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+--- Thread: [PRP] The Sound of Silence (/thread-2613.html)
The Sound of Silence - Ayliyra - April 09, 2018
There was so much debris laying about from the quake, another force of nature just as all the others she'd seen and survived, that left destruction and waste in its wake. It was upsetting how much loss and how much waste there was..materials that could have maybe been used to help the pack or..someone that needed something and there were plenty in the world that needed something and now it was useless. Well not all of it she supposed. She would have to salvage what she could and try and tidy up, collect the debris into piles, though organized ones, until..until what she didn't know. She'd used debris to help with rescues but there was no one left to rescue as far as she knew, everyone was accounted for. She had been working on collecting the glowing plants and well whatever the glowing stuff was they oozed out as it did seem to have its uses. Perhaps someone else would have an idea of what to do with the debris or rather would have more ideas for the debris as she couldn't be the only to think there was potential in the destruction. Then again..who knew. That would mean going and talking to..others of the pack though which she still wasn't exactly keen on. Sure she had managed to work with others for the rescue efforts but those had been emergencies. This..her idea to use the debris to benefit the pack however..that was hardly an emergency and would require a level of comfort in speaking with others that she simply did not have, not when she didn't have a specific goal in mind and even if she did..she still wasn't the world's greatest speaker.
She knew enough to get by when she'd been posing as a healer in her explorations but that was with those who didn't know her and well..everyone here might not know her but enough of them did to make things..essentially impossible as even those who didn't know her were likely to have heard of her. It was definitely a problem. She wondered if maybe she should go and see if Mercury had any thoughts on what to do with the debris but..Mercury was likely needed elsewhere for more important tasks and she could think of anyone else she specifically wanted to go ask. So she supposed she would simply get to work on forming her piles of material and then..go from there.
((so just remembered I was working on this draft awhile ago for an Aylie post and figured I'd use it though I'm not sure where I want this to go..also this may need to be done short form via PM at some point as I'm still struggling with..things and short form would probably be easier so..yeah.))
RE: The Sound of Silence - Rieal - April 17, 2018
((marked this as PRP for us @Puffin so not sure if I was supposed to mark it short form instead though but either way whever it's ready whenever you are or I can try and add or expand on it some more if you need me to))
RE: The Sound of Silence - Puffin [RP] - May 01, 2018
![[Image: aaEUfY3.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/aaEUfY3.gif)
In the wreckage, he felt great sadness.
By the moon, he had loved this place. He remembered his first visit, before he was Viceroy, before he was Advisor, when he was just a Parallax. Julek had brought him to talk the foxes into a coexistence. He'd been so proud to be so valued, to be so skilled as to be the one entrusted with such an important task. To serve in such a way, to lead in such a way, was a far cry from his origin. He had been born in a place of fear, a place where the only reasonable ambition was simply to survive and carry on as best as one can. As he wandered the woods of his home and surveyed the damage, he thought once more on his life's journey and what it all meant.
How many?
They were still counting the missing. He pushed the thought away. He stepped over a fallen tree, its roots still clutching dirt and obscuring everything to his right, and he stepped around it to look over the small crater left behind. No tunnel to the Tendrils, though. Could be worse. Or better? The unknown and the fear of it scraped at his thoughts but he pushed it away, too. He was better than that. He had nothing to fear, anymore. He had conquered it.
Just as he was about to continue on, he spotted a familiar form through the trees. Ayliyra? He realized he'd barely spoken to her since her return, and mentally chided himself for the oversight. Being caught up in things was no excuse. For someone else, it might have been, but he acknowledged with a grim sense of personal duty that he and Aylie had...unfinished business, of a sort.
The dog took a few steps back and took a running leap over the crater, rather gracefully he thought. As he trotted the rest of the way through the brush, he noted the pile of broken wood and fallen tree parts that Ayliyra had assembled. Puffin cocked his head. "What do you plan to do with all of this?" he asked by way of greeting. He wasn't sure how else to start. There was too much time between them, and too much of it was his fault.
Blatant disregard--
He turned that voice off. He didn't need it for this. He knew what he had to say.
RE: The Sound of Silence - Ayliyra - May 01, 2018
As she was thinking a scent she was rather quite familiar with captured her immediate attention. Puffin's. He wasn't sight yet which was good because she was so conflicted now. She had been thinking about getting help with figuring out a way to use the debris but she hadn't exactly been thinking of Puffin..not with the history between them. At the same time though Puffin was a dog and dogs tended to know things that no one but a dog, or someone who had learned from a dog, would know which meant there was a good chance he would have an idea of what this stuff could be used for. She still half hoped he didn't come this way though because explaining anything was difficult enough as it was even when she was comfortable with someone and had an idea of what to do. Neither of those fit the situation she was presently in and of course to top it off the scent was growing stronger which meant Puffin was getting closer. If only those things others called wishes actually worked she could have just wished all of this solved but that wasn't how the world worked which meant she was stuck.
She was not a fan of being stuck but she couldn't just go run and hide and wait for him to be gone but she wasn't about to call him over either just in case he was headed elsewhere. Of course as it turned out he was headed in her direction..quickly and directly. She shifted automatically preparing herself for an attack as she wasn't used to such speeds and such direct angling being used in anything except rescues, which she was not exactly in need of, and attacks and with their history..well an attack wouldn't surprise her..in fact she'd been expecting someone to attack and try and drive her back out of Nardir. She wasn't exactly the type that was great or even good at making friends.
Instead of attack though he went sailing through the air some few feet away and she realized that he had been running to make a jump. She mentally whoopsed at that and pushed the thought of impending attack as far from her thoughts as possible otherwise an already awkward situation would only be even more awkward and more stressful..at least for her but the effects of having been startled didn't go away so quickly leaving her a bit shaken and mentally and emotionally shaky. So when asked her what she planned to do with all of this, indicating the debris she had collected, all she could do for a moment was just stare at him a moment in stunned silence before opening her mouth to try and answer but still no words came to mind, no real thoughts either, at least none she could pinpoint or express, so she closed it again.
This repeated a few more times making her look like a fish out of water before she finally came up with an answer. "Uuai..". Which of course wasn't what she had meant to say. And briefly a thought she could actually make sense of flickered through her mind of another awkward situation where the only answer she could think of was to say that the grass was grassy. And now here she was managing to make an even less intelligent reply. Great. She needed to try again but she still had no idea how to answer since this she didn't have a plan or even an idea of what to do with this stuff and trying to talk to one of the ones who had played a part in her exile was stressful and also just plain awkward leaving her with no idea of what to say or how to say it.
RE: The Sound of Silence - Rieal - May 24, 2018
((small nudge cause of the board cleaning thing))
RE: The Sound of Silence - Puffin [RP] - June 02, 2018
She readied herself for an attack as he leaped, and an uncomfortable feeling he couldn't quite identify gripped his lungs. She loosened as he approached, but he knew. And worse: he knew it was his fault. How could he have done this? How could any of them have done this? He swallowed his shame and took a breath, realizing in Ayliyra's choked silence that he would be the one to begin. It was only right, he supposed. Only fair. After everything. He spent his youth pledging to be better than his elders, but he had not lived up to that promise. He had to be better, starting now.
He started by sitting down. "Ayliyra, I want to apologize." He breathed. He had thought for ages on what he would say to her, but nothing had ever felt right. But maybe that was because there wasn't really away to make it right. "We should have sent someone with you, when we sent you to Alchemilla. We should have stayed in touch, checked on you, instead of sending you alone. We should have done more for you, and brought you straight home when Alchemilla fell. The things you did-- you were still Nardiri, and you deserved better than what we gave you. I'm sorry."
He didn't know how to apologize for the exile. He wasn't sure he could. The trial had been whirlwind of emotions, but the verdict hadn't been up to him. Perhaps there was more he could have done at the time, and he knew there was more he could have done in the aftermath, but the exile itself had always been bigger than one little dog who fancied himself an orator. For all his youthful promises to be better than those who came before, his moment of truth had proven him to be no better. He only hoped that this failure had left him a blueprint to follow for the future.
But the future was the future, and this moment was Aylie's. Was she like he had been, nursing an open wound of betrayal? He braced himself for her anger, remembering his own in the wake of his own exile. She deserved what he had never been given: the opportunity to confront the perpetrator of her exile and voice everything she felt she needed to. She deserved closure, if there was any to be found in him.
RE: The Sound of Silence - Ayliyra - June 04, 2018
She watched as he sat, trying to act calmer than she felt, and listened. Listened to another apology, albeit it was one that listed things that had been done wrong to her but that also was nothing new to her. She was used to apologies that ultimately meant nothing. She wasn't supposed to say that though, especially since she had heard Puffin was higher in rank now than when she had been exiled, and perhaps if she wasn't still shaking on the inside, still on edge she would have been able to give a proper formal reply as she had done before. The problem with that was that she was still on edge, still to shaken to form a reply with pretty, polite words of acceptance but even if her brain could not formulate a prettily worded reply it still registered than an answer needed to be given. The result of the struggle was an answer spoken in a voice that was probably far quieter than he was used to hearing from her, no more than a whisper, and completely honest she murmured as if to herself rather than an audience. "I've heard apologies before". So many apologies that had ended up not meaning anything at all more times than she could count at this point.
She would have liked to have stopped there but it seemed wrong to say so little when he had said so much. There were so many thoughts swirling through her head that it was difficult to focus on just one. But then her thoughts finally landed on one that she was able to focus on not because she had received an apology but because she hadn't received one and knew she never would. "My father-". She started shifting her weight to sit as well before stopping both what she was saying and her act of sitting so that she remained standing, ready, as if the mere act of talking about him would summon him there and cause history to repeat. "I wasn't born in Nardir..". That seemed like a better place to start even though he likely already knew she hadn't been born in Nardir as she'd never made it a secret. "The lands I was born in were ruled by my father. He wasn't a king and there was no kingdom. It was just whomever ventured onto the area he claimed as his and he ruled with..". She wasn't sure how to really explain it without describing it. "He didn't believe in allowing weakness so anyone he found on the land if they couldn't..". Again she was at a loss for words to explain it without.."He would bring their bodies sometimes and lay them outside the den. It wasn't just strangers though. My siblings and I were pitted against each other. Whichever of us didn't meet his ideals and expectations, did not pass his tests, was taken away from the den, he would return smelling of blood and we never saw that sibling again". It seemed strange to be telling this story again after so long but it was what she was able to focus on and it was a history that she had already realized so many in the pack had forgotten..or simply dismissed and it was time Puffin knew if he was not already aware.
"I tried to help protect the smallest, the runt of the litter. We had been close even with the circumstances. He was always optimistic, talking about how when we were old enough to get away from our father we could see the world, travel, and he could learn about plants. He would have been a healer, if things had been different. But he was having trouble and I wanted to help him. I thought if I could make it less stressful he would do better. I didn't know it was game, games..even fun were forbidden. We had waited for our father to be gone and our mother to be away as well before we had started, we thought they would both be gone awhile and that if either of them came home early it would be our mother who didn't care really about what happened to us. At least she never tried to stop our father and would occasionally tell us that he was doing what he was for our own good". She huffed lightly there, not quite a scoff as those lessons had helped her later on in life but still the indifference bothered her. "It wasn't our mother that returned early though". And Puffin could probably see where this was going given the somber tone and what she had already said about her father.
"My brother was laughing, he was having fun chasing me, we didn't know..I didn't know it was called Tag. My father heard him before we knew he was there and he came in and..my brother..Cavan". Her voice faltered slightly as she spoke her brothers name. "Father picked him up and began carrying him out of the den with my brother begging and pleading for my father to not take him, promising he would never have fun again..and begging and pleading for me to help him. But I was afraid of my father and didn't know what I could or how I could do anything that would spare him. So Cavan's begging and pleading was the last I ever heard from him..and then he was gone". She had lost him, the sibling she had been closest to, to a game of Tag.
"I was the only one left when the volcano near where we lived erupted. When it did..my father ordered me to stay in the den and wait and then he and my mother left. And I waited. For over a day I waited and neither of them had returned. The conditions of the den were getting worse and worse and I was hungry and thirsty. I was still afraid of my father and of what disobeying his order would mean but I finally realized I had..nothing left to lose..and with my siblings all gone..there was nothing left for him to take". She remembered how alone she had been, and how alone she had felt but she also remembered the determination, the same determination, that had landed her in trouble as often as it had helped her. "I decided to leave. And I did". And Puffin would likely see the spark of defiance she was now so well known for, only it wasn't being aimed at him, at least not entirely, but rather at her father whose order would have been her death if she had obeyed it. It was that action that had started her down the path of refusing to obey orders she thought to be unjust, unfair or any of the other reasons that made disobeying orders justified..but it had also been the start of another path for her.
"That was how I ended up in Nardir. I was found around the borders by Storm and taken in as one of his family. I didn't know how old I was but the adults guessed I was around two months". She would pause a moment letting him think on that, to maybe contemplate and wonder what it would be like to lose his own siblings one by one like that until he was the last one left, while she reflected on it herself. That it had been just two months. It wasn't a long time in actuality but it had felt like so much longer. After all in that time span she'd lost all her siblings to her own father, and been abandoned by both parents in the middle of a natural disaster to fend for herself. There might have seemed like a good stopping point, like the natural conclusion to a story, and if things had been different perhaps it would have been but there was still so much more. So much history, more tragedy, left to be told.
"It was very different for me. I was able to explore like..my brother had talked about. I had siblings again, Jase and Akutan. And I was..I was even..I was given a toy to..to play with. A small stone, smooth enough so that I could roll it between my paws, and it had speckles on it". She wondered what happened to it, it had meant to much to her..and she had lost it when everything had happened. "It was the first toy I..that I'd ever had". She vaguely wondered what Puffin thought of her feeling sentimental over a rock but.."Things were nice..for awhile". And with that last addition Puffin could probably already see more tragedy looming in the story.
"There was a wolfess named Hexilia though. She kidnapped another pup in the pack, Rio, and when I came across her..since Storm had brought me in himself and because I was so young I was made part of the nobility and was in line for the throne if the royal line ever failed so I became a target as well. Eventually she was brought to trial. The charges were harm and threatening harm to pups and the attempted murder of Beta Starfleet. I was one of the witnesses". And as she began talking about the trial she fixed her gaze on Puffin as an edge began slowly creeping into her voice and her eyes likewise slowly began to harden. "She was found guilty, but because of the defense that it had been ordered for her to have she wasn't given Nardir's harshest sentence of Banishment. Instead because the defense had defended what she had done, showing that she had been wronged by the pack herself, despite the seriousness of the crimes, despite being found guilty of those charges and of treason she was given Nardir's second harshest sentence". She would pause a moment before saying it, the word that echoed in her head for so long.
"Exile". Her tone had sharpened and her gaze had hardened to razor sharpness from the hurt, and the anger and the sharp sting and pain of betrayal as she remembered her own sentencing. She had been accused of disobedience, and failing to obey a direct order, and they had even accused her of being a danger to the royal pups. She had not kidnapped any of them, had not even threatened them and had never attacked or tried to kill a fellow packmate. Her crimes had been far lesser than Hexilia's and yet not only had she not been provided with a defense the way Hexilia had but she had been given the same sentence. Puffin's apology for what they should have done following her sentence was all well and good but it was a sentence that should never have been passed in the first place for it was a punishment that did not fit the crime and her eyes said as much as she looked at him in silent accusation wondering if he realized now, or even cared, exactly what he had helped do to her, how unfair..how unjust it really was.
Her story hadn't ended there, no matter how much she, and perhaps Puffin to by now, wished it had. Her gaze returned to a somber expression as she continued. "Around that time I caught a familiar scent..I had told them, warned them but..he still got in. He still managed..to get accepted as a member of the pack". Could Puffin see where this was going? Could he even fathom what events had transpired from there?
((and gonna break up the history into parts cause it will be way long if I don't and I'm pretty sure the parts after this will need to be spoilered so..and there is music of course cause..yeah))