Emberwood [m] You already know that it's hard to find gold in this crap disco

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Probably backdated actually?? I have no clue where the timeline is anymore but this is not long after the Rusty Dusty return

It had been early morning when @Dusty Rose brought her daughter home. Reverie had not known who to fuss over for a time, and spent much of the day flitting back and forth between the two, tending their needs and smothering them with affection. It wasn't until night fell again that she found a moment alone with her Dancing King. She beckoned him quietly away from the pile of sleeping bodies, and led him to their little hollow.

If he still thought Dancing King a euphemism, Reverie did nothing to disprove the theory. All of the agitation and restless energy of the wait was now channeled into their play, and what followed. She did not speak until the breathless aftermath, their bodies still tangled together.

I want you to lead beside me, She told him softly between grooming his ruffled fur. And I want to give you my name. Medeiros. Statements, yet a question lurked beneath them. Was this what he wanted, too?

He wasn't sure what part of all this made him a dancing king, but he certainly felt the part as he laid there, limp and boneless, happily accepting her tender care. When she poke, his tail fluttered in automatic appreciation, and he had not the strength to react beyond that for a long, long moment.

The coywolf's mind moved sluggishly. Uncharitably, he thought this must have been Reverie's aim: to empty him of his brains before taking his name away from him. He did not miss that she phrased it as something she was giving him rather than... Well. He supposed that was how these things were always phrased.

He sat up to squint at her, the first half of her declaration only now registering.

"...Me?" he asked her, skeptical. Are you crazy? "You think people're gonna be happy about that?"

It was a stupid question.

"Yeah, alright," he told her, his heart pounding. Abrupt. "Dusty Rose Medeiros. Dancing King. Gotta ring to it, for sure."

Reverie was a little startled by that, if only because she hadn't expected to hear it from Dusty Rose. I don't care what anyone else thinks, She said simply, pressing her nose to his cheek. And she really didn't. Everett had hurt her, Abel and Klaus were scarce, Reina and Tybault were gone, the others were children or hardly more than that; whose opinion was there to consider?

Only Dusty Rose's, as far as she was concerned, so it was a relief when he voiced his agreement. But if he was really so concerned with the opinions of others...

But if - if you're worried about what people might think - then you should be more worried about how being with me will reflect on you, Her ears lowered slightly as she said it, and she withdrew to meet his eyes. You saw how they treated me at Swiftcurrent Creek. It's because - because - I wasn't good to them. When I lived there. Because... when I care about someone as much as I care about you, I... I do terrible things for them.

And I'm not even sorry, Reverie confessed, voice falling to a whisper. She hadn't been. Not until long after, and even then she sometimes wondered if it wasn't only regret that she had done those things, in the end, for the wrong person. Someone who would not stay. And I won't be. Not as long as it means you'll stay.

The coywolf gave a slow nod, nonplussed by the confession. He kept forgetting she hadn't been raised like him, even though it should have been obvious. He was quiet for a moment, gazing steadily back at her before he spoke:

"Where I'm from, a pack is one set of parents and all their kids," he told her. "No one else, because no one else is as important. You have your partner and your hijos and everyone else is dinner. A threat, a lotta the time. Rovers."

He looked to their tangled forepaws.

"When I met you, I decided I would stick around. But it wasn't a pack to me. Not in a way I could be part of. I've been trying 'cause of you, and I'll keep trying and all. But that's how it's supposed to be. In my mind, anyway. You're all I have. You and your lil parasites. I'll do anything, Fireflower. No question. I'll tear any motherfucker to bits to keep you all safe and healthy."

It was simple, to him. It was the law in his homeland. A coyote protected his own.

Nothing personal.

You're all I have.

I'll do anything.

He understood, then.

She shifted closer to tuck her face against his fur. You're perfect, you know, Reverie informed him in a muffled mumble, not for the first time and certainly not the last. It took a few moments to blink away the beginnings of tears, not because she thought Dusty Rose would mind but because she really, truly did not want to cry right now.

What she wanted was to kiss him, and that was what she did next.

In The Gilded Sea it was just us, most of the time, She said softly when they'd parted. It felt natural to share. Others passed through sometimes. We traded with them, but they never stayed long. A few tried - but then it was just us again.

My father said he brought my mother there to keep her safe. I think he did it to control her. All of us, That was all he'd cared about in the end. Maybe that was love in its own way. We didn't really think we could leave. He said we couldn't, anyway. But then I did. A faint smirk crossed her features then, only briefly, an expression that said fuck him as clearly as any words could.

"I know," he replied, but the smile it brought to his face made it clear how touching he found the sentiment. It was one thing to know it for himself and quite another to have someone else believe the same. "You're pretty cool, too," he told her then, because it would be rude not to, and because his real feelings on the matter were too real.

Too good to be true.

The picture Reverie painted was a familiar one. Not even he had been raised in total seclusion. Once he was big enough to have a name, his parents grew far less violent. Some came. Some stayed. All, eventually, went.

"Well, fuck him," Dusty Rose said for her. "We'll make our own family." With blackjack and hookers! "Or, y'know. Make it bigger."

He looked apprehensive; overwhelmed, for all of a moment.

Throws my 1500th post at you

Dusty Rose earned a soft giggle when he told Reverie that she was pretty cool. She didn't think anyone had ever called her cool before. But then he was talking about making a family — making their family bigger, and she was abruptly reminded of what they'd done. That their family might already be growing. His expression, though fleeting, did not escape her. Reverie wasn't sure what had caused it, but she had her own assumptions.

I could - I could show you what my midwife taught me, Reverie suggested softly, her voice light in spite of the dread she felt. She could only remember her own suffering; the blame in the eyes of the men who had promised to love her through it all. Sometimes I... well, I bleed. A lot. That's - that's why my first husband left me. Blossom's father.

She wasn't looking at Dusty Rose anymore when she finished. She could only study the ground, their paws, anything that meant she didn't need to see his reaction.

He hadn't even thought about Reverie's health before speaking. He only knew that puppies were so perilously hard to keep alive, once they left their mother's body. He had precious few experiences with puppies or pregnant women, but stories about the trials and tribulations of those first months still haunted him.

His jaws parted in thought, but instead of speaking, he combed his teeth into Reverie's fur. He didn't like her anxiety and worked at once to assuage it.

"Show me," he encouraged. He'd never tried healing before, but he supposed that being everything to each other necessitated the development of certain skills. "I'll take care of you."

Those words were more vulnerable than he wanted to be with anyone, but he found himself compelled to speak as such to Reverie. When he did, he so often received feedback that made something in him glow.

"I sorta thought Boone was her dad," he said of Blossom. "He — left you? 'Cause you were bleeding?"

He was not sure he understood. It sounded like the last kind of situation one would leave their loved on in.

Maybe he was trying to make her cry. Or maybe —

Reverie thought of Selena then, words she'd once felt so disconnected from when she thought of her own love. It'd been so long ago. And she'd been wrong about Lestan, though she'd never really been sure about him to begin with.

Maybe it's you, she thought dizzily, trailing kisses along his cheek and down his neck in response to his promise. Then I'll give you as many children as you want, Reverie promised. As many as she could.

Her first marriage was a topic far less pleasant to speak of. But it was easy to speak to Dusty Rose by now, easy to pick up where she'd left off with the story of Kvarsheim and all that had happened there. So she told him quietly the story of Lestan; their meeting and how they'd immediately been smitten with one another, how her brothers had found her and the fear of them had driven her to Swiftcurrent Creek. The surprise of her pregnancy; how he'd left; Moss; Arric and Akavir; the witch and the cave and small gods; Lestan's return, Moss's hatred, the small family's flight and their suffering and Riordan and Saltshore and finally,

the end of it all. Lestan leaving again and all the strange things that had happened. Waking on that beach with Blossom only to find Boone there.

I've led a strange life, I think, She finished, eyes searching Dusty Rose now. I'm not sure. I don't have much to compare it to.

The coywolf was fascinated, at first listening to the serial with compassion but, as it went on, hearing it more like a story that'd happened to someone else. Either way, he was enraptured, forgetting his body until the very end, when he realized his hind leg had gone numb. He shifted under her gaze, stretching out and scraping her into his chest.

"I think so, too," he confessed, falling slowly back to earth. Reverie reappeared in the story, and the result was sobering.

Even for someone like Dusty Rose, it was hard not to compare himself, anxiously, to the men she'd loved before. But they were gone now, for better or for worse, and if they came back? They wouldn't be allowed to stick around for long.

"I never met someone who left their One," he told her, marveling, just a little, at the idea of it. "My dads fought tooth and nail for each other, and for my mom, too. And when Dad died... the flower eater just went crazy. Yeah. He sticks with Slow West, now. It's kinda creepy but mostly just sad."

All that to say: "We're partners, now. That means if you're bleeding, I gotta stand there and rip people's faces off if they find out."

First order of business: kiss Dusty Rose again. It was imperative, after all, that she kiss him each time he said something that made her love him more. Clearly they would spend a lot of time kissing.

I don't think he was the one for me. Or Boone. Not really, Reverie admitted when she finally pulled herself away from him. I guess it's easy to say that now that they're gone, but I - I always felt like I had to change for them. I don't feel that way with you.

And I'm not going anywhere. Not ever, She reached out to press her nose beneath his chin, her words turning slightly playful as she finished, though there was an unmistakable sincerity to them. You're stuck with me now. Partners.

And if he ripped off a few faces for her sometime between now and eternity, she wouldn't complain at all.

"Well," said Dusty Rose, and he almost finished the thought: Well, you were Boone's One. if the idea that he'd gone and died still held, anyway. Thankfully, he stayed his tongue and smirked instead, pleased and playful: "Cheers to that."

He stole yet more kisses, then. It was his natural wont to take, such that even things freely given had to be stolen to be enjoyed. He liked to win things. To conquer.

He liked Reverie.

"Think you got another dance in you?" he asked her, eyes bright and innocent. He was, of course, a master at "playing coy". "'Cause I still don't feel much like a king."

As much as Dusty Rose loved to win, Reverie loved to be the prize that was won; something fought for, something stolen, something so precious that it could only be taken by force. His prize, then, was not only her self but her devotion. Her adoration.

I think that can be arranged, She murmured, eyes already alight with desire and mischief. Perhaps Dusty Rose wasn't aware that she already had many plans for their night together. But you have to catch me first. Before she'd even finished she was darting from the hollow, nothing but a flash of billowing golden tail in her wake. Her path would take them beyond the Emberwood, this time toward the taiga.