don't worry about matching length because my previous posts will almost definitely be shorter. >>. backdated to october 20th, the day before calypso was accepted into jaded shadows.


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Ten months. Ten months, one pack, one love, twice over a father. All that and more had separated Calypso from this place, separated him from his home of two years. He was shifted, which was notable only in that it is not his preferred form. More notable, in fact, was the slender sheet-wrapped form he held in his arms. Or even the puppy peeking out over the top of a pouch slung across his shoulder.


No, as much as it might feel like it, this was not home. Not anymore. He was not welcome here, he had no claim on the lands. He was a guest at best; a trespasser to be exiled at the worst. Calypso did not even know who lived here, anymore. The scents around the edges were a strange mismatch; some were familiar, but only just, and none had names he could associate with them. There was not the faintest hint of Adreon now, and even Gibraltar's scent was fading. Phoenix. That was the name of the owner of that most prevalent scent. Calypso distinctly remembered running into the male right after he had joined; he had answered a few questions about the land, even. And now: alpha. How quickly things changed.


The land itself, though, was as familiar as his own fur. Everything held memories; every rock, every bush, every tree. He had walked by there before, he had hunted there, he had napped there. And it taunted him. The echo of familiarity; it would be so easy to live here again. So easy to trace the same old hunting paths, to clean out and re-inhabit the old den. To show Sofia the prettiest views.


The idea of Sofia growing up here, however, was deeply unsettling in Calypso's gut. Invisible to most, through the young male's honey eyes death and sorrow hung too close for comfort. Yes, there he had laughed. But there he had mourned his Mother's death. There, Mauve had fallen to never rise again. There, he had explored too far into the river and broken his leg. All the same, there was so much beauty to the land that it was all he could do to hold himself back from whimpering and cowering and begging his place in the pack back. This was Storm. This was the pack of nobility, of strength. Of patriarchs that inspired Calypso to his search for goodness, of Adreon and Gibraltar and youth and love.


He wanted to stay, he did. But whether or not he ended up doing so, there was still the matter of Lily, of the decaying corpse cradled tenderly in his arms as if it needed love and protection as much as the curious child hanging at his hip. Calypso needed permission to access his graveyard, and less importantly, the things that he had left behind. And his curiosity begged to be assuaged; he needed an authority on the going-ons of the pack. A clipped, polite howl requested one.