tangled in the years

Ah, the dry humor he remembered from his puphood. It took him right back to the between days of fighting off one cold after another, when he’d been feeling a bit better enough to play pounce with her tail in the times when she was able to settle in from patrols.

Her words on Domari and Justice brought a faint smile. “Perhaps.”

She turned the conversation to himself, and his eyes dropped away, thinking. There was much that he’d accomplished in his five years. He’d worked hard for it, beaten two broken legs and several broken ribs and made it out still strong. He’d had two amazing best friends, and lost them both.

“Ah, well. I worked hard and made it to Sentinel. Aurielle made the change to Valhalla shortly after you passed on. Essentially, I’m the primary Beta. I don’t have a partner Beta – a Lodestar – yet; I thought for a long time it was going to be Caelia, but she fell behind and lost motivation. I had a best friend; two of them. Both gone, now. Nolan Adravendi, Aurielle’s cousin through Baine. He fell from a cliff in the north and he didn’t make it…”

The loss still hurt. The tall young man had barely begun adulthood, only for it to be snuffed out at the bottom of a long fall.

“And there was Malalia. She wasn’t in Valhalla. There’s a pack called the Ashen Armada, led by Sirius Fatalis. Things are a little tense right now. Lia went missing and, Sirius being Sirius, I don’t doubt he thinks I did something to her. I spent a little time healing in the Armada after I fell off a mountain, so I got a pretty good idea of his character. Paranoid, if determined to take care of his pack, and possessive. Lia made it to Reaper before she was even two. From what I guess, that’s like the alpha’s right paw, like you were with Aurielle.”

His lips pursed, considering, before he admitted, “Over time, I’ve come to understand that there could have been a lot more than friendship with her, but… I could never have asked her to leave her pack and family that she’d found there for me, not with what Sirius’s mentality seems to be, and I cannot see any home I would ever want but here in Valhalla. But I refuse to believe she’s dead, not until I see a body.”

His toes flexed, bear claws digging into the soil with a faint creak of leather strips. Crystal drifted in to land on the nearest standing stone, and his eyes drifted to the owl. “I made a couple of friends of another kind, though. I found Crystaloria here with a broken wing and she’s been with me ever since. And a Mandrill named Enito. Grumpy and usually ready to smack someone with a stick if they look at him crossways.”

His head tilted thoughtfully as he went one, “We won a raid the winter prior to this last. Aurielle picked the dead of night in the middle of a blizzard for it. It was pre-planned with our neighbor, Aerie, for practice. I lost my fight.” A rye smile and shrug.

Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Hear" ---- Think