...by Association

Saul Stormbringer · 01-30-2012, 10:14 AM

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<33!

The worry that he'd unintentionally hurt Saluce and X'yrin's relationship was a worry that refused to budge. Saul had always been sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of those around him and today proved no different. Many liked to tell him that he over-thought everything and Saul was inclined to agree with them. He was a natural worrier and he had the feeling that he was never going to change this core trait of his personality. He worried constantly about his pack, his family, his own life and everything in it. Like a chronic disease, the worrying had increased with age, although Saul told himself that it was a reasonable response. As he grew older, he had more life experiences, gained more responsibility and acquired more than he ever thought he'd have. He'd acquired an impromptu daughter in Wretch and Saul knew that while she was gone and might never return permanently, he would always worry about her and where she was, whether she was happy. It was a likewise story with Eclipse- he would forever worry that she had been messed up so bad by her parents that she would never be happy, never have a normal life. Despite the blatant fact that his cousin was perfectly fine and had been for most of her existence, the worry still stung in the back of his mind whenever he thought of his chocolate cousin. And now he'd gone and created something else to worry himself over.

Her soft voice, one that he hadn't heard her use before because in his mind, X'yrin was a brash and blunt kind of female, caused him to look into her eyes as she asked him to understand. He had no idea if he would understand what she told him, whether he would take away anything from their conversation today or anything of the sort. But he could at least listen and try to understand as much as he could from the information she gave him. So as she asked him to understand, he allowed his head to dip up and down in a swift nod, green eyes alight with a curiosity about her next words. She began to speak and Saul found it easy enough to keep up. She'd come from such a strange culture that the male had no idea how to put the X'yrin he knew now (albeit loosely) to the descriptions she was giving. She she explained about their Shepherd assigning them mates, Saul found it difficult to understand or accept. Mateship was based on love and trust, not the beneficial gain of the group. While the majority of him rebelled against the idea, there was a smaller part of his brain that told him the theory made sense. If the pack were so different that anything he'd ever heard before, why should they conform to what others regarded as mateship? And an even smaller part of his brain told him that he probably would have done the same if he'd been born into her culture. Benefit for the pack was more important than benefit for ones own self and if that meant producing the healthiest, strongest puppies from pairings of the strongest wolves to eradicate weakness, the young male understood the concept would be necessary.

X'yrin continued and Saul shuffled his legs softly beneath him. They'd begun to grow stiff from being stretched out behind him and so he drew them up till he was in more of a traditional laying position. Of course, he couldn't get his head around the lack of love concept. The way she looked at Saluce, the possession in her eyes when those looks passed between them made it very difficult for Saul to believe that she'd been raised with no concept of love or possession of any kind. He couldn't imagine a world where jealously did not exist, where female and males came together without passion to produce offspring and then moved on. He tried to put himself in that situation and failed miserably. He knew, without a doubt, that had he to see a female whom he'd shared such an intimate moment with the year before with another male, he would have been driven made with jealousy. He knew it without a doubt, but he still tried to imagine a world where these emotions did no exist. He supposed, in a round about manner, that if he'd been raised without the concepts he had been raised with, if he'd been raised as X'yrin had, he would think the same way she did, act that same way she did. It was all a matter of perspective. She continued then, starting first with the relationship he and Saluce shared. Saul allowed a smile over his lips as she continued to explain about how their extended families worked.

This concept was not as difficult to grasp. He and Gideon had done much the same with their respective charges- Melee and Range, Wretch and Tawny, although both of Saul's 'adopted children' had managed to leave him somehow. Melee and Range on the other hand had remained here while their father had left because he'd found it too painful to stay. Saul understood as well as any why Gideon had left, but that didn't mean he didn't blame him for leaving his children. He should have taken them with him, or at least explained to them why he was leaving. Of course, she continued to speak and he found this concept a little different. Their parents relinquished their claimed on their children and handed them over to a 'Shepherd', who adopted the role of mother, father and leader. Despite the fact that Abigail was dead and Dreyrugr felt the need to leave his children with his half sister when they were just a month or two old, they were still irrefutably his parents. He might not like what they'd done, but they were the ones who'd created them. He reminded himself that it was all a matter of perspective and upbringing, and while X'yrin had come from a culture that sounded so different and strange, she'd turned out just fine. She continued then and Saul smiled softly towards her. Her way of thinking perhaps wasn't so difficult to understand and he knew it.

"Your culture sounds so different and strange from my own. I grew up in Dahlia de Mai, without either of my parents. My brothers, Gideon and Ascher and my sister Shiloh- we never managed to be in the same place at the same time. For some reason, they felt the need to leave whenever and I'm surprised they made it this face. Mostly it was Gideon and I, with our Aunt Bris. Conor was our leader and there was always something more going on between Bris and Conor that we didn't realise until Eclipse came along. And then Conor disappeared and my Aunt couldn't cope with anything anymore. I can't help but place blame on her shoulders- she had a young pup to take care of, but that didn't seem to matter. I guess in some ways, I strove to surround myself with the family that had left me- Saluce became a surrogate father and sometimes brother than I could go to for anything. It saddened me when we went out separate ways- I'm always looking for ways to bond with him again and get one of my best friends back..."

He trailed off, green eyes glassy. As he'd spoken, the ghosts of the past had risen up to meet him. The surprising thing was, not all of the ghosts that he saw before him were dead. He saw Conor, teaching him to hunt rabbits in Berwick. He saw Saluce, hammering away at a piece of metal while Saul had scurried round him, an apprentice to something he was never really sure of. He saw Eclipse in his mind, the tiny puppy who'd grown into a beautiful woman. And he saw Bris, broken and defeated in the corner of the room, unable to function properly without the light of her life. So many images flashed through his head that he found it so difficult to keep up, but he often saw himself and his siblings at one point or another- him and Ascher in the graveyard, he and Gideon being chased by a bear, the three of the shifting for the first time and swimming out to the island to have a picnic. And that sweet, blissful day where they'd become adults and Saul had given them the charms they all still wore around their necks. He couldn't help but feel the hopeless sense of loneliness in his chest as he glanced back up as X'yrin, unable to put into words the crushing sense of loss he felt whenever he thought of his wayward family.

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