for brief trips to the deciduous forest of the Heartwood for nostalgia, but she avoided it for the most part; the memories were fresh, raw, and painful.
The pale Surgeon pressed her side against a nest of needles bursting from the nearest white spruce, and she let out a sigh. There were no altars to pray at here, so she couldn't even do that to help herself feel more at home. Without the ocean, she could feel no connection to her Spirit Guide, even though the Porpoise was always with her in one way or another. It, like Sos, was ominpresent and omnipotent, but silent of late. Blinking away her uneasiness and her sadness, Jinx let her hardened gaze wander to a late-season butterfly that was flitting along the far edge of the clearing, its wings flashing iridescent against the backdrop of moss and bark.
She had nowhere to go, so allowed her rump to fall where she stood. She would need to plan something to keep herself busy, but for now, she was content to bask in the green haze of Neverwinter Forest and watch the butterfly flirting with the evergreens.
don’t wanna take a breath without you, babe
i don’t wanna play that part
i know that i love you, but let me just say
i don’t wanna love you in no kind of way
[size=3]i don’t want a broken heart[/size]
Her mind was still reeling from the things that were going on between her and Turquoise. Her heart ached and she could feel a terrible sadness trying hard to consume all of her, but she was trying to fight it. Rivet knew that it would do her no good to allow herself to become so utterly depressed that she would want to just give up on life. Her whole world revolved around Turquoise, whether the other female wanted it to be that way or not.
Rivet clung to the hope that they would be able to work through this, just as they seemed to be able to work through everything else. The real question, though, was did Turquoise really want to work through it, or was she just doing it to appease Rivet? Either way, the ebon female was not yet ready to just give up.
Lost in her thoughts, she wasn’t paying much attention to where she was going. It wasn’t until movement from a snowy figure caught her attention that she was able to pull herself out of her thoughts. “Hi,” she calmly called out to the snowy form, and hoping she wasn’t interrupting something or whatever. “I’m Rivet.” If she was interrupting or something, she would leave, but she figured it couldn’t hurt to at least introduce herself.
Whatever thoughts she had been enjoying were put on hold when from the corner of her eye she spotted a figure; slowly, as though the other woman was some great secret that Jinx was not permitted to behold, she turned her head to gaze heavily at her presumed pack mate, though her heart clinched briefly when she noticed the bright orange-red of her eye. Kaskae? her mind dared question, but when Rivet glanced at her with a lack of familiarity and introduced herself in a voice quite unlike Kaskae's direct and brash tone, Jinx noticed her other eye was bright blue, and a combination of relief and disappointment flashed through her.
“Jinx,” she responded shortly, having taken to not speaking a lot, particularly since her time as Shearwater's Mambo and even moreso since she had become a loner. But, upon falling silent, she realized it probably wasn't prudent to make her packmates uncomfortable with her brevity, and so she forced herself to add in a quiet voice, “I take it you're from around here?”
don’t wanna take a breath without you, babe
i don’t wanna play that part
i know that i love you, but let me just say
i don’t wanna love you in no kind of way
[size=3]i don’t want a broken heart[/size]
It had been her own idea, granting her other half the permission or whatever to do as she pleased as long as it was to Rivet that she returned to every night. She just couldn’t seem to shake the worry that even this might not work, but she was more than willing to try purely because she didn’t want to lose Turq. Only time would be able to tell how it was all going to end up playing out in the long run. For now, she could only try to get herself to not dwell on any of it and try to focus on each day as it came.
The darkly colored female dipped her muzzle down politely when the other female gave her name. “Part of the pack, yes,” she answered, nodding faintly. “Haven’t been here for too long, though.” Rivet wasn’t the greatest at striking up conversation, but she was going to try purely because it would do her good to actually meet others instead of spending her waking hours thinking about Turquoise and what she might or might not be doing. “And you?”
“Same,” she imparted, figuring there was no sense lying to this female, who likely had the wits and wiles to catch others in a lie anyway, but that was merely assumption. “Seems like most of the residents are scarce, though. You're the second one I've met aside from the leaders, and I haven't even seen them in a while.” This felt chatty, so she let her voice fall off at that point, though falling silent had about it a sort of expectant quality, almost as though she thought (or hoped) that Rivet might be able to help explain why the pack seemed filled with unseen ghosts rather than members.
don’t wanna take a breath without you, babe
i don’t wanna play that part
i know that i love you, but let me just say
i don’t wanna love you in no kind of way
[size=3]i don’t want a broken heart[/size]
Rivet was definitely not the bull in a china shop type. Though she could be fiery, she was usually quite calm, relaxed, and very feminine. She didn’t really have much of a mean bone in her body, though she could become wicked angry if pushed hard enough. Right now, though, she was even more withdrawn and reserved than she usually was because of all that was going on between her companion and her. It had all taken quite a toll on her, and she could only try to hope that things would get better from here, though there was that touch of doubt that plagued her mind.
Rivet heard the unasked question after Jinx had spoken, and gave a slight nod of her head. “My companion and I were accepted into the pack by Styx, but I haven’t run into him, or anyone else other than my companion, since then. I can sometimes catch the scent of others, but I have yet to meet anyone else. You’re the first.” There was an apologetic tone in her voice, sorry that she was unable to provide much more than that.
“Who is your companion, then?” she wondered next, assuming a male companion, for homosexuality had never really made it into her thoughts. The Nereides back home had shared interesting intimacies, but the women there were not lesbians; Nanuq and Aktaie, for example, had always shared a special closeness, and Kaskae, Jinx, and Galateia had all been close at one point, but she supposed the Warchief of Shearwater Bay and the Siren Queen of the Nereides had forgotten all about her involvement by now. She had met Turquoise from this pack, but did not make any connection between the two, for the same reasons.
don’t wanna take a breath without you, babe
i don’t wanna play that part
i know that i love you, but let me just say
i don’t wanna love you in no kind of way
[size=3]i don’t want a broken heart[/size]
Rivet wasn’t even sure how many were or weren’t in the pack because it seemed they were so few and far between. She sometimes picked up scents from others from time to time, but she hadn’t really gone out of her way to trace the sources. It was her own fault that she hadn’t been very social within the pack thus far, but she also knew that things went two ways. It shouldn’t be just up to her to seek out others, or up to just Jinx to seek out others. Others could just as easily come seeking them out, too. It was a two way street, that’s for sure. A slight nod was given to show she agreed with Jinx’s words, though Rivet was definitely not really the warrior type.
“Turquoise,” she answered, giving a slight wag of her tail and a faint smile graced her muzzle. “We have traveled quite a bit, and are rarely apart.” Though they had their fights like any other couple did, sometimes their fights went haywire and out of control. But they were still together, so that had to account for something.