[Gaven]

A lilting howl crept through the lowlands, battered back by a gentle sea breeze, an eerie but familiar song announcing a return. A million years had passed since Gemini heard his call, for time flowed strangely here, but he persisted. The howl bounced with the rhythm of his step as he continued onward, chasing a slowly falling sun in hopes of finding somewhere safe to sleep before nightfall, and the effort left him breathless. Was anyone left here to remember him? ’I’m home!’

The true border was well behind him, but the rangers would find him quick. The howling was only the loudest sound he made but every step he took was a cacophony of jingling and clanking for the supplies strapped to his person. A dead goose was slung over one shoulder, dinner for later, and an additional smell of fresh blood trailing him where he stepped. The traveler had only become so lackadaisical in his movements when he approached the familiar lowlands while aware of his imprudence. He was prepared to be pounced on.

A wolf would have known what awaited them, but Gaven lacked the senses necessary to know what he walked into. Gemini may have fallen since his disappearance, overrun by the growing menace which was Saboro. Gemini could still stand but with faces that had never seen the Starreaver before. Potentially worse was what form of justice he could face for vanishing without a trace only to reappear alive and well as ever. He had a plan for the latter situation, one which involved a story, and he was prepared to use it. He wanted to avoid the dreaded Pit for a long as possible (worse than whatever Saboro had for him, clearly).

Howls ended abruptly as he grew exhausted from the effort and groaned miserably from the numbness in his legs. He spoke mostly to himself, voice hoarse as rocks, though he supposed the wolves would hear him before either of them saw one another: “I’m severely disappointed in the lack of fanfare. After all I’ve done for you, Gemini! No one has even violently tackled me yet. What sort of welcome home is this?”

[Serrate]

She heard his song sweeping over the moors, and she came for him as he must know she would—not as she had on the first day, bitter and afraid, but no less swift. So often, lately, she has traveled the roads to their wall, their declaration against the ENTIRE WORLD, not with elation and childlike wonder but with foreboding and heavy heart. She has received foreigners and heroes returned alike. She has welcomed home her family consigned to death. She has worn her duty like a funeral shroud. An evening star is rising and she parts the wall not for duty’s sake but because the keeper of her stories has returned to her at long last. It was only right that she be the first to greet him.

(It wasn’t only what was right. It was what she wanted.)

She shoots through the places between, leaving befuddled wall-walkers in her wake. Was that the Queen? they might ask themselves, ears swiveling to listen to the siren song that reeled her in. He sings and sings until he can sing no more, and when his tapers she fills the air with her own—do you remember my voice as well? she queries, expecting no answer but weaving her soul into a banner for him to see. The Starreaver left and with him he took light from the sky—she sing and she asks, are you here to give it back?

It’s been so dark. Stories have been told and passed by without him. Of stars, celestial bodies, old souls and walls. It felt good to race across the lowlands. To leave the history against the sea and accept something old that is new again. She ran not from, but to. The sun slips behind the mountains. The moon is rising. There were old friends all around in fireflies roused by her passing! She stopped for none of them, flight true to its end. She crests a hill in the creeping gloom and stops, staring down the slope as twilight bathes them both. The song is quiet.

(Pianissimo!)

She’s so still, except for ears, except for nose, except for smile blooming on her face. It’s been so long. It’s been so long! “Gaven,” she exhales breathlessly—there are those left still that remember his name… SOME of them, anyway! Her tail begins to wag, slow at first, one two three four, one two three four, pick up the tempo, haunches tense—

(FORTISSIMO!)

--And she leaps, bounding down the hill in two strides, tail rapidly swinging the time as she dances around him, on two feet as often as four. She laughs, nosing his hands and licking his fingers if he was not quick enough to pull them out of reach. She waltzes and she sings her joy to the world once more, welcoming he that was gone home again. Lorekeeper, confidant, family, friend. Gemini’s stories are old, fading ink on crumbling pages, sweet and bitter things written by ancients and newborns alike. So rarely were things that were taken given back. So rare was joy for joy’s sake, so she sang and sang until she could sing no more or he begged her to stop, whichever came first. She would quiet, she would calm, slowly, moon rising to spark off the fleck of blue in her eye.

(Adagio.)

“Gaven!” now you must sing her a song—though she doesn’t ask, just yet, “I thought you were lost to us!”

To me.

So!!!!!!! The fiend shows himself again after all this time!!!!! His best wolf friend and also grandmother had been waiting and wishing on shooting stars when she could see them but alas she hasn't seen many, almost like someone left and reaved all the stars from her sky. Somebody important. Somebody who was HERE RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!

The queen shoots through the gap in the wall, befuddlung the guards atop but she stops for no man or wolf. She knows this voice from stories told on sunny afternoons. It was a better time, then. Her Lorekeeper was home. And what kept him all this ????? Time?????

She was fleet of foot, long had she trained for this day under the grand masters of Giving A Damn. She find him in short order as the sun slipped away. The moon was rising-- he wanted to see an old friend, too. She crests a hill in the creeping gloom and stops. Her tail starts to wag.

"Gaven," she exhales softly--there are those who haven't forgotten his name, not all of them, anyway-- "This is.... a post save! For later!!!"

[Gaven]

The Dire Queen answered his song, her call brilliant against his pale mimicry, and the Starreaver stumbled and breathlessly laughed; she lived on and Gemini was whole for it. Mortal failings kept his reply locked in his chest, fatigue the least of his faults, but he kept walking toward her. What was it, he wondered, which compelled his tired legs to keep on? For all he claimed to know of stars he could not decipher what script had been written in the cosmos which inexplicably pulled the Starreaver and the Dire Queen together. Was this fate? If Serrate knew everything that Gaven did she would realize that his reasons for returning here were purely sentimental. Once they had existed parallel in time ignorant to the others existence and it only took a miniscule moment in the grand scheme of all things to change that.

How very small the Starreaver felt then.

The wolf rose over a gentle grassy slope and she looked so picturesque standing with the darkening bold sky at her back and the fireflies swirling about her that Gaven could only offer her a comical smirk. He dropped his kill in the grass along with his pack. The sharp clank in the moment of silence heralded the wolf’s tail movement. Slow at first, then gradually picking up pace, it was a threatening gesture and Gaven was well-aware of what came next.

“Serrate.”

Gaven took few steps and Serrate closed the rest of the distance. Her extravagant dance consisted of jumping and wiggling and stuffing her wet nose against his palms in a puppy-like manner and her giggling was becoming contagious. He playfully tousled her fur when she came into reach and his voice became an amusing, excited squeak.

“That’s more like it! You didn’t even knock me on my ass this time!” He teased. “If I didn’t know better I would say you missed me, but you’re such a noble creature that it can’t be true. What would they think of you if they saw their mighty queen like this? So emotional.”

When she stopped dancing and shaking and singing his hands gently clutched her face, fingers woven into the coarse ruffs on her cheeks. Golden eyes were soft and searching, taking in all that had transpired on her face in the time he was gone. Some of her fur lay differently. There was a pale fleck in her eye unfamiliar to him. He did not forget her at all and his eyes followed the changes he had missed in his time gone.

“Lost? That is...a thought,” He smiled and kept his voice quiet. “I didn’t mean to abandon you. I had a family emergency. I know you’re bursting with anticipation to get the whole story, my queen, but my legs are about to give and I can’t have you suffer the burning humiliation of carrying me the rest of the way home. What will your people think?”

He clucked his tongue in jest before leaning down the scant few inches to press his lips against the top of her head. It’s undignified and she might snap his head off, literally, from his flagrant disrespect of her position but he likes the way her fur smells like the sea and he’s terrible at showing affection without being cheeky. Gaven doesn’t linger long; he briefly ruffled her fur once more before releasing her completely.

“I missed you too.”

[Serrate]

She dances for him and he accepts her again into his life. Together they wove anew the tapestry that was their histories colliding. They had existed as singularities, once, on different paths with different names. If she knew the things he did. If he knew the things she did. Everything that passed between them was sentimental, and she told him in the spring of her steps and playful capers and growling, whining, loving welcome home. Something had changed when they met, irreverently, irreplaceably, and utterly, confoundingly IRREVOCABLY. The mere fact that their paths had crossed once had forever changed the course of history. Life was strange that way. He felt small. She had not felt so young in a very, very long time.

“If that’s what you want,” she warns, nipping playfully at a hand that dared muse her royal fur. She could knock him down and pull him up again by the pliable fabric of his shirt. She could do a great number of things, and so could he, but she chooses to stay her frightful justice and instead stills in time, tail swinging behind her in great arcs. The stars appear in the dawning evening and they reflect in her eyes. She would give them to him freely should he ask it, anything should he ask it, well, almost anything, he could ask an awful lot… “I did miss you!” she protests weakly, leaning her head heavily into one of his palms. “Let my people come and question me. I don’t care.”

In fact, she should like to see them try! She need not explain herself to anyone. Maybe she could knock them down instead of this man who drank her in and read the stories she couldn’t help but give him. It was written all over her. She would give him more than the tales she could not hide, not from him, but she knows he is weary. The road home is long. There was a bit more to go, but not tonight. The journey was longer still, the things that have passed in his absence littered the road like sharp stones and foreboding shadows. She smiles knowingly at him, though he might catch the sadness in her eyes, creeping in as puppyish glee gives way to more familiar things. She couldn’t hide that from him, either.

“I wouldn’t ask it of you now,” she promises, knowing that he’s faced a journey of his own. There would be time for them to sit quietly and tell each other of the things they have seen and the burdens they’ve endured. She swipes her tongue over the inside of his wrist in a brief acknowledgement, his tenderness accepted as freely as he has welcomed hers. In a way, she liked his strange affections. They were novel and very different from how the wolves shared their feelings. There was something deeper that pulled her to him, something she did not fully comprehend. It was a primal thing, primitive and vast, kindred souls come to meet again by the fireside. Here they communed, and she knew that she belonged there. So did he.

“Come,” she instructs, suggests, guides. “The smithy isn’t far from here, it should be a comfortable place for you to rest. You can tell me your story later.” She had turned from him, but she twists her head back to smile. This, too, was a suggestion. A very strong one. The fireflies that had settled in her stillness take flight as she parts the grass once more, forging the path and showing him the way. But he would remember, wouldn’t he? “The smith is gone,” she tells him as they walk. “For several months now. No telling where she went. Nobody’s taken up residence there since.” She pauses before she adds, “I never cared for her anyway.” The hellion had been rude and brash, and while she had suffered the pricking, wounding words, she hadn’t enjoyed it. There was no shame in admitting that to her friend. “Her fire has long gone out, but I’m sure you’ll have no trouble getting it going.”

Unease prickles her hackles for the first time since their reunion. She would feel better if she could escort him beyond the wall her people had cobbled together in the wake of the horrors suffered in his absence. She would feel better if they lingered no longer than they had to in this part of her home that no longer felt safe. Deeper, still, she knew that she could not bear to have him taken from her again. It was rare. It was so rare to have something given back. “I’ll stay with you,” she suggests, despite and entirely due to her unease. He could rest, and she would see that no harm came to him. Not now, not ever. “In the morning we can travel the rest of the way.”

[Gaven]

“If that’s what you want.”

“No! I’ve already had a taste of that. We can not do that and say that we did, I can make it sound just as convincing as if it happened,” Gaven laughs at her teasing. Well. He hopes it’s teasing because he’s not excited as the prospect of hitting the ground again, even if his ankles are whole and unbitten this time. “Ah, well. Now that I think about it, they would understand. Being deprived of me for so long is a sad way to be, anyone can see that.”

The sorrowful glint that passes her eyes isn’t about him though, is it? Maybe she’s ready to easily forgive him after a lifetime having to judge others for more heinous crimes than briefly disappearing or maybe she’s not yet acknowledged any disappointment she has regarding her Starreaver; either way she is certainly justified in whatever feelings she has about it. Despite that Gaven was with Gemini long enough to know how quickly things change and things have changed. Not in predictable ways, like the seasons, but in ways he can’t yet imagine. As Serrate promises to not press him for the details of his leave he silently promises not to prod her for whatever haunts the back of her eyes. Those things will come in time and when they do he may wish he had never heard them, even if he must.

Gaven instead smirks at the wetness on his wrist as he pulls himself away from her with an overdramatic sigh to retrieve his pack. It groans and clanks as he shoulders the weight, adjusting his stance to better carry it, and he turns back to look towards the wolf who is guiding him away. He follows perfectly step-for-step as any good pack member would, though his gait is loud and bumbling. He’ll be glad to be done with the pack for a while. It wasn’t befitting of him.

“The smith? Sorry, I have no idea who that is…er, was, I guess. Maybe she went to visit her family,” he shouldn’t joke about it so soon but he smirks at his feet as he concentrates on walking. “So what you’re telling me is there will be no touching reunion for her? A pity. She’s missing out.”

Then he sees her hackles raise; it’s not a subtle thing though he doubts it’s directed at him. Things are turning in her head, thoughts, memories beyond his reach. He almost jokes that he didn’t know she disliked the smith that much but she barely stops him with the sudden concern those who only thought you might die had.

“Awww, I’m flattered,” he still japes if only to calm her unexpected nerves. “Protected by the Queen of Gemini herself. See, normally that would concern me, but it’s such a lovely night and I’m in a good mood. I wonder though, will it be you protecting me or the other way around? Wolves certainly need their beauty sleep. Do you want to tell me what I should keep an eye open for or is it a surprise?”

He hadn’t seen the smithy before as it was constructed (repurposed?) during his initial adventures in the new land and he never really had a reason to look for it. He knew what they were only for his time and trade with humans; living as nomads didn’t afford his people access to such permanent structures. Relief bursts from his chest when he sees it. He could sleep under the sky if it didn’t rain and the wind wasn’t too rough (and no shocked Gemini citizens came to gnaw on his throat during his sleep), but this was shelter from all those things and it was on the banks of a river. He throws his pack down in the first dry spot with the bear cloak soon following its place on the floor. He must duck to fit and the whole place has a dusty, earthy smell, not unlike that of the library, but it isn’t the worst of places he has slept. He moves to the forge and throws a playful look back at Serrate.

“I’ve never lit a forge before, but if I can’t you’ll keep me warm, right?”