Two sides of the coin.

Orin Takekuro · 06-07-2011, 07:08 PM

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It seemed things dawned on Sky a little slower than they had on Orin, thanks to the disguise she wore but now let fade. She flinched visibly when Sky yelped her name, the word still sounding strangely foreign to her. There was a time when she thought she would never hear that name again. The pups at her feet stirred again, this time slowly sitting up and blinking away their nap. Orin wasn't upset about their waking, though, they had been out for quite a while. She knelt down to the girls who were showing increasing interest in the woman in the grove, but Orin distracted them by pointing towards a system of knotted tree roots. “Just in time girls, I think there's a cat over there.” As though the very statement shook the last sleep from them, the two squealed in unison and bounded to the edge of the clearing in search.

Orin straightened and turned back to Sky, a half smile on her muzzle. Her old pack mate was happy to see her, and the feeling was infectious. Even the wary mother relaxed now, her brown-stained tail twitching ever so slightly in reflection. “Yes, Sky, it's me,” she said, although it was clear that there was no real need to verify the fact. Her old disguise was only good enough to fool people from a distance, or those who had not known her before. “And my little fairies, Juliet and Titania.”

She paused a moment, glancing at the girls, but before the silence stretched on for too long her eyes went back to Sky. Where on Earth have you been? What would she tell her? How could she explain? The truth... could she bare to recall it?

“Away,” was the curt, one-worded answer that she came up with. She chewed her lip and cast her gaze aside for a moment, then sighed in frustration, knowing how pathetic that sounded. “I didn't plan to come back. I didn't even get as far as I had hoped to. I just... left... ran... But Titania was sick and I couldn't make it very far and when I collapsed in Phoenix Valley they took me in. I tried to become part of their pack but I just... couldn't... and after we were all well again I left. I started to head north until I realized the pups were still too young to make it across the mountains, so I turned back.

“...well, it was more than just that.” She surprised herself. Was she really going to bare it all to Sky right now? It didn't matter, she couldn't stop herself now. “I was in disguise...” she motioned to herself, “So no one could find me. I took on another name, I made up a new life. A new past. But the questions... they asked so many questions.” Her eyes flicked back to her girls, who had now forgotten about the prospect of a cat and were in an endless mouth-to-tail tug-of-war loop. “It was good though. Their curiosity felt good, but I kept having to lie to them. And then one day I realized I just felt... unclean. Lying to their innocent faces made me feel dirtier than any man ever could.”

She stopped then, drawing up short as she was about to say something else. Her eyes returned to Sky's and now she searched for something there. Unspoken questions huddled behind Orin's golden gaze. How much did Sky know? How much did everyone know? Of course they would know of Demetrius's murder, and in some ways it was probably as much as a horror to the Medic as it was to herself. But what of the rest? Did they even need to know the rest? Orin shook her head in response to her own thoughts, thoughts, appearing torn between saying more and stopping her story cold.

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