Post by Pavane on Oct 21, 2011 22:52:23 GMT -5
Helaku - Male Wolf
Niyt - Female Wolf
---Two-River Fork---
The night was silent, as silent as the day Helaku arrived at the waterfall in poor state. Tonight, however, was better than that day. The wind didn't blow, but the air was still cold. No clouds occupied the sky, giving the perfect view of all the stars. Helaku hadn't moved too much since his last encounter with Lexus and Niyt; a new hole in the snow was made and he curled into it as he stared at the open sky. It had been a long while since he just sat and gazed at them, not since the last night he spent with his mother Wuth. Despite how perfect everything appeared to be on this night, Helaku was still in turmoil on the inside. Helaku wasn't one to have nightmares, or even dreams for that matter. The only thing he remembered every time he awakened was nothing but cold, still black. Not tonight, though.
Niyt has been and gone and been again, moving on since the last time she talked with Helaku. It's only coincidence that brings her this way again, threading her way along a path through the reeds. It passes near where the wolf is curled up in the snow, but not directly to him, and if she continues as she is now, it seems she'll simply pass him by.
Helaku's ears slowly moved at the sound of another being close by. Scent to him it was Niyt, but what could he say? She wouldn't want to talk to him again. He considered calling out to her, but what would that bring? As far as his mind was concerned his chances with her, friend or otherwise, were entirely shot. At least, among Miakoda it would have been that way. He tempted to call to her, but only silence came from his muzzle. Instead, he curled back into his hole and shivered. She had more important things to do, most likely.
He curled up more tightly than before, but it did little good. He crawled out of his hole and sniffed the air for Niyt's exact direction. Slowly he walked after her, eventually passinginto the reeds. For him it was even colder out of the hole than in it. He was able to survive Winter, but unlike other wolves he had discomfort with the climate. The incident that stunted the growth of fur on his neck and shoulders allowed a lot of the air to pass through most of his coat if the wind was wrong or if the temperature dipped low enough. "Niyt..." he said, his voice trembling.
Along walks Niyt, unswerving from her course. Until Helaku speaks. Then, she stops. She turns to face him. Her nose twitches to confirm what his voice has told her, and her head nods slightly, an acknowledgement of his presence. "Helaku," she replies - and then waits, to see what more will come of this.
He knew it. She likely didn't want to talk to him. He should just let her go on her way. He'd only slow the pack down in the Winter nights like this. There were times he wished she could see him, but right now wasn't one of those times. "I'm...c-cold..." he said, his voice still trembling. "Hard to keep warm." For a wolf to say that--it was absurd. Wolves had extra fur in the Winter to shield them from the frigid environment. She'd probably think he was being dumb.
Niyt simply nods her head; and there is neither scorn nor rejection in her posture. "The wind is strong, here," she answers. No wolf can stand against the seasons; her father stood fast in winter, yet panted in the summer's heat. Wolves are simply mortals, and cannot do everything alone. That is why they have packs. "If you come to the riverbank, it is less." Further into the lands of her pack - and, indeed, "The others are there." She pauses for a moment, and then adds, "We can share warmth with you."
Helaku was hesitant to come closer but he made himself close the distance between her and him. He was close enough for her to feel the excess warmth that escaped his coat. It was more than it should have been. "Please..." he whispered, but even that was shaky. "I feel it almost everywhere." Helaku's physical fault? Endurance. He was built for sprinting, ambushing, short lengths of time in which he had to spend his energy. It was a signature trait from his mother; speed, accuracy, use of momentum sacrificed long term endurance and brute strength. Most Miakoda had those straights--the few that didn't were the upfront fighters while the rest resorted to shadows. In that, Helaku was a shadow in the simplest definition.
As Helaku approaches her, Niyt does the same. She steps against him, pressing herself to his side as he shivers. Her fur is thick, soft; well-suited to winter. Her ancestors came from the mountains, where they ran against the glaciers and frolicked in the chill valleys. They are not the largest of wolves, but they are adapted to the cold, and though Niyt lived in the desert as a puppy, the desert nights are also cold and her coat has not forgotten how to adapt to winter. So she leans against his side, breaking the wind somewhat with her slender body and sharing the warmth of it without any seeming compunctions.
Helaku's shivering continued, but it lessened the longer Niyt stood with him. His fur was thick, but not as thick as it probably should have been. His ancestors didn't come from the mountains, but the forests and plains. Then the coyote and one dog in his more distant ancestry likely didn't help with the situation. "Thank you," he whispered. "I'd not be this way...if not for wounds I sustained a few years ago."
Niyt stands beside Helaku, leaning against him to share her warmth as her father once did to her, when she was a pup. She's not the largest of wolves, but even so; she is a better bulwark against the cold than one wolf alone. She nods at the thanks, and says simply, "You're welcome." At the mention of the wounds, she tilts her head slightly, considering. It's true, sometimes the fur doesn't grow back entirely over injuries.
In Helaku's case, the wounds were caused by both animal and device of man. He didn't want to bore her with those details, however. A lot of wolves he encountered didn't know what Man was, or heard of Man and thought wolves who had exposure to man were diseased and fallen. "May we find a place to lay?" he asked. "It would be improper to make a female stand." What was that? Certainly not the Helaku that had been so rage-filled over the last few days. More like, it was a Helaku that hadn't been present since the first time they met. Then again, he might have spent so much energy on that rage that he wore himself out.
Niyt smiles a little, and nods her head. "We may," she replies. She doesn't comment on the change, save with her smile and how she responds to it - almost as though the Helaku of anger had never existed. As though there are two wolves, and this one is still the friend he started out to become. "There's a little gully, by the base of the hill," she says. "It's not very far... and it will give some shelter from the wind. This way..." She starts to walk, slow steps to let the chilled Helaku keep up and share her warmth. Even short journeys are difficult for the injured and half-frozen, but the shelter will be worth the travel.
Helaku kept pace with her, none too eager to have the cold cycling through his pelt again. He didn't have much to say in their movement. He was too weak from the exposure to think on anything else but her presence and warmth. The other Helaku was still there, but dying off. He said he couldn't do it anymore, but he never specified what 'it' was. "Everything you've said," he muttered, "has been close to the truth." Same Helaku, though his voice had broken. It was the voice of a wolf who had no goal, no aim, nothing. "Pup years...nothing but fighting, schooling in fighting. Even with my Ute father, Helaku, who tried to teach me other things...nothing but fighting, deception, underpawed tactics. No play like the pups here."
Niyt walks along with Helaku, the blind leading... the injured? What is Helaku, and what will he become? She listens, her ears perked in attention, as he speaks, but she doesn't interrupt. She's silent, though it's a listening silence rather than a judgmental one, as she tries to make sense of a world such as he describes. It's one very different than hers, where pups play freely and are beloved of the whole pack.
Their worlds were entirely different from each other and had little similarities aside from the fact they had packs. Wolves of the Redwood Barrens did not act like untainted wolves, having been corrupted by Man's influence. It all started with man cutting down a tree the early Miakoda held as sacred several generations back. Until that point, they were entirely peaceful. That history wasn't so well remembered by most.
Helaku thought of what to say next, but had a hard time doing so as he shivered again. "Mother hated it...after learning from Father. The other four Alphas beat her a lot after he disappeared. Stripped her status. Uncle kept me in the heirarchy. Opposed my mission to find Father....they probably beat him too..."
And still their worlds are foreign. Four Alphas? Even when her pack was made from two newly merged, there was only one pair called Alpha. This idea of strict hierarchy is strange to Niyt. Her pack has always been more of a family than anything. She knows the genealogy that connects them all, even when it's a matter of distant cousins and relations through mates. There are some wolves unrelated by blood, yes; but more often than not, they join the family tree sooner or later, whether by mating or adoption. Tariro is her alpha, but he is her uncle before that. Sometimes her pack argues and fights itself, but she can hardly even imagine something like what happened to Helaku's mother. If it did, the wolf would surely leave - alone, or with those of her family who were inclined to come along. Yet it seems that to a Miakoda wolf, all that is... normal? The way things are? She shakes her head, not in denial but simply in an attempt to comprehend something so strange.
Helaku pressed alittle closer to Niyt, savoring the warmth though his wasn't nearly as much as hers. "Miakoda was three small packs arranged into one," he said. "Each portion had a task." Most wolves did have only the parents and off spring as packs, others not so much. The Miakoda were by nature 'freaks' in this regard. "I left when a late juvenile..." And that explained the yearling rabbit comparison. Helaku never had sounded so broken before. It was as if he was telling things he was forbidden from telling. that was a truth itself. The Miakoda considered their operations none of the business of other packs to such an extent it was 'law' it not be spoken of. They were the superior, and that was that. The more he thought about it the more Helaku's voice broke. It was the root of all his problems. Lack of proper puphood, being forced to thinking as an adult, forced to think of heirarchy and...for less than a better word...warfare. It clashed so much with what his father and mother tried to teach under all that it made him a wreck and incompatible with the majority of other packs. In a sense, it unveiled an ugly truth of the Miakoda--they didn't want wolves to leave the pack and beable to function. It would give them a deadly enemy. The entire system was designed to "keep it in the pack".
Niyt nods slowly. Miakoda paranoia aside, it's not as though telling their structure will likely do any harm - they're many miles away, and not in any direction Niyt's family travels. She's silent for a few moments longer, and then she smiles. "Perhaps you should start over," she says. It's half joke, half serious. "Become a puppy again. Play. Learn. Let what you used to be become... just stories, told by another."
Just stories. That thought crept back into his mind. Who was he, really? He was Helaku II. But he could be anyone. The wolf made to crook his neck over Niyt's, braving the cold for just a few moments. "You're not like many wolves," he said. "You're different in a special way." And then he retreated behind her bulk for warmth. Was that his way of making an apology? Likely so.
The fur over the back of Niyt's neck is soft, and her tail gives a slow back-and-forth wag as Helaku rests his neck there for a few moments. His words are true, on one level, and perplexing on another, but she smiles at them nevertheless. They seem to be words well-meant, and she can untangle them at her leisure. Perhaps there will be further explanations, in time. She walks on a few moments longer, and then pauses. "We're here," she says - and there is the gorge she spoke of, earthen walls that curve up toward each other around a pocket big enough for two or perhaps three. In summer, it's open to the sky, but snow and ice have made a translucent roof overhead, and the ground inside is only lightly dusted with snow.
She wasn't kidding when she said it was shielded from the wind. It was too bad the shelter didn't last throughout the entire year or it would have been a good place to hide away. "This is a nice place," he said. "I've not seen anyone navigate as well as you do." A hint if content powered Hel's voice at that moment. He hadn't been able to socialize like this for a long time. The last wolf he recalled was Crescendo...whereever she was now. He lightly nudged her snout with his. "It is only proper that females get their pick of spots first."
Niyt smiles, and nudges back. "And I'd rather not have you climbing over me, so get in first," she replies in a tone of, yes, playful teasing. "I'll take the entrance." Her fur is thicker, after all; a practical matter, regardless that the entrance is the guard's spot, the place where the first responder rests. She stands, waiting for Helaku to step inside, and as she does, she answers his other comment. "Perhaps I have fewer distractions," she says with a slight smile, and then continues more seriously. "There's a shape to the world beneath our paws. Stone, earth, plants... they all have a feel to them, and they follow patterns."
Helaku did as she suggested. He curled into the small, cozy den first and awaited her. He took her teasing rather well for a wolf that wasn't taught how to accept teasing or play. "These are things wolves with sight often cannot feel," he said. "They rely too much on their eyes." He knew about patterns and textures, but certainly not to the extent that Niyt did. All he had was basic terrain understanding and experience in his roaming.
Niyt follows Helaku into the den, her paws gently stepping out until she finds exactly where he's settled and then lowering herself down with little shifts to adjust to lean her body against his, between him and the entrance. Touch is a substitute for sight, here; and she has learned well what can serve instead of that sight in many circumstances. She smiles, once she's settled. "Everything is give and take," she says. "I can feel the world around me, but I cannot see it. Others can see, but they cannot feel. I remember what a sunrise looks like. Now I only feel its warmth." She laughs a little. "And the warmth is still pleasant."
She remembered sunrise. She wasn't always blind, but would she trade what she has now for sight if she could have it? He curled up warmly against her when she settled down, his eyes peering up at her. He hadn't shared close quarters like this with any wolf since his mother or siblings. "If you don't mind me asking..." he said, "...how did you become blind?"
Niyt lowers her head to rest on her paws comfortably. She can't see anyhow, so why not relax? It's a comfortable way to spend the time as the snow dances in the gusting wind outside, and Niyt is easy and familiar with sharing warmth like this. At the question, she's silent for a few long moments. Perhaps she's offended? Or perhaps she's simply thinking what she wants to say, because when she eventually does speak, her tone is calm and even. "An accident, of sorts, that left its mark on me."
Helaku didn't push for more. If she wanted to tell him the details at a later time, then she would. He nuzzled closer, closing his eyes to get a feel of wamrth rather then just the sight of the source. It was only fair as she couldn't see, that he close his eyes for now though he was purely awake. "You could say the same happened to me," he said. "My Father had his marking....and now I have mine."
The little pocket traps the warmth well, heating up around the two wolves to make a nice spot to relax in despite the winter chill. "I don't mind it," says Niyt after a few moments. "I'm different, yes. There are things I can't do, or I must do differently than the others. Sometimes there are things I'd like to see, even... but it's how things are. I'm still here, and I'm not alone. That's enough for me."
This was...nice. A warm little den; certainly something he hadn't felt in a long time. "No, you're not alone," he answered with a brief nudge of his snout. "There is something I've seen that many wolves here have not seen," he said. "Do you remember seeing any lakes when you still had your eyes?"
"When I was a puppy," says Niyt, "We lived in the desert, near an oasis. I would go there sometimes, to explore along the shore and play in the shallows. We sometimes visited the waterfall here too, and I saw the deep pool at its base and the river that flows from there." She smiles. "Not quite lakes, either of them, but not so distant from one either." Then she tilts her head to the side, curious. "What is it you have seen?"
That was a lovely image she presented. perhaps she was the pack's story teller, like how Skelaghe was for the Ute. "That sounds like a nice place," he said. He had his reasons for asking about lakes so she'd have something visual in her mind to compare what he would describe. "The great sea," he said. "It wasn't far from where I was born. Imagine those pools you played in...many times larger, so large there's nothing but water. You can't drink it; the water isn't the same as the water in our rivers. Many creatures live in the water. According to the birds that come in to the shore, there is land out there, but so far away that only flying can get one there. So big, they say hundreds, maybe thousands of wolf packs could have territories between our shore and the next."
Niyt smiles as she listens, and then nods. "It sounds like a desert of water," she suggests. "Going on for what seems forever." The desert, it turns out, seems the closer image to what he describes than the ponds she's known; a place defined more by its extent than by its nature. "Nothing's really forever, though. The desert turns to grasslands, this great sea turns to land again. I suppose that land will turn once more into a great sea, land and water together."
Helaku blinked. "Where did you learn of that?" he asked. Not too many wolves spoke in such terms that he knew. Most were only educated about their own territories and regions, not the entire world as it was. Niyt was proving herself among the most knowledgeable wolves he'd encountered--and he had no problem with that.
Niyt tilts her head, a little confused. "The desert?" she asks. "I lived there." There, and along the river's bank, and visited the forest and the mountains her family came from... and she is by no means the most traveled of her relatives, or of other wolves who have visited with this pack for a while. She has heard many stories of places more distant than she has ever been. Enough to know that the world lives in those cycles, though she has not seen them all; there can be no land so great that it does not lead to water, no water so large there is no land at the end. It's part of that same philosophy of hers that sees life leading to death leading to life again. Cycles everywhere, at so many scales of being.
"I mean the changing of environs," he said. "Few wolves ever talk of such things. Most are centric to their own lives." The more Niyt spoke, the more he liked her. She wasn't a simple wolf who was blind, but an educated wolf who had sight. She knew things; he knew things. In a way, they had a similarity. He closed his eyes one more.
"When the wind blows, it passes over everything. The desert wind carries the hint of the mountains still," says Niyt with a smile. "Things change, but they never truly end. The sun rises; the sun sets. Summer goes to winter and back again. Everything goes in cycles. I do not have to see this great sea of yours to believe it exists; or to think there are bits of land in it, scattered as the lakes and rivers are scattered across the land. There is a pattern to things; cycles within cycles, things forever changing. Even a wolf can run far enough to see where the straggly grasses take root in the sand; how they turn to lush greenery and the trees reach up among them. How those trees grow thick, until the ground cannot be seen for them. How those trees give way once more to grass, and then hard earth beneath the paws. A different place, and yet it follows a cycle."
That was a different way of looking at things. The way she described the land and sea was as if it had its own character rather than the view he'd favored--it had features and they must be used. That was the Miakoda approach. Nothing to her refinery. There was no cyclic issue there. Only: There is. There Isn't. Few in between. "So, there is no real...end..."
Niyt smiles, and nods. "The sun keeps rising. The river keeps flowing." All those cycles, neither beginning nor ending but simply /being/, overlapped and intertwined with each other. They're not practical. They're not useful. It's an explanation and view of the world more spiritual than pragmatic. Dynamic equilibrium. "Everything changes forever, according to patterns."
Always changing, never ending. Things were easier to deal with when it was thought of like that. It applied to everything he could think of. He huddled just a little closer, as close as he could to Niyt. Part of him didn't want to leave this den, but eventually they'd both have to for food and what not. With her, it was as if the cold outside didn't even exist. "Is this a Cerulean thought or just yours?"
Well, is it? Niyt ponders on that question as Helaku presses close against her and she shifts to lean back against him, warm and comfortable. Certainly, it fits with what her mother and father told her, when they spoke of philosophy, but she's not sure they ever put it in quite those words. Some of the songs her mother sang hinted at it, some of her father's words about the spirits referenced it. "A little of both," she says at last. She doesn't think anyone in her family would argue with it, if they heard. Though... "There are some of Cerulean who would disagree. Coinin, for one." He has been accepted into the pack, after all.
The idea of cycles fit with his father's views, and his mother's adopted views. Not so much the Miakoda, but the old Ute would likely have agreed with cyclic thinking. So, it may not have exactly been a Cerulean thing, but mostly. He murmured against her, his ears remaining perked for anything she might say. "Niyt," he said. "You may call me Snow. It's what my mother and Skelaghe called me." Technically, it was Snow Eyes, but shortened to Snow was better. "I believe I'm ready for being part of a pack."
Niyt leans against the other wolf, here in this little haven from the snow and cold that's made, in part, from that very snow, and her ears perk to his words. "Snow," she repeats softly, and smiles. "It's a nice name." She's quiet for another moment, considering on the other part of what he said, and then she nods. Perhaps he is.
The insides of his ears turned a light red from the compliment. He hated the name the Miakoda gave him--Wanageeska. He had always been 'Snow'. Still, he'd call himself Helaku II, but for those close to him, Snow. She she leaned against him, he accepted her weight. "Thank you."
Niyt shifts her position slightly, and she rests her muzzle back along Helaku's shoulders with a smile. Outside, the snow has begun to fall instead of simply being swirled around by the wind, but in here, it's still pleasant. "You should speak with Tariro," she says quietly after a while, returning to the matter of joining a pack. Of course, Helaku has already done that - sort of - but she rather suspects the Helaku of this moment would have a different conversation with her uncle than he has so far.
"I should," he said. He wasn't quite sure 'how' he would speak with Tariro, only that it would have to be done. The conversation would be different. He wasn't sure entirely how he would handle it since the only thing Tariro had seen was...what he'd seen. "Perhaps it would be best if I hunted something substantial for the pack...something more than rabbits...prior that speaking."
Niyt nods somewhat, and smiles. Is such a gift needed? She doesn't think so. But if nothing else, it might well put Helaku... Snow... on more comfortable ground to do so. For that, if nothing else, the suggestion has merit. She closes her eyes for a moment, as though thinking. "The deer herds keep mostly to the deep forest, this time of the year. Though there are other things to hunt, if you find their trails first."
"I will find them," he murmured. "It would be a nice thing to do..." He curled even closer, his voice slurring as he started to doze off into what was likely a sleep. He hadn't slept much in the last few days; that he held out this long without much sleep was a statement of his ability to push himself. "When I wake..."
Niyt smiles, and she curls herself back against the other wolf. "Sleep well," she murmurs softly, and then she is silent, letting him rest as the snow outside blankets everything with calm. There is peace, inside this den and out. It is good.
Niyt - Female Wolf
---Two-River Fork---
The night was silent, as silent as the day Helaku arrived at the waterfall in poor state. Tonight, however, was better than that day. The wind didn't blow, but the air was still cold. No clouds occupied the sky, giving the perfect view of all the stars. Helaku hadn't moved too much since his last encounter with Lexus and Niyt; a new hole in the snow was made and he curled into it as he stared at the open sky. It had been a long while since he just sat and gazed at them, not since the last night he spent with his mother Wuth. Despite how perfect everything appeared to be on this night, Helaku was still in turmoil on the inside. Helaku wasn't one to have nightmares, or even dreams for that matter. The only thing he remembered every time he awakened was nothing but cold, still black. Not tonight, though.
Niyt has been and gone and been again, moving on since the last time she talked with Helaku. It's only coincidence that brings her this way again, threading her way along a path through the reeds. It passes near where the wolf is curled up in the snow, but not directly to him, and if she continues as she is now, it seems she'll simply pass him by.
Helaku's ears slowly moved at the sound of another being close by. Scent to him it was Niyt, but what could he say? She wouldn't want to talk to him again. He considered calling out to her, but what would that bring? As far as his mind was concerned his chances with her, friend or otherwise, were entirely shot. At least, among Miakoda it would have been that way. He tempted to call to her, but only silence came from his muzzle. Instead, he curled back into his hole and shivered. She had more important things to do, most likely.
He curled up more tightly than before, but it did little good. He crawled out of his hole and sniffed the air for Niyt's exact direction. Slowly he walked after her, eventually passinginto the reeds. For him it was even colder out of the hole than in it. He was able to survive Winter, but unlike other wolves he had discomfort with the climate. The incident that stunted the growth of fur on his neck and shoulders allowed a lot of the air to pass through most of his coat if the wind was wrong or if the temperature dipped low enough. "Niyt..." he said, his voice trembling.
Along walks Niyt, unswerving from her course. Until Helaku speaks. Then, she stops. She turns to face him. Her nose twitches to confirm what his voice has told her, and her head nods slightly, an acknowledgement of his presence. "Helaku," she replies - and then waits, to see what more will come of this.
He knew it. She likely didn't want to talk to him. He should just let her go on her way. He'd only slow the pack down in the Winter nights like this. There were times he wished she could see him, but right now wasn't one of those times. "I'm...c-cold..." he said, his voice still trembling. "Hard to keep warm." For a wolf to say that--it was absurd. Wolves had extra fur in the Winter to shield them from the frigid environment. She'd probably think he was being dumb.
Niyt simply nods her head; and there is neither scorn nor rejection in her posture. "The wind is strong, here," she answers. No wolf can stand against the seasons; her father stood fast in winter, yet panted in the summer's heat. Wolves are simply mortals, and cannot do everything alone. That is why they have packs. "If you come to the riverbank, it is less." Further into the lands of her pack - and, indeed, "The others are there." She pauses for a moment, and then adds, "We can share warmth with you."
Helaku was hesitant to come closer but he made himself close the distance between her and him. He was close enough for her to feel the excess warmth that escaped his coat. It was more than it should have been. "Please..." he whispered, but even that was shaky. "I feel it almost everywhere." Helaku's physical fault? Endurance. He was built for sprinting, ambushing, short lengths of time in which he had to spend his energy. It was a signature trait from his mother; speed, accuracy, use of momentum sacrificed long term endurance and brute strength. Most Miakoda had those straights--the few that didn't were the upfront fighters while the rest resorted to shadows. In that, Helaku was a shadow in the simplest definition.
As Helaku approaches her, Niyt does the same. She steps against him, pressing herself to his side as he shivers. Her fur is thick, soft; well-suited to winter. Her ancestors came from the mountains, where they ran against the glaciers and frolicked in the chill valleys. They are not the largest of wolves, but they are adapted to the cold, and though Niyt lived in the desert as a puppy, the desert nights are also cold and her coat has not forgotten how to adapt to winter. So she leans against his side, breaking the wind somewhat with her slender body and sharing the warmth of it without any seeming compunctions.
Helaku's shivering continued, but it lessened the longer Niyt stood with him. His fur was thick, but not as thick as it probably should have been. His ancestors didn't come from the mountains, but the forests and plains. Then the coyote and one dog in his more distant ancestry likely didn't help with the situation. "Thank you," he whispered. "I'd not be this way...if not for wounds I sustained a few years ago."
Niyt stands beside Helaku, leaning against him to share her warmth as her father once did to her, when she was a pup. She's not the largest of wolves, but even so; she is a better bulwark against the cold than one wolf alone. She nods at the thanks, and says simply, "You're welcome." At the mention of the wounds, she tilts her head slightly, considering. It's true, sometimes the fur doesn't grow back entirely over injuries.
In Helaku's case, the wounds were caused by both animal and device of man. He didn't want to bore her with those details, however. A lot of wolves he encountered didn't know what Man was, or heard of Man and thought wolves who had exposure to man were diseased and fallen. "May we find a place to lay?" he asked. "It would be improper to make a female stand." What was that? Certainly not the Helaku that had been so rage-filled over the last few days. More like, it was a Helaku that hadn't been present since the first time they met. Then again, he might have spent so much energy on that rage that he wore himself out.
Niyt smiles a little, and nods her head. "We may," she replies. She doesn't comment on the change, save with her smile and how she responds to it - almost as though the Helaku of anger had never existed. As though there are two wolves, and this one is still the friend he started out to become. "There's a little gully, by the base of the hill," she says. "It's not very far... and it will give some shelter from the wind. This way..." She starts to walk, slow steps to let the chilled Helaku keep up and share her warmth. Even short journeys are difficult for the injured and half-frozen, but the shelter will be worth the travel.
Helaku kept pace with her, none too eager to have the cold cycling through his pelt again. He didn't have much to say in their movement. He was too weak from the exposure to think on anything else but her presence and warmth. The other Helaku was still there, but dying off. He said he couldn't do it anymore, but he never specified what 'it' was. "Everything you've said," he muttered, "has been close to the truth." Same Helaku, though his voice had broken. It was the voice of a wolf who had no goal, no aim, nothing. "Pup years...nothing but fighting, schooling in fighting. Even with my Ute father, Helaku, who tried to teach me other things...nothing but fighting, deception, underpawed tactics. No play like the pups here."
Niyt walks along with Helaku, the blind leading... the injured? What is Helaku, and what will he become? She listens, her ears perked in attention, as he speaks, but she doesn't interrupt. She's silent, though it's a listening silence rather than a judgmental one, as she tries to make sense of a world such as he describes. It's one very different than hers, where pups play freely and are beloved of the whole pack.
Their worlds were entirely different from each other and had little similarities aside from the fact they had packs. Wolves of the Redwood Barrens did not act like untainted wolves, having been corrupted by Man's influence. It all started with man cutting down a tree the early Miakoda held as sacred several generations back. Until that point, they were entirely peaceful. That history wasn't so well remembered by most.
Helaku thought of what to say next, but had a hard time doing so as he shivered again. "Mother hated it...after learning from Father. The other four Alphas beat her a lot after he disappeared. Stripped her status. Uncle kept me in the heirarchy. Opposed my mission to find Father....they probably beat him too..."
And still their worlds are foreign. Four Alphas? Even when her pack was made from two newly merged, there was only one pair called Alpha. This idea of strict hierarchy is strange to Niyt. Her pack has always been more of a family than anything. She knows the genealogy that connects them all, even when it's a matter of distant cousins and relations through mates. There are some wolves unrelated by blood, yes; but more often than not, they join the family tree sooner or later, whether by mating or adoption. Tariro is her alpha, but he is her uncle before that. Sometimes her pack argues and fights itself, but she can hardly even imagine something like what happened to Helaku's mother. If it did, the wolf would surely leave - alone, or with those of her family who were inclined to come along. Yet it seems that to a Miakoda wolf, all that is... normal? The way things are? She shakes her head, not in denial but simply in an attempt to comprehend something so strange.
Helaku pressed alittle closer to Niyt, savoring the warmth though his wasn't nearly as much as hers. "Miakoda was three small packs arranged into one," he said. "Each portion had a task." Most wolves did have only the parents and off spring as packs, others not so much. The Miakoda were by nature 'freaks' in this regard. "I left when a late juvenile..." And that explained the yearling rabbit comparison. Helaku never had sounded so broken before. It was as if he was telling things he was forbidden from telling. that was a truth itself. The Miakoda considered their operations none of the business of other packs to such an extent it was 'law' it not be spoken of. They were the superior, and that was that. The more he thought about it the more Helaku's voice broke. It was the root of all his problems. Lack of proper puphood, being forced to thinking as an adult, forced to think of heirarchy and...for less than a better word...warfare. It clashed so much with what his father and mother tried to teach under all that it made him a wreck and incompatible with the majority of other packs. In a sense, it unveiled an ugly truth of the Miakoda--they didn't want wolves to leave the pack and beable to function. It would give them a deadly enemy. The entire system was designed to "keep it in the pack".
Niyt nods slowly. Miakoda paranoia aside, it's not as though telling their structure will likely do any harm - they're many miles away, and not in any direction Niyt's family travels. She's silent for a few moments longer, and then she smiles. "Perhaps you should start over," she says. It's half joke, half serious. "Become a puppy again. Play. Learn. Let what you used to be become... just stories, told by another."
Just stories. That thought crept back into his mind. Who was he, really? He was Helaku II. But he could be anyone. The wolf made to crook his neck over Niyt's, braving the cold for just a few moments. "You're not like many wolves," he said. "You're different in a special way." And then he retreated behind her bulk for warmth. Was that his way of making an apology? Likely so.
The fur over the back of Niyt's neck is soft, and her tail gives a slow back-and-forth wag as Helaku rests his neck there for a few moments. His words are true, on one level, and perplexing on another, but she smiles at them nevertheless. They seem to be words well-meant, and she can untangle them at her leisure. Perhaps there will be further explanations, in time. She walks on a few moments longer, and then pauses. "We're here," she says - and there is the gorge she spoke of, earthen walls that curve up toward each other around a pocket big enough for two or perhaps three. In summer, it's open to the sky, but snow and ice have made a translucent roof overhead, and the ground inside is only lightly dusted with snow.
She wasn't kidding when she said it was shielded from the wind. It was too bad the shelter didn't last throughout the entire year or it would have been a good place to hide away. "This is a nice place," he said. "I've not seen anyone navigate as well as you do." A hint if content powered Hel's voice at that moment. He hadn't been able to socialize like this for a long time. The last wolf he recalled was Crescendo...whereever she was now. He lightly nudged her snout with his. "It is only proper that females get their pick of spots first."
Niyt smiles, and nudges back. "And I'd rather not have you climbing over me, so get in first," she replies in a tone of, yes, playful teasing. "I'll take the entrance." Her fur is thicker, after all; a practical matter, regardless that the entrance is the guard's spot, the place where the first responder rests. She stands, waiting for Helaku to step inside, and as she does, she answers his other comment. "Perhaps I have fewer distractions," she says with a slight smile, and then continues more seriously. "There's a shape to the world beneath our paws. Stone, earth, plants... they all have a feel to them, and they follow patterns."
Helaku did as she suggested. He curled into the small, cozy den first and awaited her. He took her teasing rather well for a wolf that wasn't taught how to accept teasing or play. "These are things wolves with sight often cannot feel," he said. "They rely too much on their eyes." He knew about patterns and textures, but certainly not to the extent that Niyt did. All he had was basic terrain understanding and experience in his roaming.
Niyt follows Helaku into the den, her paws gently stepping out until she finds exactly where he's settled and then lowering herself down with little shifts to adjust to lean her body against his, between him and the entrance. Touch is a substitute for sight, here; and she has learned well what can serve instead of that sight in many circumstances. She smiles, once she's settled. "Everything is give and take," she says. "I can feel the world around me, but I cannot see it. Others can see, but they cannot feel. I remember what a sunrise looks like. Now I only feel its warmth." She laughs a little. "And the warmth is still pleasant."
She remembered sunrise. She wasn't always blind, but would she trade what she has now for sight if she could have it? He curled up warmly against her when she settled down, his eyes peering up at her. He hadn't shared close quarters like this with any wolf since his mother or siblings. "If you don't mind me asking..." he said, "...how did you become blind?"
Niyt lowers her head to rest on her paws comfortably. She can't see anyhow, so why not relax? It's a comfortable way to spend the time as the snow dances in the gusting wind outside, and Niyt is easy and familiar with sharing warmth like this. At the question, she's silent for a few long moments. Perhaps she's offended? Or perhaps she's simply thinking what she wants to say, because when she eventually does speak, her tone is calm and even. "An accident, of sorts, that left its mark on me."
Helaku didn't push for more. If she wanted to tell him the details at a later time, then she would. He nuzzled closer, closing his eyes to get a feel of wamrth rather then just the sight of the source. It was only fair as she couldn't see, that he close his eyes for now though he was purely awake. "You could say the same happened to me," he said. "My Father had his marking....and now I have mine."
The little pocket traps the warmth well, heating up around the two wolves to make a nice spot to relax in despite the winter chill. "I don't mind it," says Niyt after a few moments. "I'm different, yes. There are things I can't do, or I must do differently than the others. Sometimes there are things I'd like to see, even... but it's how things are. I'm still here, and I'm not alone. That's enough for me."
This was...nice. A warm little den; certainly something he hadn't felt in a long time. "No, you're not alone," he answered with a brief nudge of his snout. "There is something I've seen that many wolves here have not seen," he said. "Do you remember seeing any lakes when you still had your eyes?"
"When I was a puppy," says Niyt, "We lived in the desert, near an oasis. I would go there sometimes, to explore along the shore and play in the shallows. We sometimes visited the waterfall here too, and I saw the deep pool at its base and the river that flows from there." She smiles. "Not quite lakes, either of them, but not so distant from one either." Then she tilts her head to the side, curious. "What is it you have seen?"
That was a lovely image she presented. perhaps she was the pack's story teller, like how Skelaghe was for the Ute. "That sounds like a nice place," he said. He had his reasons for asking about lakes so she'd have something visual in her mind to compare what he would describe. "The great sea," he said. "It wasn't far from where I was born. Imagine those pools you played in...many times larger, so large there's nothing but water. You can't drink it; the water isn't the same as the water in our rivers. Many creatures live in the water. According to the birds that come in to the shore, there is land out there, but so far away that only flying can get one there. So big, they say hundreds, maybe thousands of wolf packs could have territories between our shore and the next."
Niyt smiles as she listens, and then nods. "It sounds like a desert of water," she suggests. "Going on for what seems forever." The desert, it turns out, seems the closer image to what he describes than the ponds she's known; a place defined more by its extent than by its nature. "Nothing's really forever, though. The desert turns to grasslands, this great sea turns to land again. I suppose that land will turn once more into a great sea, land and water together."
Helaku blinked. "Where did you learn of that?" he asked. Not too many wolves spoke in such terms that he knew. Most were only educated about their own territories and regions, not the entire world as it was. Niyt was proving herself among the most knowledgeable wolves he'd encountered--and he had no problem with that.
Niyt tilts her head, a little confused. "The desert?" she asks. "I lived there." There, and along the river's bank, and visited the forest and the mountains her family came from... and she is by no means the most traveled of her relatives, or of other wolves who have visited with this pack for a while. She has heard many stories of places more distant than she has ever been. Enough to know that the world lives in those cycles, though she has not seen them all; there can be no land so great that it does not lead to water, no water so large there is no land at the end. It's part of that same philosophy of hers that sees life leading to death leading to life again. Cycles everywhere, at so many scales of being.
"I mean the changing of environs," he said. "Few wolves ever talk of such things. Most are centric to their own lives." The more Niyt spoke, the more he liked her. She wasn't a simple wolf who was blind, but an educated wolf who had sight. She knew things; he knew things. In a way, they had a similarity. He closed his eyes one more.
"When the wind blows, it passes over everything. The desert wind carries the hint of the mountains still," says Niyt with a smile. "Things change, but they never truly end. The sun rises; the sun sets. Summer goes to winter and back again. Everything goes in cycles. I do not have to see this great sea of yours to believe it exists; or to think there are bits of land in it, scattered as the lakes and rivers are scattered across the land. There is a pattern to things; cycles within cycles, things forever changing. Even a wolf can run far enough to see where the straggly grasses take root in the sand; how they turn to lush greenery and the trees reach up among them. How those trees grow thick, until the ground cannot be seen for them. How those trees give way once more to grass, and then hard earth beneath the paws. A different place, and yet it follows a cycle."
That was a different way of looking at things. The way she described the land and sea was as if it had its own character rather than the view he'd favored--it had features and they must be used. That was the Miakoda approach. Nothing to her refinery. There was no cyclic issue there. Only: There is. There Isn't. Few in between. "So, there is no real...end..."
Niyt smiles, and nods. "The sun keeps rising. The river keeps flowing." All those cycles, neither beginning nor ending but simply /being/, overlapped and intertwined with each other. They're not practical. They're not useful. It's an explanation and view of the world more spiritual than pragmatic. Dynamic equilibrium. "Everything changes forever, according to patterns."
Always changing, never ending. Things were easier to deal with when it was thought of like that. It applied to everything he could think of. He huddled just a little closer, as close as he could to Niyt. Part of him didn't want to leave this den, but eventually they'd both have to for food and what not. With her, it was as if the cold outside didn't even exist. "Is this a Cerulean thought or just yours?"
Well, is it? Niyt ponders on that question as Helaku presses close against her and she shifts to lean back against him, warm and comfortable. Certainly, it fits with what her mother and father told her, when they spoke of philosophy, but she's not sure they ever put it in quite those words. Some of the songs her mother sang hinted at it, some of her father's words about the spirits referenced it. "A little of both," she says at last. She doesn't think anyone in her family would argue with it, if they heard. Though... "There are some of Cerulean who would disagree. Coinin, for one." He has been accepted into the pack, after all.
The idea of cycles fit with his father's views, and his mother's adopted views. Not so much the Miakoda, but the old Ute would likely have agreed with cyclic thinking. So, it may not have exactly been a Cerulean thing, but mostly. He murmured against her, his ears remaining perked for anything she might say. "Niyt," he said. "You may call me Snow. It's what my mother and Skelaghe called me." Technically, it was Snow Eyes, but shortened to Snow was better. "I believe I'm ready for being part of a pack."
Niyt leans against the other wolf, here in this little haven from the snow and cold that's made, in part, from that very snow, and her ears perk to his words. "Snow," she repeats softly, and smiles. "It's a nice name." She's quiet for another moment, considering on the other part of what he said, and then she nods. Perhaps he is.
The insides of his ears turned a light red from the compliment. He hated the name the Miakoda gave him--Wanageeska. He had always been 'Snow'. Still, he'd call himself Helaku II, but for those close to him, Snow. She she leaned against him, he accepted her weight. "Thank you."
Niyt shifts her position slightly, and she rests her muzzle back along Helaku's shoulders with a smile. Outside, the snow has begun to fall instead of simply being swirled around by the wind, but in here, it's still pleasant. "You should speak with Tariro," she says quietly after a while, returning to the matter of joining a pack. Of course, Helaku has already done that - sort of - but she rather suspects the Helaku of this moment would have a different conversation with her uncle than he has so far.
"I should," he said. He wasn't quite sure 'how' he would speak with Tariro, only that it would have to be done. The conversation would be different. He wasn't sure entirely how he would handle it since the only thing Tariro had seen was...what he'd seen. "Perhaps it would be best if I hunted something substantial for the pack...something more than rabbits...prior that speaking."
Niyt nods somewhat, and smiles. Is such a gift needed? She doesn't think so. But if nothing else, it might well put Helaku... Snow... on more comfortable ground to do so. For that, if nothing else, the suggestion has merit. She closes her eyes for a moment, as though thinking. "The deer herds keep mostly to the deep forest, this time of the year. Though there are other things to hunt, if you find their trails first."
"I will find them," he murmured. "It would be a nice thing to do..." He curled even closer, his voice slurring as he started to doze off into what was likely a sleep. He hadn't slept much in the last few days; that he held out this long without much sleep was a statement of his ability to push himself. "When I wake..."
Niyt smiles, and she curls herself back against the other wolf. "Sleep well," she murmurs softly, and then she is silent, letting him rest as the snow outside blankets everything with calm. There is peace, inside this den and out. It is good.