Post by tad on Jan 31, 2010 20:02:13 GMT -5
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Hilltop Vista
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Characters involved:
Siwa ~ Female Juve. Wolf
Skelaghe ~ Female Wolf
The wind has picked up a little. Instead of the dead, still heat common to summer days there is a soft breeze blowing by the hill. It rustles the leaves of the trees nearby, and tickles the hawk feather tangled into Siwa's ruff. She is sitting a little apart from the sleeping bodies of the others, her eyes closed, her brows furrowed and her mouth slightly open. It looks as though she's listening very hard for something. All at once, she shudders and her eyes open. "Oh no," she murmurs to herself, staring at the treetops.
Skelaghe spends as much of her time genuinely dreaming as she used to spend simply daydreaming, these days. When she actually has the time to sleep, she happily takes it. Even tired as she tends to be, thouh, when she hears a nearby voice, her ears twitch and she opens her eyes. That's all, to begin with, though moments later, she yawns and stretches out, preparing to stand up. She hasn't spoted Siwa, but as she is now awake, she listens much more attentively to what is going on around her.
Inside Siwa's head, the soft muttering voices of the trees are agitated. "I can't..," she talks to herself again, getting frustrated with the impossible task of separating one voice from another. When they all clamor so at once, how can she make out the message? It's been a while since she actually WANTED to understand them -- in the past, her ability has more frightening than its ever been useful -- but things are different now. If something's coming, she wants Skelaghe to know. The Alphess's face swims into her thoughts and Siwa turns reflexively and, to her relief, sees the adult awake. "Mistress Skelaghe!" she calls softly, not wanting to wake the others.
Skelaghe first looks to Siwa when the girl says she can't... can't do what? She hardly hesitates at all in standing and approaching the girl, her tail relaxed behind her as she does. Her voice is as quiet as Siwa's, and compasisonate, as she replies, "What is it, Siwa?" A nightmare, maybe? That's the first thing that Skelaghe thinks, anyway.
She waits for the Alphess to approach close enough, and only then does it occur to Siwa how BIZARRE she's going to sound. Terrified as she is of losing Skelaghe's kindness, this is no trivial matter. Siwa hesitates, but not for long, and after a deep breath she says calmly, "Please, Mistress.. I ain't mad, but this is going to sound awful strange. I can.. hear the nature voices. There's them as lives in the wind and the water and in the trees, and right now them in the trees is all torn up about.. about something." She has a fierce urge to lower her eyes and look at the ground at this point as her embarrassment peaks, but she forces herself to ignore it. "I THINK they're saying they're afeared for the winter. This winter.. I think it's going to be real bad. More bad than the trees have seen in a long while."
It's possible that the girl had a nightmare. It's possible that she just has a really active imagination. Or, it's possible the spirits really do speak to her. Skelaghe does not lose her compassionate demeanor as she listens to and watches Siwa. What Skelaghe is mostly uncertain about is whether Siwa's concern is for herself, as it would be for most pups, or for the pack. Without knowing that, she can't be certain how to best comfort the child who tries to be far too adult-like, sometimes. "Shhh. I don't think you're mad. You shouldn't worry, child. You will stay here, and be safe, with us, through the winter, okay?" Skelaghe has never seen a winter where she did not lose a disturbing amount of weight. Last winter was particularly rough, as a great deal of food went to her pups instead of to her, and this winter may be much the same, but she is convinced they will pull through.
There's no doubt that Siwa is far too young to have ever actually witnessed a winter, though she's heard much both from her ma and the general clamor of the voices about what it's like. Hunger, silence, and bone-deep cold. At Skelaghe's calming tone, Siwa relaxes a little. To someone who's only heard of it naturally the thought of these strange harsh months is frightening, so the offer to stay through the winter does not go unnoticed or unappreciated. Siwa is further soothed, and she flattens her ears as the tree-voices continue to grouse and moan. "I try not to hear them, but sometimes I can't help it," she reflects, finally dropping her gaze. "I'm glad you don't think I'm mad, though."
"It is never wise to try to ignore whatever it is that the spirits, that nature, that whatever it is is trying to tell you, Siwa." Even if it /is/ though a dream or her imagination. Skelaghe lowers her head to nuzzle against the young girl, as though to reassure her that she will not be judged for what, yes, might really be madness, even if Skelaghe does not believe it is. "If they bother you so, perhaps you could try speaking back, let them know you are lsitening? So many of us do not hear anything they say, even if they are screaming it." Even now, Skelaghe hears nothing other than the wind through leaves.
Siwa herself is still undecided on that matter. The only thing that gives her cause to think, wishfully perhaps, that the voices are real and not just budding insanity was the fact that her ma said she could hear them too. There were those in their old pack who said her ma was mad too, though they were happy enough to have her around to help when someone got sick or injured. There is so much about Skelaghe's manner that reminds her of her mother, and Siwa can't help but smile, though sadly. "That's what my ma used to say, too. She said that I MIGHT go mad if I tried to ignore them too long, especially when they want to be heard. It was the spirits, or whatever they are, what led me to Ute." The girl shifts a little nervously, since this feels like a natural segue into the other thing she knows she must tell Skelaghe. "Mistress Skelaghe, there's something else that- that I need to tell you. Haht' said that if I have a secret and I don't speak of it, that things would only get worse. But I want you to know first."
The girl's nervousness is clear, and in an attempt to set Siwa at ease, Skelahe lies down, so that her head is more at Siwa's level, before she responds, "I'm listening." Skelaghe does not try to guess what might be coming. She knows there has to be something dark in the girl's past, given how young and thin she was when she arrived, how clearly traumatized she is, so she'll approach this with all the seriousness it deserves, unlike when one of her children has a "secret".
The girl watches Skelaghe out of the corner of her eye, ready for any number of hostile reactions to what she's about to say. She's been thinking about it ever since her conversation with Haht', pondering out just what she would say. There's really no way for her story not to sound insane, but Skelaghe is so kind and motherly, Siwa has a glimmer of hope that she'll also be forgiving. "Well, I wanted to tell you how.. how I got to be in the state I was when you found me on the border. As I say, them voices led me there. They didn't call Ute by its name, but they said this place was peaceful and good and that the folks here were kind." She swallows and shuts her eyes, reaching back into her mind to open doors that have been locked up tight. "I come from a pack of wolves that are so different than Ute. They was only kind among themselves. My ma did things for them. She knew things, and could help when one of them got sick or hurt, so they let her stay. Sometimes she warned them of things when the spirits would talk to her, but they didn't like that as much. They called it unnatural, but she stayed because.. she said she loved them and knew that they needed her."
That clearly is not the end of the story, so Skelaghe remains in silence, listening. Whatever judgement Siwa is waiting for is not coming. Skelaghe had already decided that Siwa's parents, or mother, as the case may be, must have died. It may be important to the girl to tell how she died. Though Skelaghe already wants to comfort Siwa, she waits, instead of doing anything that might make this harder for Siwa to tell.
Had she known the sort of comforting urges Skelaghe was already fighting, Siwa would thank her for restraining them. She yearns for such affection, naturally, but indeed it would only make things that much harder. "By and by, one of them took sick. My ma soothed him best she could, but it weren't enough and his end came fast. My ma and me were out some days later, she was teaching me more about hearing the nature voices, and she started to feel strange. She'd caught the sick from the one she'd tried to help. She sent me to find the Alphas to tell them and get them to come help. I was so a-feared for her; I ran fast as I could and found the others quick enough. They said they would come as soon as they got someone to watch the pups. I went back to my ma..." Siwa stops here, having come to what is still the hardest part for her to think of. Everything that happened afterward, all the fear and horror, does not compare to this. Her voice trembles as she goes on, though it also starts to rise as some of the anger resurfaces. "It took them five days. /Five days/! And how many times did ma drop everything and go to them, when they was sick or hungry or had pups coming? And by then.. she was dead."
Skelaghe's attention is fully on Siwa, and so Toyo goes unnoticed for the time being. Though her words cannot mean much, she says, "I am terribly sorry that they left your mother to die alone like that, Siwa." That's all the alphaess says, for now. If this is all of Siwa's "secret" then Skelaghe will attempt to do more to console her, but she cannot see why Siwa might have been reluctant to relate this. If it had seemed that the girl simply found the tale too painful to relate, then Skelaghe would understand more, but Siwa seemed afraid of how Skelaghe might respond to the story.
"All that time.. I stayed by her. Don't know how I never took the sick too, but.." Siwa shuts her eyes tight and says the next few things very quickly, wanting to get it over and done with so that she might never think of it again. "I stayed, even when ma was gone, and her- and the rot begun to come, and the vulture-birds. I drove them away. The reek was on her, but I stayed for days.. By the time the pack got there, I.. I'd gone full /mad/, Mistress," Siwa confesses hoarsely, though her eyes are hard and dry. "I /hated/ every hair on their bodies. I ran at them, I snarled, I told them to go away. I tried to bite them. They said I'd must have got the sick too, that I was crazed, and that I would spread it to the rest of them.... They left for a bit, but then they came back. They started to chase me, I thought at first just to drive me away, but then they were hunting me. Them I'd thought was family, they was hunting me down like a fat deer to slaughter." After this, Siwa's shoulders slump and she seems to deflate, as though relieved that the story is finally out. She goes on in a softer and far less distressed tone, determined to finish her story. "Somehow I got away. The nature voices was telling me which way to go and where to hide. I ain't sure how long I was out there a'fore I followed the voices to Ute.." Finally through, she lets out a sigh, marveling at the relief and the exhaustion she feels. Though she's afraid to look at Skelaghe, Siwa eventually does and her expression is a little anxious as she waits for the older female's reaction.
"Come here, puppy." Those are the only words that Skelaghe says, and even they are in a compassionate tone. Siwa must know anything that the alphaess could say to comfort her. She was distraught over the loss of her mother. Or maybe she was, in fact, sick, but it did not destroy her as it had the older wolves. The only thing that actually matters is for Skelaghe to rassure the young female that she will not be run off from Ute, and she can do that better by touch than with words. Indeed, she does not even wait for Siwa to approach her. Rather, she moves to place a gentle paw over Siwa's back, to nuzzle gently at the top of the young girl's head.
Siwa's not sick - at least, not in any physical way. But the trauma of betrayl, being hunted, and especially the horror of a rotting body certainly affected her for the worse, and have left gaping emotional wounds. Blue-green eyes widen at Skelaghe's words, and warmth floods her as Siwa realizes that she must be forgiven. Crouching low, the girl belly-crawls a bit closer to the Alphess and gratefully presses her nose against Skelaghe's forepaw.
Skelaghe licks lovingly at the top of the young girl's head. Forgiven, perhaps, but then, Skelaghe does not believe Siwa has done anything for which she must be forgiven. So long as the girl reains in silence, Skelaghe will do the same, just hold the girl close to her to convince Siwa that she will not have to run any further.
Hilltop Vista
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Characters involved:
Siwa ~ Female Juve. Wolf
Skelaghe ~ Female Wolf
The wind has picked up a little. Instead of the dead, still heat common to summer days there is a soft breeze blowing by the hill. It rustles the leaves of the trees nearby, and tickles the hawk feather tangled into Siwa's ruff. She is sitting a little apart from the sleeping bodies of the others, her eyes closed, her brows furrowed and her mouth slightly open. It looks as though she's listening very hard for something. All at once, she shudders and her eyes open. "Oh no," she murmurs to herself, staring at the treetops.
Skelaghe spends as much of her time genuinely dreaming as she used to spend simply daydreaming, these days. When she actually has the time to sleep, she happily takes it. Even tired as she tends to be, thouh, when she hears a nearby voice, her ears twitch and she opens her eyes. That's all, to begin with, though moments later, she yawns and stretches out, preparing to stand up. She hasn't spoted Siwa, but as she is now awake, she listens much more attentively to what is going on around her.
Inside Siwa's head, the soft muttering voices of the trees are agitated. "I can't..," she talks to herself again, getting frustrated with the impossible task of separating one voice from another. When they all clamor so at once, how can she make out the message? It's been a while since she actually WANTED to understand them -- in the past, her ability has more frightening than its ever been useful -- but things are different now. If something's coming, she wants Skelaghe to know. The Alphess's face swims into her thoughts and Siwa turns reflexively and, to her relief, sees the adult awake. "Mistress Skelaghe!" she calls softly, not wanting to wake the others.
Skelaghe first looks to Siwa when the girl says she can't... can't do what? She hardly hesitates at all in standing and approaching the girl, her tail relaxed behind her as she does. Her voice is as quiet as Siwa's, and compasisonate, as she replies, "What is it, Siwa?" A nightmare, maybe? That's the first thing that Skelaghe thinks, anyway.
She waits for the Alphess to approach close enough, and only then does it occur to Siwa how BIZARRE she's going to sound. Terrified as she is of losing Skelaghe's kindness, this is no trivial matter. Siwa hesitates, but not for long, and after a deep breath she says calmly, "Please, Mistress.. I ain't mad, but this is going to sound awful strange. I can.. hear the nature voices. There's them as lives in the wind and the water and in the trees, and right now them in the trees is all torn up about.. about something." She has a fierce urge to lower her eyes and look at the ground at this point as her embarrassment peaks, but she forces herself to ignore it. "I THINK they're saying they're afeared for the winter. This winter.. I think it's going to be real bad. More bad than the trees have seen in a long while."
It's possible that the girl had a nightmare. It's possible that she just has a really active imagination. Or, it's possible the spirits really do speak to her. Skelaghe does not lose her compassionate demeanor as she listens to and watches Siwa. What Skelaghe is mostly uncertain about is whether Siwa's concern is for herself, as it would be for most pups, or for the pack. Without knowing that, she can't be certain how to best comfort the child who tries to be far too adult-like, sometimes. "Shhh. I don't think you're mad. You shouldn't worry, child. You will stay here, and be safe, with us, through the winter, okay?" Skelaghe has never seen a winter where she did not lose a disturbing amount of weight. Last winter was particularly rough, as a great deal of food went to her pups instead of to her, and this winter may be much the same, but she is convinced they will pull through.
There's no doubt that Siwa is far too young to have ever actually witnessed a winter, though she's heard much both from her ma and the general clamor of the voices about what it's like. Hunger, silence, and bone-deep cold. At Skelaghe's calming tone, Siwa relaxes a little. To someone who's only heard of it naturally the thought of these strange harsh months is frightening, so the offer to stay through the winter does not go unnoticed or unappreciated. Siwa is further soothed, and she flattens her ears as the tree-voices continue to grouse and moan. "I try not to hear them, but sometimes I can't help it," she reflects, finally dropping her gaze. "I'm glad you don't think I'm mad, though."
"It is never wise to try to ignore whatever it is that the spirits, that nature, that whatever it is is trying to tell you, Siwa." Even if it /is/ though a dream or her imagination. Skelaghe lowers her head to nuzzle against the young girl, as though to reassure her that she will not be judged for what, yes, might really be madness, even if Skelaghe does not believe it is. "If they bother you so, perhaps you could try speaking back, let them know you are lsitening? So many of us do not hear anything they say, even if they are screaming it." Even now, Skelaghe hears nothing other than the wind through leaves.
Siwa herself is still undecided on that matter. The only thing that gives her cause to think, wishfully perhaps, that the voices are real and not just budding insanity was the fact that her ma said she could hear them too. There were those in their old pack who said her ma was mad too, though they were happy enough to have her around to help when someone got sick or injured. There is so much about Skelaghe's manner that reminds her of her mother, and Siwa can't help but smile, though sadly. "That's what my ma used to say, too. She said that I MIGHT go mad if I tried to ignore them too long, especially when they want to be heard. It was the spirits, or whatever they are, what led me to Ute." The girl shifts a little nervously, since this feels like a natural segue into the other thing she knows she must tell Skelaghe. "Mistress Skelaghe, there's something else that- that I need to tell you. Haht' said that if I have a secret and I don't speak of it, that things would only get worse. But I want you to know first."
The girl's nervousness is clear, and in an attempt to set Siwa at ease, Skelahe lies down, so that her head is more at Siwa's level, before she responds, "I'm listening." Skelaghe does not try to guess what might be coming. She knows there has to be something dark in the girl's past, given how young and thin she was when she arrived, how clearly traumatized she is, so she'll approach this with all the seriousness it deserves, unlike when one of her children has a "secret".
The girl watches Skelaghe out of the corner of her eye, ready for any number of hostile reactions to what she's about to say. She's been thinking about it ever since her conversation with Haht', pondering out just what she would say. There's really no way for her story not to sound insane, but Skelaghe is so kind and motherly, Siwa has a glimmer of hope that she'll also be forgiving. "Well, I wanted to tell you how.. how I got to be in the state I was when you found me on the border. As I say, them voices led me there. They didn't call Ute by its name, but they said this place was peaceful and good and that the folks here were kind." She swallows and shuts her eyes, reaching back into her mind to open doors that have been locked up tight. "I come from a pack of wolves that are so different than Ute. They was only kind among themselves. My ma did things for them. She knew things, and could help when one of them got sick or hurt, so they let her stay. Sometimes she warned them of things when the spirits would talk to her, but they didn't like that as much. They called it unnatural, but she stayed because.. she said she loved them and knew that they needed her."
That clearly is not the end of the story, so Skelaghe remains in silence, listening. Whatever judgement Siwa is waiting for is not coming. Skelaghe had already decided that Siwa's parents, or mother, as the case may be, must have died. It may be important to the girl to tell how she died. Though Skelaghe already wants to comfort Siwa, she waits, instead of doing anything that might make this harder for Siwa to tell.
Had she known the sort of comforting urges Skelaghe was already fighting, Siwa would thank her for restraining them. She yearns for such affection, naturally, but indeed it would only make things that much harder. "By and by, one of them took sick. My ma soothed him best she could, but it weren't enough and his end came fast. My ma and me were out some days later, she was teaching me more about hearing the nature voices, and she started to feel strange. She'd caught the sick from the one she'd tried to help. She sent me to find the Alphas to tell them and get them to come help. I was so a-feared for her; I ran fast as I could and found the others quick enough. They said they would come as soon as they got someone to watch the pups. I went back to my ma..." Siwa stops here, having come to what is still the hardest part for her to think of. Everything that happened afterward, all the fear and horror, does not compare to this. Her voice trembles as she goes on, though it also starts to rise as some of the anger resurfaces. "It took them five days. /Five days/! And how many times did ma drop everything and go to them, when they was sick or hungry or had pups coming? And by then.. she was dead."
Skelaghe's attention is fully on Siwa, and so Toyo goes unnoticed for the time being. Though her words cannot mean much, she says, "I am terribly sorry that they left your mother to die alone like that, Siwa." That's all the alphaess says, for now. If this is all of Siwa's "secret" then Skelaghe will attempt to do more to console her, but she cannot see why Siwa might have been reluctant to relate this. If it had seemed that the girl simply found the tale too painful to relate, then Skelaghe would understand more, but Siwa seemed afraid of how Skelaghe might respond to the story.
"All that time.. I stayed by her. Don't know how I never took the sick too, but.." Siwa shuts her eyes tight and says the next few things very quickly, wanting to get it over and done with so that she might never think of it again. "I stayed, even when ma was gone, and her- and the rot begun to come, and the vulture-birds. I drove them away. The reek was on her, but I stayed for days.. By the time the pack got there, I.. I'd gone full /mad/, Mistress," Siwa confesses hoarsely, though her eyes are hard and dry. "I /hated/ every hair on their bodies. I ran at them, I snarled, I told them to go away. I tried to bite them. They said I'd must have got the sick too, that I was crazed, and that I would spread it to the rest of them.... They left for a bit, but then they came back. They started to chase me, I thought at first just to drive me away, but then they were hunting me. Them I'd thought was family, they was hunting me down like a fat deer to slaughter." After this, Siwa's shoulders slump and she seems to deflate, as though relieved that the story is finally out. She goes on in a softer and far less distressed tone, determined to finish her story. "Somehow I got away. The nature voices was telling me which way to go and where to hide. I ain't sure how long I was out there a'fore I followed the voices to Ute.." Finally through, she lets out a sigh, marveling at the relief and the exhaustion she feels. Though she's afraid to look at Skelaghe, Siwa eventually does and her expression is a little anxious as she waits for the older female's reaction.
"Come here, puppy." Those are the only words that Skelaghe says, and even they are in a compassionate tone. Siwa must know anything that the alphaess could say to comfort her. She was distraught over the loss of her mother. Or maybe she was, in fact, sick, but it did not destroy her as it had the older wolves. The only thing that actually matters is for Skelaghe to rassure the young female that she will not be run off from Ute, and she can do that better by touch than with words. Indeed, she does not even wait for Siwa to approach her. Rather, she moves to place a gentle paw over Siwa's back, to nuzzle gently at the top of the young girl's head.
Siwa's not sick - at least, not in any physical way. But the trauma of betrayl, being hunted, and especially the horror of a rotting body certainly affected her for the worse, and have left gaping emotional wounds. Blue-green eyes widen at Skelaghe's words, and warmth floods her as Siwa realizes that she must be forgiven. Crouching low, the girl belly-crawls a bit closer to the Alphess and gratefully presses her nose against Skelaghe's forepaw.
Skelaghe licks lovingly at the top of the young girl's head. Forgiven, perhaps, but then, Skelaghe does not believe Siwa has done anything for which she must be forgiven. So long as the girl reains in silence, Skelaghe will do the same, just hold the girl close to her to convince Siwa that she will not have to run any further.