Silvertip Mountain worn pathways

For @Summer boo. :) Edit: you get my 69th post. ~_`

The only mountain she had ever been on was the Sunspire, and she had decided then that she didn't like them— perhaps only a side effect of being held captive there, but it had become her truth nonetheless. Still, the yearling was determined to waste time; she would need to go to the caldera eventually, as it was the entire reason she had even come back to the Wilds... but even after crossing paths with several other wolves, Magpie still didn't feel ready. It was likely that she never would, but she was still naive enough to believe that a time would come that suddenly felt like the perfect moment.

Instead, she drew close to the base of a mountain to the north. She wasn't brave enough to climb it, yet, but she sat and stared curiously at the worn pathways leading toward its summit. Who would ever dare live in such a precarious place? These were important questions; definitely a higher priority than seeking forgiveness from Peregrine and Fox.

*waggles brows*

The trip to the Caldera had not gone quite to plan. Peregrine had never shown, and as eager as the young Ostrega had been to see him, in the end his desire to get home to Ty had won out against his resolve. Thus, he left defeated but not wholly failed. Elwood had fortunately struck him as a decent and honest fellow, so as he walked, he had little doubt that his message would get to the alpha in the end. He hadn't been able to meet him and leave a trustworthy impression upon him, but hopefully leaving it on the man's beta would prove good enough.

In any case, there was nothing for it now that he trudged along the lands that lined the based of Silvertip Mountain. His intention had been to head straight back to the Sunspire with hardly a pause for eating or even sleeping. All of that had changed the moment he'd crossed a hauntingly familiar scent just West of the Heartwood. Summer couldn't say for certain that it was the same cougar he'd tracked that fateful day when he and Jace had discovered what had happened to the Sunspire's former alpha, but his blood had run cold all the same. After much debate, the black wolf had changed his course to follow the scent North towards the land he now traveled upon. Ty had waited this long, she could wait a few days longer for Summer to pursue some unfinished business.

Summer walked with his nose to the ground, eagerly trying to keep hold of the cat's scent even as exhaustion begged him desperately to stop. He had not expected to come across another of his species while searching for his enemy, but there one was sitting directly in his path, gazing quietly up towards the slopes just ahead. Her scent touched his senses. It was familiar in a way, just as was the pale markings upon her otherwise flawlessly black coat. But he was tired and hungry, deliriously so. It had to be his senses playing tricks upon him. He couldn't possibly be coming across her now when he wasn't even looking, when he'd waited and searched for her for so long to no avail.

The Ostrega closed his tired sunlit eyes for a few seconds before he allowed himself to look at her again, shuffling his paws across the ground in hopes of making her turn so that he could see if her eyes were just as green as he remembered.

She believed that the souls of the dead clung like echos to the land they had lived in— perhaps even pieces of the souls of the living. Perhaps part of her still existed in the footsteps she had left behind in Swiftcurrent Creek, in the Sunspire, in Redhawk Caldera. Ghosts were memories of the land, and the memories of the wolves that carried them. As her bright green eyes traced the pathways up the mountain, she wondered how many ghosts continued to wind their way up and down the monolith. Thousands. Maybe even more. She shuddered at the thought, though not out of fear— simply out of the gravity of that idea. The more she grew, the smaller Magpie felt.

A shuffling of paws broke her away from these heavy thoughts, her heart fluttering slightly in her chest. An ancestor? The Corvidae believe in ghosts, believed that ancestors could occasionally manifest to bestow wisdom on their descendents. Usually that required fasting and/or ingestion of particular herbs, but stranger things had happened in their stories.

Magpie turned her head over her shoulder, breath held, green eyes sparkling. As they fell on the wolf that was arguably her best friend— despite the fact they hadn't seen each other in six cycles of the moon— a dozen emotions played behind them. Summer. A heartbeat of silence, and then as if no time had passed at all, she asked, "Do you believe in ghosts?"

And there they were, just the same as he remembered. Seeing them was like a brush of warm wind upon his senses, so very much did they remind him of Spring. Immediately, Summer was taken back to when this life of his had begun. To when he'd just found the Sunspire, had just been starting to battle against his anxieties and had begun to make something of himself as a part of the pack. She had been there for all of that, appearing just shortly after his own arrival. They'd barely been able to spend any time together before she'd been sent back home by his alpha, and yet... Until Ty had come around, he'd never felt more at home with his own pack.

There was no hesitation in her voice as she asked him a seemingly random question. He pondered it for a moment before answering. "Not usually," he answered truthfully, "But sometimes... yes." It was a hard thing to deny, his belief. After all, he knew logically that such things could be real, but that didn't stop him from the feelings that plagued him in certain moments, that maybe there was something that walked with him from the beyond. In any case, he studied her quietly then, still in wonder simply at the fact that... there she is.

Her body now following her head, Magpie stood and realigned herself to face him— even drawing nearer, though she stopped a few feet shy of being close enough to touch him. As he answered, the yearling's eyes washed over him. She had always thought of him as being older than her, but the clarity of adulthood now told her that wasn't so. Perhaps it was the situation that she had been in at the time— so much turmoil in her childhood, and then to be held captive by his pack— but Magpie had never truly seen him for what he was. He had been a playmate, a wolf she had bonded with when it seemed impossible that she would bond with anyone ever again... and even now, the way he looked at her, she had no true grasp of the depth of his feelings.

That was likely why she felt no guilt for leaving him behind, for not saying anything when she left and never returned, for not bothering to visit despite innumerable chances. In short, the yearling female was completely unaware of the fact that she had been a giant asshole to the dark boy that stood before her. His simple acceptance of her question, his willingness to answer, did nothing to alert her to the fact that she had been a poor friend.

"I do," she offered simply. "I think there are generations of ghosts on this mountain," she continued to explain, jerking her head back toward Silvertip. "Look at those pathways up to the summit; they're deeper than any single pack could make in its lifetime. I bet there are places on that mountain so haunted that it would make you believe all the time." Her oblivion continued; no "How have you been, Summer?", no "I'm so sorry. I've missed you, Summer." Just idle chatter about ghosts, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world to talk about— because for Magpie, it was.

Summer watched her closely as she spoke, his gaze travelling across her lithe frame. She seemed to be in good health, if slightly on the skinny side. She had always been skinny though, even when they were younger. It was a relief to the Ostrega to see her doing well. He remembered when Tytonidae had returned to him so unexpectedly, thin and haggard and hurting deeply. She had done much to recover physically since joining the Sunspire, but emotionally, she was still scarred. It was a state he didn't wish upon anyone, and so he felt even more glad to see Magpie before him, changed only in the fact that she was both older and free of incarceration.

She continued to speak of ghosts. Summer canted his head slightly as he pondered her words, wondering about them. He had never given ghosts much thought before, but he was far more interested in her fascination than of the actual subject. "Are you intending to search for those places?" he asked after a beat. He was fairly certain the path was worn because of the numerous generations of all kinds of animals that wandered their world, but if Magpie was planning to add her own pawprints to the trail, then his would be placed right behind them. He had just found her; he wasn't letting her out of his sight so soon.

He stood silently, glancing over her as she rambled about ghosts and mountains— somewhere in the back of her mind, she noticed that, but it didn't slow her monologue. When she finally did, her green eyes met his, watching him coyly beneath her lashes. When she had last seen him, she had been too young to understand crushes or love... even now, it was new and alien. Perhaps it wasn't love, but she suddenly felt something, looking at him there— listening to her without judgement, without anger. Not like what she assumed faced her at the Caldera.

Truthfully, that was the furthest thing from her mind, now— she was consumed only by him and the idea of ghosts. His next words, though they could have been anything, though he could have chimed in with accusations or judgement, formed only a question in response to her imaginative beliefs. Summer had always been that way; always kind to her, always accepting of whatever she was feeling. He was humoring her now, she knew, but it didn't matter.

Magpie grinned, then, and dashed towards him, affectionately bumping her snout against his cheek and planting a kiss over his muzzle. "Of course, Summer," she laughed happily, again dashing away before he had a chance to react. Moving towards the mountain paths, the earlier reasons that had caused her to hesitate now forgotten— because Summer would be there, with her— Magpie glanced over her shoulder to make sure he followed.

She didn't answer at first, but suddenly a smile flashed across her muzzle and she was coming swiftly towards him. His muscles tensed even though he knew she would do him no harm. There was nothing violent about her actions, just sudden unexplained joy and enthusiasm.

In seconds, she'd closed all distance between them, and just as those Spring-painted eyes were mere inches from his, she touched his cheek and kissed him. Summer heard her as though on the other end of a tunnel, butterflies bursting in a flurry within his chest. His breath caught in his throat, and then he watched her bounding away, laughing and casting a backwards glance over her shoulder.

He stood there for a moment, totally dumbfounded. It was as though she'd just wacked him over the head with a hammer, sending him flying back in time to the nervous little boy bringing a pretty stranger a pinecone in hopes of making her smile, if only for a second. Now she was there, smiling and laughing, no pinecone in sight. She was happy just because of him - no tricks, no presents, no nothing. It was effortless, so vastly different than with Ty whom he worked and worked for and yet made no progress with at all. Summer was suddenly intoxicated by her, and honestly would have been even without all of those other deep reasons simply because he was a boy and she was a girl and she'd totally just given him his first kiss.

And hot damn did he want more.

A laugh erupted from his throat and he shook his head. "Hey, slow down!" he called after her, grinning. Mere seconds had passed in which his inner monologue had written a novel before his legs were carrying him swiftly forward in her wake, eager to start writing the next chapter.

She giggled to see him standing there, the astounded look upon his face was— well, adorable. It was like the first time he had made her laugh, a bright memory in a dark time. She had kept the pine cone he had given her then, and it still lay in one of the many treasure caches she had hidden during her childhood spent here in the Wilds. He hadn't known, then, that Magpie loved to collect small trophies— but that was the way with Summer. He seemed to understand her without a need for her to explain a thing.

After a moment, he seemed to shake himself out of it, laughing in turn— as he called after her, Magpie slowed her gait until he was able to catch up. And then they were running, side-by-side. She panted happily, looking at him again, drawing closer to him as they moved to brush her shoulder against his. They were growing closer to the mountainside, but part of Magpie never wanted this to end.

She was quick, but seemed to slow in order to allow Summer to catch up with her. It didn't go unnoticed by him, but caused him another flutter of joy instead of humility. She wanted him near her. It did more for his self-esteem and confidence than it likely was meant to, but his lifted his head and tail a little higher nevertheless. She came closer to him as they ran and Summer felt another tingle along his spine as their fur brushed together.

Summer suddenly grinned a little deviously, and though he remained attentive to the path along which they ran (not wanting to trip and fall and make a total ass of himself), he watched her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for his moment. When it suddenly came, the Ostrega jumped lightly at her, nipping at her ear with a playful growl.

As the mountain rose, Magpie began to slow— and it was then that Summer seized his moment, leaping at her and planting a gentle nip upon her ear. She gave a yelp of delight, ceasing her forward movement to prance backwards away from him, rearing up to playfully box his shoulders. Once more, the mountain and its ghosts were forgotten, and there was only Summer. Her green eyes gazed at him, and she gave him a coy smile— but Magpie made no more advances, suddenly unsure of what to do with... this.

"C'mon," she told him, finally, "Let's go make you believe in ghosts."

Summer spun to face her as she stepped backwards, laughing as she jumped at him. He braced himself for her weight, not even trying to avoid it as, to be quite honest, he didn't really want to. He liked her touch, even if it was the playful, mildly abusive sort. He laughed as she did, loving the sound of it. He didn't notice as she paused from uncertainty, only that she was looking at him and he was looking at her. And that was enough for now, wasn't it?

His brows lifted slightly at her comment, and very suddenly, he decided that it wasn't. "I think I already do," the Ostrega replied quietly, wondering if she would know that he meant her. She'd been gone so long without a trace, and suddenly there she was, as though no time at all had passed. Were he still getting high every day, he might have assumed that he was just imagining her. But he wasn't, Magpie was here, in front of him. But for how long this time would he be able to keep her?