Dawnlark Plains ladybits

Her route home was interrupted by a localized storm. The timing was poor.

There weren't many places to hide on the plains, but Bazi eventually found a tree to shelter under. It was stooped and old, tired from many years spent competing with the surrounding grass. Bazi would still emerge soaked, but she liked to pause when it rained. Something about not wanting to slip down a hole and die.

It was barely past noon, but the cloud cover made it seem much later than that. As predicted, it began to rain, and Bazi shuffled closer to her tree trunk as the heavens let loose upon the earth. Her children were still feeding, and leaving them alone for too long caused Bazi to swell uncomfortably and become tender. She glanced around for any signs of wolves in the grass, then hiked her hind leg up and seized one of her own teats. Since becoming a mother, Bazi's sense of shame had taken a beating. Needs must.

idk, seemed funny in my head

I know I totally dropped the ball on our last thread, but I just couldn't resist.

It would have been nice if someone had told Reek he had been living in the good 'ol days before they had up and passed.  A simple warning would have sufficed. But no, instead the universe decided to drop a big, fat cluster of reality bombs right on the rangy beta's seemingly stable life.  His optimistic naivety had become his downfall; Wyn had left him without a word, and initially Reek had thought nothing of it. She was smart, resourceful, and Reek wasn't the most possessive wolf in the world... but every day that passed without her by his side had caused him to worry that she had left him this time for good.  It only made sense after what Smash had told him.  Maybe she wasn't as ready for parenthood than Reek had initially thought.

Smash's departure from the Rise had only further added insult to injury.  It seemed all of those that Reek had gotten close to where destined to eventually leave him.  Although, in hindsight,  maybe he had become too close to Smash.  He was a married man after all... however, at this point he wasn't even sure about that anymore.  And to be honest, he would be lying to say he hadn't thought about her that way.  But, that had become unimportant and unchangeable.  Although the rise was still home, staying there had become entirely too painful.  Reek needed to clear his head and he left the territory for the first time since Junior's disappearance in search.

Who he was searching for, he didn't even know.  While a part of him hoped he would find his MIA wife, a little part of him tugged at his heart to find Smash and tell her the truth.  Either outcome would have been favorable, but no matter how hard Reek searched no trail came up.  The rain had washed it all away.  To bad it couldn't wash away the dull and throbbing ache in Reek's chest.

He turned to head home so he could wallow in his failure, but was met with a familiar sight way out in the distance.  Baz?  His approach was slow and deliberate.  In his grief he found that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't smile.  But, every part of him still wanted to greet his old beach friend with warmness.  "Hey Baz.  Been awhile," he droned, plopping down beside her.

The powers that be must have been smiling down on her through the storm. Reek approached from an angle that allowed Bazi time to cover herself up. She did so quickly, hastily arranging her legs to cover the damp patch of belly, and turned to smile at the wolf that had flopped beside her. He had been caught out in the storm too, and smelled strongly of wet dog. His face, though no amount of smiling could make it beautiful, looked particularly dejected.

"It has. You look miserable, my good man," the mountain Alpha declared, squinting at her distant home as she said it. The winds whipped the rain into a mist, and sitting under a tree only did so much to keep them dry.

The storm whipped up and Reek did his best to hide himself from the bulk of the rain, but resistance was futile.  The rain blew sideways with the wind and the tree was no proper umbrella.  More like a cheap, shitty K-mart knockoff.   He squirmed closer to Bazi in an attempt to stay dry, but it was of no use... he was already soaked to the core.  It's not like Bazi would have appreciated it any way; Reek was a sad sight to see and it was a wonder that she didn't just take off for home at first glance.  The raggedy sad sack was a far-cry from the chipper optimist that used to trawl the beach without a care.  Reek's expression didn't lie and Bazi had picked up on it.

"I am," said Reek who's voice was still hoarse from the search.  "I guess I should polish up my acting."  The bedraggled beta attempted to crack a weak smile, but in it's place came an uncomfortable grimace.  It was as if his homely face had gone stiff.  

And apparently he was - miserable, that is. Bazi racked her brain for details about Reek's life - something about a pack on the brink of disbanding? She had been under the influence of pregnancy hormones at the time, and recalled little of their conversation. "Well, what's on your mind? We're stuck here for the foreseeable future - might as well play psychiatrist to one another. I'll go after you," she assured the plain-faced wolf. He shuffled closer, which she didn't particularly appreciate, but he was a sweet man and clearly meant no harm. He did smell, though.

To Reek's surprise, his coastal acquaintance was ready to take on the roll of an impromptu therapist and listen to his growing list of problems.  While he didn't particularly want to talk about his adventures in loneliness, he did realize that having someone to talk to would serve as a catharsis and an easy way to vent his frustrations.  However, he felt completely talked out.  "You sure Baz?" he asked with apprehension, but nevertheless he gave her little time to answer before it all came spewing out like a great fountain of— uh, sad stuff.

"Actually, it sort of goes back to where we left off,"  he began, thinking back to the day the two had met and how happy he had been even in a crumbling pack.  How times had changed.  "Ankyra Sound lasted about a week after that.  But, that's not the problem; I was pretty happy about that.  When things fell apart though, we all went our separate ways.  Well, except for this one girl, Wynter, who stuck around with me (for whatever reason, I have no fucking idea)."  

He paused and mustered a weak smile as he reminisced.  The memories where untarnished, and even if Wyn had left him without a word... she had still left him with those.  "We got pretty close after a while, things were good.  We met Saena, we joined a pack... life was working out for us, but I still couldn't tell her how I felt about her.  After awhile, I grew a pair and just made things clear, point blank.  Turns out, she felt the same way.  After that, I took her as my mate... maybe it was a little rushed, but at the time it felt right." 

"We started planning a family." His expression shifted back to somber. "We went to get permission but Saena told us to wait.  The pack was too new, so I understood.  Out of respect, we waited to do the thing.  Even though she wasn't in season, we still weren't taking chances.  Blue balls are worth love right?"

"So we went on back to the day to day.  Normalcy and such.  I was promoted to Beta, and she was out doing her... thing.  But, it turns out she got the green light from Saena for the whole family thing.  She was already gone by the time I knew.  A subordinate told me... I was the last to know."  Reek sighed with an air of finality.  "So what does that make me Baz?  Am I still a married man, or should I just give up?"

Delicious drama. Bazi did not connect the name of Reek's Alpha with the woman she had met on the Rise at the height of her pregnancy - she would link the two facts when the nearby pack knocked on her door a few days later.

The mountain wolf frowned her way through the last part of Reek's tale, struggling to understand. "By thing, do you mean she want into heat... and then just left you?" Bazi made an ugly face. "In that case you are most definitely a single man again," she huffed, completely forgetting her own wholesale abandonment of Scimitar and Swiftcurrent Creek - far worse than Wynter's crime.

Bazi's dissaproval of Wynter's actions was evident in her delivery, and as much as Reek wished he could hold on to the relationship and wait for Wynter to wise up and return, it just wasn't feasible to wait around for something that may never even happen. Bazi was right; Reek was newly single.  Their short and flighty mateship had ended the moment Wynter walked out... Reek had just failed to see it.  

His head sunk into the dirt and he let out a long and winded sigh in disappointment. But after the sigh subsided, his solemn scowl shifted into terse, but empty smirk in disbelief, and he shook his head and wheezed a hoarse and disappointed chortle, as if the whole situation had been one shitty bout of cosmic irony.  One big universal joke, and Reek was the punchline.  

"I don't even know," he wheezed, defeated.  "She left without a word of explanation... I've just been picking up the pieces here and there."  He hadn't smelled heat in the rise, not until Smash's, but Wynter was long gone by then.  However, if she had gone into season, their window of opportunity was dead and gone.  "I'm just tired Baz.  Real tired."  He paused and lifted his head from the dirt. "What should I do?" he asked , fully aware there were no easy answers.

Reek's pain put strain into his voice. Bazi was no counselor, certainly not in matters of the heart - she was as new to that game as Reek was, still struggling to make sense of her mateship on a daily basis. When Reek raised his head, she shrugged.

"You could wait. But.. you might never forgive her. Not 100%."   She glimpsed it in her own mate's eyes from time to time - the unease that comes with having a wife with a history of being flighty. "Let her go. You're young - there will be other wolves." Eventually, stability and charm won out over tall, dark, and handsome. And older ladies had it more together. Presumably.

Slapping a conclusion on this!

Reek did not know it then, but that 'other wolf' was just around the corner - he would settle on the rise, win a sprightly little alpha's heart, and begin to dream of family. Disaster and mayhem would accompany him on the road (they were mere weeks from a tornado), but Reek was the sort of fellow who might just weather those storms. His heart was in the right place, and he possessed just enough naivety to shelter it from harm.

They talked for a while longer, swapping eye-rolls and laughs until the storm let up. Bazi made her way home to her mate, and Reek went off to face the unknown.