The small yearling made her way to the edge of the shallow stream that slipped through the territory. Looking down at the reflection, broken by ripples. She felt like she should know the face looking back at her, but the fog that clouded her thoughts was thick and difficult to break through. She was as much a stranger to herself as the rest of these wolves. The people she grew up with, and should have a trove of memories to look through.

She knew it was supposed to fade in time, but that seemed little consolation for the here and now. She sighed, brushing a paw across the surface, breaking her reflection. She got back to her paws, shaking the water from her toes. There was only one thing for it, really. She needed to make new memories.







"Speech"

Stranger. As he wandered across Insomnia's lands, the foreign scent reached his nose and grabbed his attention all at once. Someonehe wasn't familiar with was trespassing - or close to it. It didn't really matter which, not to him. Perhaps months ago he would've retreated upon realizing there was a problem that needed tending to, but he was trying to slow reintegrate into the pack, one painstaking step at a time.

He moved slowly toward the source of the smell, sightless eyes staring blankly ahead of him. Once it grew strong enough to signal that he was within earshot of the stranger, he paused and raised his head high, lips curling in a semblance of a sneer. "Who goes there?" There was no need for small talk or pleasantries, as far as he was concerned. She was a threat and he intended to figure out her intentions - and if needed, call for Medusa or someone higher up to deal with her.

A snarling voice caught her entirely unaware. She jumped in surprise heartbeat picking up in her chest. Her alarm also agitated the crystals in her throat, and she coughed, trying to clear the sensation. "H-hello. I'm Crypris, Widow's daughter" She said, surprised this wolf didn't know her. The drugs her kidnapper had fed her had shrouded her own memories and thoughts. She knew there was still a lot missing, and was waiting and hoping it would all come back to her. In the meanwhile, she had no context on this wolf, or knowledge of them. She didn't know if they had met before, but by his snarling voice, she thoughts that perhaps they had not.

The shy, tiny girl hunched up on herself a little trying to make herself a smaller target. "I-I'm sorry if this is your spot, I can leave" She squeaked out apologetically.

There was no retaliation from the stranger, only a feeble cough as the girl tried to clear her throat. Only upon creeping a tiny bit closer did he realized she was not entirely an intruder, and her words only confirmed that. She was Widow's daughter, Cryptis. And she sounded afraid, not at all a threat to Insomnia or any of its inhabitants, not unless she was a very convincing liar. A possibility, but unlikely, he concluded. It was something he'd keep in the back of his mind though. No one was to be trusted, not completely, even packmates and even those he had practically grown up with. Trusting simply wasn't worth it.

"Cryptis? Hm." Veigar considered it for a long while. "This isn't my spot. No need. I guess I just haven't met you before." His mind was spinning, stuck between distrust and worry that he may frightened Cryptis enough for her to complain to Widow, and if word got back that he was being unnecessarily aggressive to one of his peers... he wasn't sure he wanted that sort of attention. Laying low and going basically unnoticed had been his saving grace for so long, and he wanted to make his reintegration slow and deliberate. "I'm Veigar. You been around here this whole time?" His head was low, hoping she didn't notice the way his eyes were hazy and unfocused.

She waited for the intimidating stranger to answer. Keeping her eyes down in the vicinity of their tan paws as she did so. After a moment, it seemed like the other wolf toned down their aggressive stance. Perhaps catching the scent of Widow on her coat. She let out a slow breath, wondering if she should still be worried or not.

“You can call me Triss… if you like” She said as Veigar told her his name. She was pretty confident at this point that this was not a wolf she was supposed to ‘know’ prior to the drugs her captor had given her. “I was raised here, but I was gone for a little while. Its… sort of a long story” She said, not sure if she wanted to get into it.








"Speech"

Trying to discern how another wolf was feeling without sight was a difficult thing. The fear was notable in her voice, though it seemed to calm slightly as Veigar's own aggression did. Feeling like he had some grasp of control over an interaction did wonders for his confidence; he lived in constant fear of things going sideways before he could recover. The predictability was reassuring for the blind wolf.

She said he could call her Triss and he nodded, recording that to memory. He'd remember her voice and scent, and her name, he was certain of that. "Triss," he repeated quietly. "A long story? I have plenty of time." His voice wasn't half as aggressive as it had been but it had an air of authority to it that was undeniable. After a beat he sat down, expecting her to get into it even if she didn't sound particularly eager to.

She sighed as the adult wolf sat down across from her. His words and manner made it clear that she wasn’t getting out of this easily. Remembering the aggression with which he had met her just moments before, she was reluctant to cross him. So she closed her own eyes, and tried to assemble her thoughts. She didn’t like to talk about it, but what else could she do? “There was this man… he kidnapped me, and took me away. I’m not sure for how long, because he drugged me and kept me on an island not far from here.” Her voice got softer as she spoke, and heat flooded her cheeks. She hated how much she sounded like a victim in this. How much she was a victim.

“I don’t remember much about the time because of, well, the drugs. Then my mum Widow found me and took me back home. And now I’m here, the end” She said, hoping the finality in her voice would keep him from asking any more questions about it.


"Speech"

Veigar tried hard to decipher as much as he could about Triss without seeing her. At first she'd sounded terrified of him, but she seemed to have relaxed slightly, no doubt due to his own aggression lessening. Unless she'd noted his blindness - which was allegedly something others could tell about him now, not that he had any idea how his eyes looked.

She explained she'd been drugged and kidnapped and held somewhere away from here. "For what purpose?" He asked then, wondering. Someone being kidnapped for no apparent reason seemed a strange concept to him though not completely unbelievable. He absolutely knew how cruel wolves could be though. Perhaps her kidnapping had been purely malicious. Even still.. why wasn't her mother hunting down this alleged kidnapper? Or had bringing her home to heal been more of a priority?

Veigar didn't know, but he was intensely curious anyway, perhaps inappropriately so. If her discomfort in talking about the subject was apparent to him, clearly he didn't care. "And you have no idea who he was? Your mother hasn't gone looking for him? Or sent anyone to?"

Now that she had room to think, it was all too easy to imagine what horrors might have awaited her. Held by a man that liked to kidnap young children away from the protection of their pack. She would never know what his true intention would be now. If he had intended her to be a bargaining chip, a source of income, or simply a play thing in his collection. Her mother had saved her from that. She knew she didn't like her imaginings, and wasn't happy with the wolf in front of her for inflicting them on her. There were frightening gaps in her memory where anything could have happened, and she shivered at the thought. Feeling more then a little lost. Would she ever get them back? But, more importantly, would she ever want those memories back?

"My mother didn't bother asking questions before she tore him apart." She said stiffly, neatly answering all of his questions with that statement.

Empathy was not something Veigar was capable of. Maybe once, but certainly not now, not when his world had grown so dark and so lonely. Instead all he felt was a morbid sense of curiosity as he questioned Cryptis about what had happened to her, wanting to pry even further, but she didn't give up much information. Surely she had thought about it, at least since she'd come home and begun to heal? Veigar wondered what sort of sick purposes she might've been utilized for, but his thoughts didn't go very far. At least she was lucky enough that she didn't seem to remember - or maybe she was lying to him.

"Fair," he said finally, in response to her final note. At least that answered some of his questions. even if the rest would remain unanswered. He couldn't help the sudden but very misplaced feeling of envy that suddenly nagged at him though. His own maternal figures were nowhere to be found; he'd give anything for that kind of devotion, for someone to bring down justice and retribution following a mistreatment like that. Talk about mommy issues. "And what do you plan to do now that you're back in Insomnia?"