[private] your heart, it's like a drum; Firen

[Ferran]

i'm told that to be human i must stand still
you can try your hardest, but i never will

She dreams of many things. Many of him, of days long gone. Lost forever to the winds of time (they steal so easily, leaving only memories in their wake). And she wakes. Sometimes when she wakes, it is not where she had slept. Sometimes she is left in the echoes of her memories, wondering if they ever truly existed.

It had been so easy to lose herself. She had once frequently thought she had not been made as they were. Had too often wondered if the wolf had taken her too quickly and too thoroughly. And then she had forgotten to wonder. Had simply forgotten she was anything more.

Today she remembers. She awakens and she remembers. Perhaps it is the scent in her lungs, familiar and nostalgic, tangling in her brain until it knocks loose those forgotten pieces. Firen it whispers. And she knows him. Knows his scent. Knows exactly who he is (or rather who he should be) to her.

She does not question how she had come to be here. Her paws are too quick to press against the leaf litter, her nose too quick to follow an old and nearly faded trail. The soft whuff of her breath and the gentle padding of canine feet against spongy earth are the only sounds of her passing. She loops and winds through the trees, her tenacity unchanged, even after all these years. She does not stop until her steps bring her to the water's edge.

Until the trail grows stale and too distant even for her to follow.

And though she hunts, plunging through the chilly waters to the other side of the river, there is nothing more. She had failed. And failure, such as it is, had always sat poorly with her. Finally, when even she must be forced to concede, she stops. Settling slowly to her haunches, she lifts her gaze to the star-blanketed sky peeking through the branches above. After a contemplative moment, a low, plaintive howl rises from her throat.

An achingly lonely sound, even in the loneliest hour of the morning.

ferran

@[Firen]

[Firen]

A haunting sound slices through the forest, riding the autumn wind. For thousands of years, their ancestor's howls had echoed across this land, but none would have moved him like this one.

He doesn't feel much, not since the dragon turned his heart to ice, but he feels that.

The wolf's legs are in motion before he has time to consider if he should or shouldn't. It wasn't a question. She was his Alpha, and she called.

She called to him.

In a world like this, it was the nature of souls to drift apart. Time was forever pulling against them, pulling them apart, and time usually won. But there was another side to the nature of tides and time -  what had been broken was often pushed back together again. He hadn't doubted it, even if he had never searched for her with intention. He had always known that she would call for him again when she was ready. 

The unique signature of Ferran's mind draws him like a torch, and before he can see her he seeks to fall into its familiar crevices. He felt more at home in her thoughts than his own in the younger years, when he was little more than her slinking shadow. 

Or so he had been told.

Their father had always said that like it was an insult, but he hadn't minded being her shadow. 

The years that have past can be seen on his face, in his size, and most noticeably the old wound across his chest. Bare skin, the color of charcoal, stands out - an ugly contrast to the rest of his thick pelt. It is the only hint that there is no warm, beating heart in his breast. Any heat that he generates comes from the small twisting flames above his shoulder blades.

Red eyes search her, just as his mind searches her, and he mirrors her. Sinking to his haunches he absorbs her ghostly wolf-form with a hungry stare.

He doesn't feel much, he never would, but he knows that this is right.

[Ferran]

i'm told that to be human i must stand still
you can try your hardest, but i never will

The echo of her call fades into the distant sky, but still she waits. For an answer, or more. It’s foolish to think there might be one after all this time. She had called before, and always it had ended the same. She had waited until pink and orange and purple tinged the horizon. Until light had overtake the nostalgia of night. And then she had continued on where she had left off, her childish whimsy forgotten as all the rest had been.

This night, on the surface, is no different from those night’s past.

And yet, it is. Because tonight, her call is answered. The faint sounds of paws against damp, heavy earth and the brush of leaves against fur are the answer she had been waiting for. The faint glow of an eternal flame herald his arrival, drawing her eye to where he appears. Answering her as though they had parted only yesterday. The soft whuff that rises from her throat and single thump of her tail against the ground are the only signs of her excitement. But it is enough.

The moment he stops, she rises to greet him. Without thought to the many ways in which they both might have changed during their time apart, she presses her nose against his whiskers with an ancient familiarity. But the changes are too great for even her to ignore for long.

With a sharp exhale, she withdraws, pale gaze meeting his as she matches his stare with equal intensity. His smell is wrong, and she is not certain she cares for it. The scars that delve, gnarled and twisted, into his chest tell stories of the many things she had missed. For a moment, she could almost feel the guilt well from deep within, where she had buried her feeling self. Almost.

Tell me. The thought rises, demanding and instinctive. Speaking in a way long forgotten, yet as familiar to her as breath. Perhaps she cannot reciprocate, but the knowledge that he can hear her wells from deep within.

ferran

[Firen]

There is a comfort in the way she greets him, an easiness he has not felt in the presence of others since his heart had been irrevocably damaged.  She touches her snout to his whiskers, huffing and exchanging scents, and he pushes his muzzle into the thick collar of fur around her neck, letting his senses overflow with her and the feelings of home.

When they withdraw her eyes find his scars. She is full of questions and something close to guilt, but he just shrugs. She hadn't been there for him, it was true. But it just as easily could have been she who was hurt and he who was missing. If somehow he had been given that choice, it always would be he who took the bullet.

And anyway, she would have only gotten herself killed if she had tried to fight the creature that attacked him.

But he wouldn't tell her that.

She wants to know more and he won't defy her. He opens his mouth, speckled-black tongue sliding over even blacker lips as he prepares to use his voice for the first time in weeks. In his mind, this was his largest flaw,  that he had to use his voice to speak at all.

"It's not much of a story." He begins, reaching back into his memory with a scowl, sifting through the jumble of days and faces around that event. "It was on Icicle Isle, a monster." He didn't have the words to properly describe the xenomorph who had pulled him from the sky like a cat with a songbird. But he would never forget her face.

"I woke up days later, and a strange stallion had kept me alive. He sealed the wound with ice magic," It was a cruel irony, the man had saved his life but still Firen harbored something resembling resentment for him.  "but I'm not sure he did it right."

[Ferran]

i'm told that to be human i must stand still
you can try your hardest, but i never will

Time works on them all, an inescapable, merciless march that pulls them apart and drags them back together on reckless whims. She had known better than to believe everything would be as she had left it, but some foolishly naive piece of her still had.

And perhaps that is what fuels the anger inside her as she reveals his story in stilted verses. She knows, without asking, that he had not told her everything. And that is why she knows there is so much more to this monster than he reveals. That is why, as he speaks so emotionlessly, a snarl rises in her throat.

She knows, deep down, it’s her fault as much as this nameless monster’s. But that does not translate well in the more primitive recesses of her brain. And so that ferocity rises, undeniable as she stands abruptly, gaze casting briefly past him. As though this beast might lie in wait just behind him, rather than in the recesses of his past.

I will kill it. The thought whispers untempered in her thoughts. Not now, perhaps. But one day, it’s throat would know her teeth.

Raw instinct tells her to hunt the man who had botched her brother’s healing so badly too, but sense prevails before the desire is fully realized. Firen is alive, after all. Perhaps she would never thank him, but she would stay her baser instincts in payment for that service.

But she understands better now why he feels so different.

It takes considerable effort not to turn north. To seek out the isle and dig into its secrets until they all lay bare before her. But the weight of Firen before her holds her in check. She would not abandon him again. Not now.

There would be time enough for revenge later.

"Where is home?" she finally whispers as the echoes of her own growls fade.

ferran