Stavanger Bay all the stars in the sky

all welcome now :-)

"C'mon, Drake!" Charon shouted loudly through the forest. "We don't have all day!" The youth dashed from between the trees and galopped into the dunes with his awkward, gangly four-months-old body. He looked over his shoulder, then at the sky. The stars were beautiful, though some of them were covered by clouds. That's why Charon had come to the beach; he could see them much better at night. He'd heard of one story of the stars, and wanted to learn to read them better; that's why he came here alone, so that he could see if he could figure out more of the stars' secret stories.

"Tell me your secrets..." Charon muttered under his breath. His left ear twitched and he looked to his side, grinning. "No, Drake, I was just talking to myself. Anyway..." Charon turned his gaze back to the stars and smiled. He hoped he could find stars that looked sort of like his mother (even though he hardly remembered how she had looked); he could maybe find a story about her, then, or find the star that she represented. "Aren't they beautiful?" Charon said aloud and he sighed, enjoying the sight of the stars for a moment as he sat down at the edge between forest and coast area.

I know we have another thread going already, but this has been too lonely for too long B)

Alone as he was, Aesop found himself often wandering the shores and reaching back, recalling younger days and warmer nights. And he found himself swept up by the ebb and flow of nostalgia, the sentimentality of the elderly. A hallmark of the aging, he thought, and so he allowed himself his reveries. More and more he thought of the stars, the warm summer air and a warmer body beside him, laying closer than was appropriate for wolves of such polite families. Thus he used to spend his evenings, with the stars and the planets and the heady haze of growing affections.

These days he remembered fondly, and so he was not pleased to be drawn from his thoughts by Charon's shouting. He huffed, wondering who Charon could possibly be shouting at (first he thought of Atreyu, and dreaded another such confrontation) at this hour. Still, he remembered Charon's interest in the stars, and wondered if this had anything to do with it. So he loped up the sand, barking to catch Charon's attention before he drew near, stopping an appropriate distance away. "Who're you talkin' to?" he asked, glancing around at the empty beach.

Thank you for joining :D

It did not take long for someone to notice Charon and Drake. The youth was staring at the stars, not paying overly much attention, so he did not notice Aesop until he spoke. Charon looked at Aesop as he was asked who he was talking to, and smiled. "Hi!" he greeted enthusiastically, happy for any sort of additional company. Charon hadn't seen the stupid ass wolf at the beach since their altercation, and he intended to keep it that way for now, but Aesop was alright.

Realising that Aesop must not've met Drake yet, Charon nudged the air on his left side. "This is Drake. Don't worry, he's not really a bear; he's just a troll and the crafting bears accidentally gave him fur when they fixed him. It's kind of a long story." Aesop probably didn't want to hear all of it right now, although if he did, Charon would gladly tell him the rest of the story. "Anyway, we were just trying to see if the stars wanted to spill some secrets tonight." Charon looked back up at the sky again, where the stars sparkled, waiting for some sort of divine sign, or even just a tiny secret, just one...

The younger wolf seemed pleased to see him, which Aesop took as a comforting sign. Acceptance is a powerful mood lifter, after all. "Hey, kid," Aesop greeted easily, as he sat down where he stood.

Charon indicated a spot to his side and introduced him to an individual that was certainly not present. Aesop frowned, wondering if this was some joke at his expense. "But there ain't anyone- oh." His realization came a moment too late, but he was able to back track. Clearly this was an imaginary friend he was dealing with, and though the concept was strange and discomfiting, he had dealt with stranger. So he quickly recovered with a swift continuation of, "ain't anyone ever heard of the, uh, craftin' bears fuckin' up like that, but I guess there's a first time for everythin'. Drake, you said? 'm Aesop." Nice recovery.

Charon divulged his purpose, and Aesop smiled wryly. "'n have you had any luck yet? They can be tricky, sometimes." He planned on offering his assistance, if Charon would have it, as it would be good practice for the both of them.

"I'm not a kid anymore," Charon corrected Aesop, not unkindly so, and he went on to explain, "I've seen, like, almost five moons!" Pretty darn old and mature, he was, no longer a kid at all!

Aesop seemed surprised to see (or rather, not see) Drake. Surprisingly, Charon had had to deal with other wolves being harsh towards his imaginary friend very little; nobody outwardly told him 'your friend doesn't exist'. Some were startled at first, like Aesop, but they all played along in the end. Charon tilted his head, but looked pleased when Aesop went on to explain that he hadn't ever heard of the crafting bears messing up like that. "Well, Drake was all fallen apart and hurt so the crafting bears had to fix him. And then because they're hairy they accidentally gave Drake hair too." All made perfect sense.

On the subject of stars... "Well, there is this one star that is super bright somewhere..." Charon spied the skies for his special star, until his eyes rested on one of the brighter stars. "That one!" He wasn't entirely sure if it was the same one he looked at every night, but it didn't matter much. This one was super bright too. "It's the momma — uhm, Julooke star. She was my mum but now she's with the stars, looking down on me." That's how he liked to believe it worked, anyway. "And the stars are whispering a story about how brave she was." Charon looked at Aesop before he would continue, to see if Aesop was liking any of his story-telling skills so far. He bet this wasn't a story Aesop had ever heard before; Charon liked to think the stars reserved stories this special for him alone.

Give it another five moons, Aesop thought, bitterly (and a tad unkindly,) and he won't be so quick to say so. Naturally, he didn't voice this, as Charon had already proven to have little tolerance for any slight to his person. "Five moons, huh? And how many d'you think I've seen?" Aesop looked innocent, but there was an underlying mischief, as this was an easy trap to fall into.

At only five months, it would be downright unkind for Aesop to not play along with the imaginary friend game. Though he'd never felt the need for one himself- the pack he'd grown up in was large and particularly...fertile- he had known more reserved peers who had not taken as well to socializing to invent a friend. It wasn't surprising, he supposed, that Charon would do the same. In all of his time at the Bay, Aesop had yet to see another child in Charon's age group. "Huh," he grunted, "well, I dare say it suits him."

When Charon pointed out the star, Aesop followed the line of his sight, finally picking out one of the brighter ones among the lights. And then... well, that was depressing. He hummed, shifting uncomfortably. He had never been skilled with what to say in situations like these. "Why don't you tell it to me, I can't hear 'em. Probably only tellin' this one to you," he prompted, since that was noncommittal enough.

How many did he think that Aesop had seen? Oh, boy, Charon couldn't even begin to count those. He was, like, super old! "Uhmmmmm... A thousand billion and three?" Charon said with a super serious expression on his face. Anything beyond his own age was super old, and he had little comprehension about age just yet, as he hadn't given it much thought.

"Yeah, it does," Charon agreed about Drake. "He's a lot warmer to crawl up to at night, too, now that he's got fur." Drake used to be all stony and cold, no doubt (for they'd only become friends after Drake had become hairy).

Then the subject turned to a slightly sadder one. Charon didn't really remember what his mother was like, but he knew that normal pups still had a mother and father, and he did not. Maybe subconsciously, part of him just liked the attention he was given when he told others about his dead mother, and part of him actually missed something that he had never even had.

Aesop asked to hear the story, so Charon drew a breath while he looked up at the Julooke-star. "Well, Julooke was a white wolf who was super pretty and really awesome. She was also super brave. She was an honory shield maiden, which is like a viking thing, and it was honorary because she wasn't really a viking herself but they made her a shield maiden anyway because she and her viking friend were really good friends, I think. Anyway, that part of the story doesn't really matter. So Julooke the white wolf one day decided to retire from her adventures of awesome. She liked the watch the stars a lot so she decided to settle down with another wolf who was pretty awesome and he had more grey-like fur, and his name was Verrine, and he was really awesome too so they really deserved each other."

Charon looked to see if Aesop was still following, even though his story was super-coherent, before continuing, "So anyway, after becoming a mum and settling down with her mate, Julooke one day saw that a bear was trying to kill her puppies. Even though the bear was, like, twenty times bigger than Julooke, she attacked it to save her puppies. And a miracle happened! Even though she was so small compared to the giant mean bear, the bear was losing! How could it be! It must be because Julooke was super duper epic, 'cause 'cause how else could it be?" Charon spoke in excited tones, trying to keep the story alive and his audience captivated.

"So the bear didn't want to lose the fight so he decided to think of a trick, that mean old bear! The bear pretended to surrender and rolled on his back, and when Julooke came closer to help the bear up and call the truce, suddenly [size=9]BAM[/size]!" Charon shouted the 'bam' loudly and gasped in suspense. "With one giant smash, the bear crumbled poor heroic Julooke's skull apart and she was no more." Well, he wasn't sure if it had gone exactly like that, but Charon imagined it had; the bear could only have won by cheating, of course.

"And she was never seen again, only up here in the sky, with the other stars." Suddenly feeling sad talking about his dead mother, Charon looked up at Aesop with watery eyes and said, "Poor Julooke..." Although what he really meant was 'poor Charon'.

"A thousand billion and four," he corrected, equally serious.

He paid Charon the respect a storyteller deserved, all the more because of the personal dimension to it. It was told with all of the hallmarks and embellishments of a child, charming and simple and enthusiastic, if not a bit scatterbrained. But skills could be refined, and there is something to say for the stories of children. Indeed, Aesop gave Charon his due respect and attention for a good long while, but his mind began to wander as Charon drudged through the finer (unnecessary, though Aesop wouldn't say it) details, his eyes slightly glazed but otherwise seemingly attentive.

At the climax of the story, Aesop flinched. The 'bam' and subsequent gasp startled him out of his stupor, and he blinked a few times, quelling the instinctive irritation that flared up in the split second after the outburst. And then he grimaced. Poor Julooke indeed. Charon turned to him with wide-eyes, tears threatening. Aesop cleared his throat, glancing quickly at the star in question. "Right," he said, a placeholder, "but there's no higher honor than to stand in the stars. When you're up there, you ain't ever goin' away." It was a weak attempt at consolation, but grief had never been his forte. Issues of anger and matters of the heart he could solve, but there was no resolution save time to ease grief.

Aesop did not seem to be very good at comforting; Charon had expected for him to be super sad for Charon now, and fawn over him and say lots of nice things... But none of that happened. Aesop uncomfortably looked at the Julooke-star and tried to console Charon in a different way, by saying that there was no bigger honour than standing with the stars.

Charon was a little disappointed, but didn't say anything to let it show. "Yeah," he just mumbled. He cleared his throat and then said, "Did you know that my daddy was killed, too? He was killed by —" Charon's train of thought halted a moment while he tried to think of something cool; the young Naturalist filled the space with sniffling sadly so that Aesop wouldn't suspect he might be making this whole thing up, "— by a real firebreathing dragon." Little did Charon know those didn't actually exist. "And my one brother 'n sister were kidnapped to work their whole lives for some other evil pack and we dunno where that pack is so we can't ever save them or see them again." Well, he bet that's where they were off to, anyway.

Charon looked at Aesop with his sad watery eyes. He hadn't a clue that it wasn't that Aesop wasn't feeling sorry enough for him; it was just that he wasn't good at expressing it... So he just kept piling on more sob stories in hopes of getting the sympathy he so desperately craved.

Nurturing was never Aesop's gig. Though his skills ranged towards more passive ones, like healing and naturalist-ing?, he was hardly passive himself. Passive aggressive, perhaps. But true nurturing was not among his skill sets, and the subtle nuances of grief and sadness were ones he had a hard time picking up on.

Bullshit, however, was on his range. Not that this was particularly well veiled bullshit. Dragons were not real, this Aesop knew for sure. How to deal with that bullshit was a different monster all together, though, as it was clear that Charon really was an orphan. Aesop knew how many adults were in the pack, even if he did not know all of them. None of them were Charon's parents. So was he supposed to call him on it, then comfort him? Or was this a coping mechanism best left untouched?

He tries another route entirely. Now that he thinks he understands Charon's behavior a bit better, he might know how to help. Or he might screw this up royally, as well. Children really never were his forte. "You must be lonely," he muses softly, "can I tell you a secret?"

Charon expected Aesop to respond kindly to him and tell him that he was very sorry for his loss, but unfortunately no such thing happened. Charon didn't understand why, because he didn't ever remember telling the (or, well, a version of the) sad story of his broken childhood and fallen apart family and not receiving heartfelt apologies and hugs in physical or verbal form.

Instead Aesop said that Charon had to be lonely, and then asked if he could tell a secret. Charon didn't really like how Aesop made this all about him; this was sorta his spotlight moment, even if it was for a sad reason, and now Aesop was going off and stealing it. "Sure," Charon said and he looked at Aesop. He realised he was actually growing curious for Aesop's secret, even though he was still kind of frustrated over his stolen spotlight.

Aesop remembers grief. He knew it well, early on. Grief became an old friend long ago, but he knew better than to think that his methods of dealing with it would work on Charon. Already he knew that they were vastly different wolves carrying vastly different baggage. Perhaps he should have given in to Charon's cries for attention, because maybe all he needed was for someone to indulge him? But Aesop was not so skilled as to determine that, so he continued to blunder on in his awkward way.

First, Aesop took a moment to internally cringe at the cliche he was about to drop. "You got your brother and sister out there, right? And a whole bunch of other people that love you, even if ya'll can't be together right now. Helps if you remember that whenever you're lookin' at the moon, you're lookin' at the same moon as them," Aesop said solemnly. May his reputation lay in peace.

my last post. thanks, this was an interesting thread! i would love a newer thread sometime c:

Charon narrowed his eyes and looked away when Aesop said that his siblings were out there somewhere and loved him. He wasn't sure they even remembered him at all; they'd been so young, and it seemed forever ago since he had seen them. They probably were dead, or whatever. It didn't help Charon at all to look at the moon and think that they were looking at it, too. They were probably looking at it, not remembering him at all, happily living their lives wherever. Or maybe they were just dead. Charon wasn't sure which one he prefered.

"Dunno," Charon mumbled, even though no direct question had been asked at the end of Aesop's story. "I mean, I don't... They probably don't even remember me, so how could they love me?" He kept looking away, feeling frustrated and unheard because he didn't get the attention and coddling that he wanted and was used to.

"Whatever," Charon said all of a sudden, as airy as he could manage, "Never mind, I shouldn't have told you anything. I dunno why I even did. Me 'n Drake gotta go." Without even waiting for a response, Charon nodded a brief goodbye to Aesop and he started to trot back into the forest with a casual trot to show how he didn't care about all of this at all. Once he was sure Aesop was out of sight and hearing, Charon quickened to a gallop until he reached the den, and he curled up tightly under a tree in the den's clearing. It took a while before he finally drifted off into an unruly sleep.

Right back at you!

Aesop blinked, taken aback by the sudden change in tone and unsure of what to do.  He really never was very good with kids, much less kids who had experienced so much in their short lives.  In the land of his birth, they led a relatively cushy life, not entirely bereft of tragedy but pleasantly lacking in it.  Their children grew up in stable homes with two parents, for the most part.  The only strife they knew was petty arguments among their peers.  Few knew loss, though it was not unheard of, but Aesop would be a fool to think that this was the case everywhere.

He felt sympathetic, of course, but did not know how best to address Charon's problems.  He shuffled in place, uncomfortable but silent.  "Well," he tried, the rest of his explanation coming out as an awkward, aborted noise.  "Uh..."  Nice going.


It took him by surprise when Charon's parting words hit him like a punch to a gut, not a glancing blow.  He frowned, only just realizing that he had taken a misstep somewhere along the line but not sure where, exactly.  "See you," he managed.  Once Charon disappeared imperiously into the forest, Aesop huffed and muttered a few complaints, not pleased by how put off he found himself.  Just a kid, he had to remind himself, but it was difficult.  Can't please everyone.