ooc:
There was a woman that dwelled in Ichika that fancied herself a warrior. She was strong and able and kind at heart, and her mind was ever changes with the experiences of the passing days. She had learned from her life led before this what it meant to care for her familiars, but it was only within these lands had she learned what it meant to love. It was an emotion lost to her brethren, condemned for its complications. Living among these people of these vast lands she could understand why her family would seek to keep these emotions from their culture, but at the same time she damned them for robbing their generations of such wonderful feelings.
But she love was splendid in all its complexities; it was also frightening and strange. She learned how it could twist the mind and incite a fear no vicious fang or blade to compare to. She learned how love could foster doubt in an otherwise certain mind, and how it could shake even the strong to their core. And in all its strangeness and complications, she still cherished its feelings and was glad to experience it daily. The love for her pack even when their faces were absent to her, the love of the growing generation even though they were not her own, and the love of her mate though he seemed to avoid her during these trying times.
When her life was better spent in ignorance, this woman learned that the luxury was no longer hers to delve in. She may not have wholly embraced what it meant to lead but gradually she was coming to understand its implications. The airs meant to be upheld as well as the responsibility. She blamed none for this sudden shift in her life and believed it to be the will of the ancestors that this trial be hers to overcome. And as all things before it, she would with her utmost ability. But she found herself against an obstacle she could not begin to hurdle. She did not know how to scale its stone walls and see to the other side. She was faced with uncertainty and did not know where to begin to dispel it.
She this woman was determined to try even at the risk of failure, even if that failure meant the loss of precious love she held dear. And she had found her first step, as distant as it was and took stride along its path, carrying her further from the cradle of the territory into the shadowing mountains’ embrace. Her meeting earlier that day left her in hopeful spirits, but there was still a sliver of doubt that crossed her eyes occasionally. But each time she felt the creeping down, she would gently rest a claw on the head of the fledging braced against her chest and whispered words of assurance, not for it but for herself to make her believe that all would be well. It had to be.
Taking a deep breath, she paused in stride and placed her palm over the head of the young bird before raising her muzzle and letting her call ring out for her beloved to hear. She had searched for him in all other places but here and could only hope that he would answer her pleading voice.