Just Around the Riverbend

The enraptured fascination that painted Talyssa's sweet face brought a warm, loving smile to her father's face. Artorias loved seeing his children learn and explore their world, just as he loved feeding that sense of wonder each of them possessed. His own mother had done the same for him and he fondly recollected on all the adventures Tamsyn had taken him on to foreign lands just so he could see more of the wide, wide world. He had never doubted that he would also one day get to share in that parental experience, but getting to live it was entirely different and radically different from anything he could have expected. While they made their way carefully down the sloping earth, Taly asked him about the size of the waterfall. The older wolf glanced over to the falls, which were by no means meager, but also far from the largest he had ever seen. "These falls are not small, but there are much bigger ones out there," he explained,  glancing down to his little pup at his paws. "There's a set of waterfalls just south of our home called the Lazuli Falls. They are much larger than these and flow into crystal clear pools at the bottom." While all of nature was beautiful, there was a certain sort of grandeur that came with large scale waterfalls. Perhaps he would need to take Taly there someday.

During their descent, Artorias kept a close eye on Lys. He wanted to empower his daughter to try things for herself, but that didn't mean he was going to let her get hurt either. As they neared the bottom, the sound of rocks shifting and giving way snapped the alpha wolf's attention back up to his gasping daughter just in time to see her paws slip and the gravel behind them begin to slide. With practiced paws, Artorias turned his feet sideways to slow and stop his descent, reaching out with one dire-sized paw to catch Talyssa around her midsection before she lost her balance, then braced himself. Although it wasn't a dangerous landslide, even a little loose rock could cause a wolf to lose their footing and take a tumble. "Whoa! I gotcha, sweetheart." Artorias held his stance while the loose stones went sliding past them to clatter harmlessly to the ground below. Once the mini landslide had passed and the ground was stable again, Art gently lowered Taly back to her own paws so she could finish climbing down the slope with him. "Okay, nice and easy now. We're almost at the bottom," he said to reassure her with a confident smile, taking the lead once more.

When their paws had finally hit solid earth once more, Artorias breathed a sigh of relief and looked back up to the shale slope they had come down. A close call, yet not too dangerous, but certainly enough to spook a young pup. Amber eyes turning back down to his daughter, Art asked, "Are you okay, Taly? Did the rocks catch your paws?" His primary concern was making sure his child hadn't gotten hurt. The next would be teaching her about the risks of landslides while navigating risky terrain.

"Artorias" | "Carpathian"