Earth below us

Gideon Stormbringer · 05-13-2011, 09:54 PM

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Gideon had chunks of flesh taken from around his joints, the muscles, and has some scarring on his face :o So he walks funky.

Gideon hadn't been up to much in the last month or so. He had been keeping to himself more than ever as he had healed and his hermit ways had continued even after he was up and moving around. The male now stuck almost primarily to his lupus form unless he needed to find prey. He was unable to run very far or very quickly in either form, which meant that he could not hunt very easily. It was a good thing that he liked fish, at least, though lately his palate craved the blood of a plump summer hare or a strip of deer hindquarter.

He left his bedroom to walk toward the porch, legs stiffening up in places and twinging in places with each footfall. He had to walk in a very specific, tender-footed way to avoid jarring the muscles in the wrong way or to avoid tripping over something that he was trying to walk over. He'd tripped once already, earlier that week, and had ended up in a painful tangle of limbs that had been very difficult to get up from. Today he intended to try and fish a bit..get something for the next few days so that he wouldn't have to take the trip again the next day. Gideon took the front steps one foot at a time, careful not to stretch anything too far or move in a way that would aggravate his half-healed injuries.

Nayru · 05-18-2011, 03:00 PM

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Everything had been a whirlwind, a constant torrent of never ending events that only lead to more incidents that paved the path for more happenings, all of which she had to deal with. Ever since her rise to alpha, Nayru had found that stealing a moment for herself was nearly impossible. First there had been the gathering up of members to redefine Dahlia de Mai, or what was left of it. Then there had been the excursions to the other packs, which had nearly taken a whole week of her time. And even after returning there had been meetings, joiners, hunts. It was never ending, Nayru realized this, and even though she did not grow bitter or resentful over her duties, she did grow weary at times, although this never showed on her face.

What showed on her face now was a serene calmness, almost an inner joy, at finally finding a moment to herself. And yet, when Nayru discovered that the borders had been tended to and there was no urgent need for food and Farore was tending to the vineyards the thoughtful girl did not steal away to be in solitude as she once might have. For too long she had been missing the ebony man, and it was high time to seek him out. He had been present at the meeting, but withdrawn and it had been the first she had really seen him in weeks. Right after she had left the pack lands on her journeys and had yet to run into the boy since her return.

Gideon was where she believed she could find him. Even with Conor's abandonment and the damages to the house, Gideon remained. It was a tribute to his enduring personality, and yet Nayru half hoped he would have taken up residence somewhere else. The top floor of the large house was still uninhabitable, but their bedrooms on the first floor were mostly untouched. Yet despite that it was safe enough, the looming home left an uneasy feeling in her gut as she approached.

"Gideon." Her naturally quiet voice was even more hushed, so that the name was mostly just mouthed rather than spoken. He seemed so frail, so broken, and Nayru still did not know fully what happened. They hadn't talked, anything she knew she only knew from the whisperings of the wind. Which was nothing at all really. The fairy girl drew closer and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

Gideon Stormbringer · 06-01-2011, 11:46 AM

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He moved like a shadow through the lands when he did exit the large house, creeping about through the shadows with his odd gait. He hadn't been visiting many wolves during his recovery with the exception of Saul, who he saw on a regular basis whether he felt up to it or not. His brother was usually able to bring him out of his funk even when he was feeling in the worst of moods. A bright light in the darkness.

The wretched remains of the house seemed to suit him; there weren't many who took refuge in it any longer besides himself and his children that he knew of, a fact that he didn't mind one bit. The children had helped with his recovery quite a bit, though they probably didn't know it. He'd kept away from most of the pack but would never ignore or deny his family anything that he could still give. That entire day was a mess inside his head; he could remember leaving Dahlia to do something, but the rest of the day was a jumble.

Much had happened during the time in which he had been recovering. Conor and Bris were gone, Eclipse as well, and Nayru had been made the leader of the pack. He had much respect for her already, as she had always been older and wiser than him even in their youth. He felt that he knew her better than many in the pack, but over the last few months a distance had stretched between them. When he saw her his breath caught, heart thudding quickly in his chest. Some things had changed...and yet others stayed the same.

"How has the pack been treating you?" His voice was slightly hoarse, brow knit with concern for her. Was she keeping herself well fed while she did her pack duties? Eating and drinking enough? She looked quite fit to him, but then...he had always seen her as a perfect work of art. "You look well" A contrast to Gideon, perhaps. He didn't look terrible, and there was still a spark of life in his turquoise gaze, but something had changed.

Nayru · 06-01-2011, 01:41 PM

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389.

It was the same voice as before but rough around it’s edges. It had been so long since she had heard the man speak; even at the meeting he had been silent, coming and going like a wraith. That so much time and distance had grown between them was nearly unimaginable, but even as close as they stood now Nayru could feel the barrier between them. His question was so mundane, but his comment on her appearance held more than just a simple observation. Always he had kept his eyes out for the fairy girl, having been the younger but larger of the two children. Had anything gone wrong with Nayru, Gideon was often the first and only to know. He had been there to help stitch her broken head. Yet he had been gone when Conor left. Gone when Bris took her departure left. And also when Saluce left. Almost she had feared that he too had gone away without telling her.

"Well enough." It wasn’t the same as it had been before. Despite her efforts to stay invisible among their ranks, everyone knew Nayru now. She was no longer the phantom fairy child of Dahlia de Mai, but she stood front and center. Gideon now faded into that background and Nayru had to go hunting through shadows. Cherry eyes looked him over again, and despite the sorrow she felt at his unexplained injuries she couldn’t help but smile. It was almost a happy frown, as being near to the boy at all once again brought feelings she couldn’t quite explain or understand. Even if he was not whole, or the same as he had been, he was here and she could be glad of that.

Without hesitance and with gentle slowness she trailed an ivory finger along one of his scars, and though she would often overlook or let go many unhappy memories or subjects, this was not one she was content to turn a blind eye to. “Do they pain you still? The injuries?” The girl wanted to demand who did this, wanted to turn Gideon in the eye and ask who hurt him and why didn’t he come to her after it happened? Yet like the easy creature she was, Nayru knew that all information came out eventually and hurrying it usually did not help.

Gideon Stormbringer · 06-02-2011, 12:50 AM

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He had missed her, though he hadn't realized exactly how much he'd missed her until now. He didn't like to let his emotions show to others and Nayru was included in that for the most part. There had been times when he had wondered how she was doing or what she was up to, but he hadn't been too certain of how to locate her and the thoughts had been fleeting at best anyway. Not something he had focused on for any amount of time. Gideon had been worried about his own recovery and about the children for the most part, keeping to himself and his direct family.

"Good." He was genuinely glad that she was doing well. Gideon had so many things to ask her, so much to talk about that he wasn't sure where to start. She began the conversation for him as he searched for the right words, though, one finger tracing over one of his more visible scars. The touch was enough to make him start slightly in surprise; he had only ever felt pain from his injuries, and the feeling of her finger on his skin brought something completely different. Something akin to pleasure. If it had been a larger touch he would have leaned into it. No one had dared to touch his fragile form over the last couple of months...he found himself craving it now. "Y..Yes. Every day. That doesn't hurt, though. Um...do you want come in and sit down?"

Nayru · 06-05-2011, 12:02 PM

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Almost the elegant lady was reminded of the awkward boy Gideon had been once, and Nayru wondered if to him she was the same eccentric and innocent girl she had been almost a year ago. They had nearly been inseparable then, living under the same roof and often sharing their days together. No one had questioned the bond between them, that of best friends, quasi-brother and sister, and perhaps something more. And though the boy still held a place in her heart that no other could imagine overtaking, her days were filled with Saul and Siku and Saluce and the tall ebony boy had been laid to the wayside. As he responded to her touch Nayru was reminded of all the other times they had touch, for a long time he had been the only one who could reach out to her physically besides Bris and occasionally Conor. Now it seemed his skin was the one she came into contact least with.

"Yes. Let's go sit." It was like stepping back in time as she swept past him and into the house that she could no longer consider her home. Yet far too many days and nights of wandering these halls made it impossible to feel uncomfortable in the large, empty place. When she had settled and Gideon had joined her she turned to him, her normally gentle and calm face almost sad as she took him in. His same body, but changed. The same house, but different. "Neither of us are who we use to be Gideon." And suddenly she didn't know why she had said that, it was too soon to open that can of worms. Too early and uncomfortable to try and pry about his injuries and knowing this her sorrowful face changed suddenly. Out of place, her lilting twitter came, rolling music of soft laughter and Nayru shook free the thoughts that had been invading her head. "How are Range and Melee?" Like her laughter her voice was cheerful, but she knew she had to tread carefully. There was too much else that could have gone wrong during their time apart.

Gideon Stormbringer · 06-07-2011, 07:52 PM

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She took her hand away from him and they entered the remains of the house. Gideon couldn't imagine leaving this place, though Melee and Range spent their nights out-doors as often as they did inside these days. The building had sentiment to him. Bris and Conor were gone, now, but he didn't need them. He wasn't angry with his aunt for leaving them...but her departure had left a small hollow inside of his chest. She had been the one to care for him as a pup when he had been injured, lost, and alone. Who would he have to go to for advice now that she was gone? Layla had lived with him for a few months before she too had taken her leave. He'd miss her company as well. Having Nayru around, feeling his face twist into a smile and heart beat with emotion, was making him realize how much he had missed out on while recovering. Could he get it back?

He saw her as a leader, but also in several other ways as well. She was his superior and he respected her position, but she had also always been the one he could talk to about anything, who was his friend through thick and thin no matter what happened. He settled beside her, allowing himself to sink slowly down onto the cushion of the ratty old velvet couch. Her words perplexed him momentarily and he allowed himself a moment of silence to think. What was she referring to? He wasn't the same as he had once been...but that was the way life went, wasn't it? "We've led different lives than we had when we were children, Naryu. The world isn't as innocent as I once believed it to be. Sometimes the hero and the villain wind up being the same person in the end."

Their conversation had gone down a dark road, but Nayru made a quick U-turn before it went too far. He had spent a lot of time thinking about what had happened to him and why...if he had done something wrong in his life to deserve to be treated like that. To go through this suffering now. "They've been sticking around the house about as much as they've been outdoors lately. I can't keep them in and I don't want to, hah. I don't want them to explore too much and get into trouble..but it's the only way they'll learn I guess. I was a pretty shy pup for the most part...I was happy to stay inside Dahlia because that's where all of my friends were, anyway." He looked back at her, hands in his lap.

Nayru · 06-11-2011, 01:19 PM

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Nayru nodded as the man explained Range and Melee didn't want to stay in anymore. Although she asked after them, she knew this. Nayru, ever the alert and attentive guard of Dahlia de Mai often caught their scent coming and going from Dahlia. Many times it left the borders and did not come back for days. Yet their scent was easier to catch than Gideon's, which stayed closed to Wolfville. Nayru knew the lifestyle Range and Melee lived now; she had lived it once as a child, getting wanderlust and wandering off for days. Gideon had always stayed closer to home, and that too had been a time they had seen less of each other, it had been the beginning of the end of their childhood. Range and Melee soon wouldn't be children, but that hardly seemed possible.

"I wish they would stay in Dahlia de Mai." Almost she didn't believe her words. The freedom granted to her by Conor had been one of the greatest gifts, it had been part of the reason she had grown so well in so short a time. Yet her mind was the recent conversation she had had with Saluce, things like that happened outside of Dahlian borders. Nayru didn't need to go to confirm, she knew in her heart Conor was dead. The lavender eyed boy wouldn't have crossed the borders and stayed willingly. Looking up at Gideon, who towered over her even as both sat low in the couch, Nayru knew she could and wouldn't keep the information from the boy. He had more of a right to know than she perhaps. "Conor's dead, Giddy. It happened in Anathema." That's all she had to say, she didn't need to tell Gideon how Conor had been a hero and a villain too.

Nayru searched Gideon's face for emotion. Did this change anything for him? To Nayru the news had just been distant gossip, having written Conor off the moment he stepped out of Dahlia de Mai. The man's death had already occurred for the girl, and now she was more concerned with the living left over. Gideon's injuries concerned her, in a way that it personally hurt her to see him hurt. Laying an urgent hand over his arm, "Who did this to you?" Even if the warrior in her had decided she couldn't avenge Conor, she could avenge Gideon, she had to. Gideon still was from Dahlia de Mai. The lady of still had a responsibility to do right by him.

Gideon Stormbringer · 06-14-2011, 05:07 PM

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"I just hope that nothing happens to them. I don't want them to be hurt...but how else will they learn? They will be adults...the words of their father seem to phase them less and less every day" He mumbled. He couldn't protect them forever, not from everything anyway. Gideon had to allow them to stand up and make their own mistakes...but be there to catch them when they fell down. He would make some rules about the most important things...but allow them to feel like they had their independence. At least they came home at night.

He gave her a sidelong glance at the news of Conor. He knew that something had happened...but not what it was, exactly. Gideon had been lost to the world during the last few months, caught up in his own pain and disappointments. "I feel like I've missed out on a lot, Nayru. I had to heal..and some parts are still not completely better." Not just his physical body, but mentally. "What is Anathema?" Some new territory he had never heard of before? "The name sounds familiar to me..but I don't recall it"

Questions of his own injuries came then, of who had caused his pains. "I honestly can't remember, Nayru. I just remember leaving Dahlia de Mai, speaking with a few canines...but their faces are blurred in my mind. There was a certain scent, the smell of must and dirt. But that's all that I remember. Then I was awake and struggling home." He hadn't told many of his experience and of what he remembered. Some things were sharp in his mind...the sight of the trees overhead when he had first woken back up, a flash of gold fur, but that was it.

Nayru · 06-17-2011, 02:12 PM

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Short short.

Gideon took in the news of Conor rather calmly, and Nayru was not surprised. It seemed for him that already the man's absence had been processed. In that way they were very much the same. Tilting her head at the man she spoke softly. "Anathema is a newer pack. They are in the east, past Phoenix Valley. Up in the mountains." Nayru thought of Naniko and Theodore. They had both been kind to her, would either of them have really allowed anything to happen to Conor? If they had, it was none of her business now. Only those that remained mattered still. Nayru found that letting go was easier than she would have thought, even if mental images of the man still plagued her now and then.

Hesitantly she pushed her body close to Gideon, if that were possible. Letting her slight weight rest upon his great body, she peered up at him. He did not remember? At all? Had the boy blocked out the memories of that day? As extensive as his injuries were the day they had occurred was probably rather traumatic. It did not surprise her that his mind had decided it best not to remember any of it. Her slender hand reached out to his then as she closed her eyes, resting her head on his shoulder. "If you remember… I want to know." She didn't really. But she had to.

Gideon Stormbringer · 06-18-2011, 04:19 PM

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Hey, that is more than fineee Big Grin <3 And aha...a turn of events, perhaps >__> Nay may not be the one to flee~ He feels conflicted..he doesn't want her touching him like that unless he knows for sure that there is some kind of meaning behind it. Because he doesn't want to get used to having that around and then have it taken away, I think. He's a complicated boy. -pets him-

He'd always had the thought in his head that he should watch out for Nayru and keep her safe. Gideon wanted to be her protector, her knight in shining armor. But how could he be those things when he couldn't even protect himself? He'd felt useless in the weeks after his injuries as he had healed, taking snail-slow steps toward recovery. The male had tried to be as independent as he could, but had accepted little bits of help from Saul and the children when they had offered. He was a stubborn one at times.

The Stormbringer had never thought he would be looking to Nayru for protection from anything or anyone. The realization made his stomach roll; gone were the days when he could go confidently to the borders of the pack and scout out in the open, gone were the days when he would rush into a confrontation to protect the pack from an intruder. He didn't know that he would be of any use if he did such a thing any longer. Anathema...the wolves there had to be pure evil. Could he defend Nayru and the pack from such a force, or would he wind up looking to them for protection from that pack?

He would have to try and train, try and get back to somewhere near where he had once been physically and mentally. He didn't want to have to rely on anyone or anything...or be afraid any longer. "Why would they kill him? For no reason?" He had guessed that something had happened, yes, but couldn't work this part of the story out in his head. "I really don't remember, Nayru. I just remember that weird smell...the scent of must and dirt. Like something old and dusty"

His overstimulated mind received an even bigger shock when she touched him once more, putting her hand in his and resting her head on his shoulder. He froze. Did she not know what this did to him? See what it did? He sat stock-still, unsure of how to react or what to think. There was too much rushing through his mind right now to handle all of it. He turned his head slightly to look down at her, eyes wide, heart beating wildly. He had to get some kind of control back. "You...shouldn't touch me."

Gideon pulled back, then, standing up a bit unsteadily. "I don't know. I think it means more to me than it does to you. I don't..I just don't know." He took a few steps to the side, turquoise gaze crossing the room to rest upon the door that she had come into. An escape route, perhaps, if he needed it. He was afraid of what she might say, afraid that what he had said had wrecked the entire situation. Why couldn't he have just sat down and continued to talk to her? Why couldn't he stand her touch?

Nayru · 06-19-2011, 08:06 PM

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We can have Giddy run away and start up the next thread if you still wanna have him help convince her? 404

The question that Gideon asked then was not one she wanted to answer. Saluce had warned her against spreading the gossip, and she agreed that it was best to let Conor's member die a beautiful one. That his fate might have started traveling down the same path as his psychotic father's haunted her. That someone was extracting revenge upon the man seem impossible, but from the few words Saluce had spoken to her it seemed the cased. What children could inherit or learn from their parents was impressive, and though Nayru hardly realized it her mother was a master liar and wearer of masks, so it was no surprise that she said as believably as one might "I don't know why, Gideon." And she hated herself for lying to him, but it was better that way. He didn’t need to carry around those scars also.

As Nayru was trying to pinpoint where the smell of must and dirt originated, she was surprised to find that Gideon was pulling away from her. When they had been children they had often found comfort in the contact of the other, in fact Gideon had been one of the only beings who touch she ever tolerated and certainly the single one she actively sought out. Now Gideon treated the ivory and ebony alpha as if she were electricity. He pulled back as if his already battered body had unexpectedly encountered an uncomfortable hotness. Nayru couldn't have anticipated that his sudden movement would cause such heart ache for her, but as he pulled back a sinking feeling found her. Did he not like her nearness any longer?

Ruby eyes blinked slowly, taken by surprise for one of the first times in her short life, and tried to formulate words to comprehend the situation. "Gideon are you okay?" Perhaps it was just too much. Perhaps it he needed to process the death of Conor even more than she had realized. Perhaps it was the distance her rank created between them. Perhaps something else but Nayru couldn't know. Still couldn’t understand. For too long they had been best friends. That they could ever be anything besides that was unconceivable.

Standing up, she took a few steps at him and then stopped. A small head tilted, and almost she reached out to him again but already she could feel the distance once more. "What means more to you? I don't understand Giddy."

Gideon Stormbringer · 06-21-2011, 05:33 PM

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Got itt :3 Whenever you wanna thread again I'd loooove one, though...awkward fun :3

There were a few things that he had to tell her before he did anything else, or he might not get the chance. Who was to say when he would see his beautiful alpha again? If he had messed this up somehow, then it might be quite a while. Gideon would likely hide in shame from her over what he had said and how he had acted. "This Anathema threat...it scares me, Nayru. I don't want anything happening to the pack. We need to make a strong alliance or partnership with another group or another pack...so that we can all remain safe."

He didn't like those Anathema canines one bit. If anyone ever hurt a hair on one of his packmate's heads...well, he would have something to do about it. Somehow, he would find a way to get them back for what had happened to Conor. Gideon would have to continue to train daily and try and work through some of the pain issues that he was having with his joints, but he was willing to try. He wanted to be able to protect them as well as he could.

The male took a few steps farther away from her. "I'm not okay, Nayru. I won't be until you are by my side." He said simply. He clenched his teeth together, lest he say anything else to further ruin what they already had. The dark boy turned from her, then, padding quickly out the front door, down the porch, and running for the surrounding brush.

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