Welcome Home

He smiled easily as she thanked him for choosing to be the one who would oversee her training to better her fighting ability, if she possessed any, muzzle dipping in a nod. Now, her deviation to genetics, and her inadvertent inclusion of herself into the mix, flew right over his head. The big red oaf that he was, he tilted his head seriously, considering it. His grandfather had been fully black with golden eyes, by his grandmother and mother’s recollection, though his grandmother had always seemed a bit upset when talking about the huge black male that had left; one who was even taller than Regulus, if only by an inch. All of the children from that litter had been black, white, or in aunt Lyric’s case, white with black swirls, and then his mother had been a silver timber. Then his father and his mother had produced himself, Baine’s Albino form, and Faite’s russet and silver self, where the rest of the kids had all held the silver coloring and timber marks of their mother. “Well…”

His eyes dropped from the sky to find the little healer’s expression looking less than comfortable, and he trailed off. His train of thought completely deviated from talk of genetics and coloring to concern for her discomfort, but her suggestion of what she’d like to hear regarding the history of the Pack, and how he’d risen to power yet again threw him onto another trail, and his momentary frown of concern turned to a grin, and he lowered himself to settle beside Cairo’s grave, forepaws crossing comfortably as he found a likely spot, ears planed to the sides in thought before he smiled and started, from both his mother and Grandmother’s own words, but told from a new generation…

“Well… It started after my Grandmother lost the challenge by Viridiana Sovari for Valhalla. She was older by that time, and while she stayed in practice for sparring… My mother and my great Uncle got my Grandmother away from the Battlefield, And Valhalla’s remnants scattered to the four winds. Mother, Great Uncle Cormalin, and my Grandmother, Erani, went to an Island off the western coast of this continent, and they stayed there for a good while, until Grandmother was healed. However, in that time, my Great Uncle passed on. When they – my mother and Grandmother – returned to the mainland, they settled in a grove of willows north of here; the Whistling Willows. There were, by some miracle, members of our family settled there, biding their time, I guess. So my mother and grandmother settled with them. Eventually, mother and father met up again, and when Summer came around… Well. Next Autumn, my siblings and I were born.”

He paused here to grin at Solveiga, bowing his head as though introducing himself all over again, before continuing, rolling his memories about. “I remember a little bit of my early puphood – mother’s scent and fur all around, and then how hazy it was when my eyes first opened… Ho! Those first real sounds were fascinating. Meanwhile, mother was planning – had been planning all along – to revive Valhalla for a third time, if not in the original name, then under a new one; this name: ‘Celestial’. We had a good sized family base, but there were still a few problems. A pack known as Arcanum was on Valhalla’s original lands; these ones.” He lifted a paw for emphasis, tapping the ground under their feet with a good sized pat before resettling it upon the other paw.

“They… weren’t a nice pack. I can’t recall, and I don’t think they ever found out exactly how that pack formed, but they were not a nice pack. Mother thinks that the pack was passed around after the Sovari woman won it and tossed it aside, until it eventually became Arcanum. But that’s really just a theory. Being a mere group of loners, two of whom had children, and one of whom was an elder, they weren’t exactly ready to retake the Plains in any way. Mother was going to challenge, but there’s also such a thing as patience, and she has a lot of it. And it worked out. But not before Father ran off to a fight for his sister to get her back from Arcanum, who had kidnapped her. He ended up getting taken himself, even when she got freed. I was only a pup at the time. Mother was ballistic, scared…” His head cocked slightly, ears falling back as he remembered the tense expression that day, how his mother had stared toward the battlefield and gotten more and more aggravated the longer time passed.

“She tried not to show it to us, but… well, kids are more observant than one might guess. It wasn’t hard to see that mother was upset, and that Father wasn’t there. I’m not sure exactly how long his was gone. She did her best; took myself and my siblings all the way to the land bridge between this continent and the southern one. The sand there is something amazing. It’s where I got this.” He touched the back of one leg to the sapphire pendant on its heavy gold chain about his neck, the gold clinking softly under the touch. “It was a very fun day. Annnd there was the time I snuck back that way, and ended up all the way onto the southern continent. I got too close to a wild boar. That’s where the crescent shaped scar on my left shoulder came from.” He indicated the marks, but didn’t elaborate on the huge set of four claw marks overlaid on top of the older scar. He’d be getting to that in a bit.

“I was in deep, deep trouble when I got home, with the help of a Native. Grounded until mid-winter, I think. It was snowy when I finally got out. And it was in winter when I found my best friend, Cinder. She’s been at my side almost ever since. She’s my companion, and hunting partner. If a rabbit gets into it’s hole, she can go in and scare it right back out. And then Father finally got back toward the end of the season. None of us caught it. Mother was furious with him for not putting into account the fact that he had children and a mate to worry about, and that his sister had a mate to care for her and get her back, and not listening to her when she had told him to stay home with us. But Arcanum had maimed him; he eventually went completely blind. He was a fighter. Now he’s a healer, though he’s not as skilled. But… In Spring, my mother and Grandmother slipped out one night. I woke up, and I followed; I was curious.

“By the time they realized I was following, we were already too far from home, and my grandmother couldn’t tarry. So they took me with them. We went back to the Island they had gone too after the fall of Valhalla. Grandmother wanted, in truth, to be laid to rest here, beside Cairo; the wolf who had truly loved her, and never left. But Arcanum was still here, so… She decided to rest beside my great Uncle. It was the first time I saw someone die. It was peaceful, eerie. Almost beautiful. You learn to understand your own mortality when you see a life leave someone you never realized could die…” He trailed off, eyes farseeing, remembering that feeling of waiting that had almost seemed to fill the air; a breathless hush, as though something was about to happen, something deeper than what the living could see. “’I will see you in your dreams someday. You are in my heart, and so long as I am within yours, I am never truly gone.’” He recalled aloud, baritone, accented voice thoughtful and solemn. “I hope I do.”

He gazed skyward for several moments, before his eyes dropped to Solveiga, and he grinned, ruefully. “We waited until dawn to start swimming back… And I had to pull the dumbest puppy stunt I could ever had pulled. I saw something out in the water – definitely not in the direction of the mainland – and… well, I just had to know what it was. A storm was building in the sky, and mother tried to catch me to redirect me. But the storm hit before we could get close enough to the island or the mainland. We both nearly drowned, and even so, we were swept way out into sea, and ended up washing up on the southern continent. We were lost, mother was injured, and I was suddenly the one who had to protect, navigate, heal my mother’s injury to the best of my young knowledge, and hunt for us both.” He grew silent for a few beats, then went on.

Meanwhile, my sister, Faite, had vanished. And my father, believing myself and my mother lost, started trying to starve himself to death, while Zuriel fought to keep him alive, hunt for them both, and keep him healthy. We finally got back in the Summer. It was like a breath of fresh air to see the Bifrost – the land bridge between the continents – and realize I knew where we were. We ran into Zuriel there.” He stopped to cock his head at her, sapphire eyes twinkling. ”I’m not boring you yet, am I?”