[html] She'd been back for more than a week now and failed to find any small sign or hint of him. At least, that was, until she wandered through the woods just south of Inferni. Rachias had picked up a very faint scent of him there, wrapped tightly around what seemed to be Ahren's scent, and the girl had followed it ever since. The trail lead the young girl through the thick forest, eventually breaking off in to something of a large field. She made her way quickly through each area though, paying little mind to even the sandy beach that she was lead through. It was a long, tiring journey, and by the time she reached forest once more, her legs burned and ached beneath her, chest heaving for breath.
She had decided when she started, though, that she couldn't chance losing the scent and needed to follow it. Unfortunately, what she found when she reached the end of her trail was not something that made her at all happy. Borders. Had he joined a pack, perhaps started his own? The scent that marked them was not his though, but rather a strangers. Growing irritated rather quickly, the sandy colored girl balled up her fists tightly, pacing just along the outer edges of that invisible line. Back and forth she went, going farther and farther in each direction, watching and waiting. Her father was in there and she wanted access to him now.
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Laurel didn't know how the young pacing a rut along his borders had been doing so; frankly he hadn't even known she was there. Laurel had only decided to step away from the pack for a little while to clear his head when he discovered her. There was something about her pace that said something very different altogether to him and he picked up easily on the concerned look on her face. Stepping from the thick mess of trees and shurbs, he cleared his throat to draw attention. “Can I help you?”
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[html] His arrival practically made her jump, the words catching her off guard suddenly. She spun to face him, finally bringing herself to a stop. For a moment the girl eyed him, a curious looking man, and if it weren't for the fact that she had a mission in mind, she might have actually taken a moment to give a damn about how different he seemed. Instead, the sandy colored girl marched right up to him, though instead of anger, it was worry that fueled her. "My father." She lifted a hand then, stopping just in front of him. "I was tracking his scent and it lead me here." She turned away slightly, pointing off in the direction that she had come from. "He wasn't a part of a pack when I saw him last and it's odd that I didn't smell you on him when I was on his trail. It led me here though, his scent and Ahren's." She tried to explain in the most non-threatening way possible, though her concern and the quiet excitement that filled her was making it hard. "Have you seen two men traveling together? One is a wolf, the other a hybrid like myself."
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At least she wasn't sick, that's what he told himself. At least she wasn't sick and looking for refuge or someone to take care of her. Not that he would have turned her away if it were the case, but Laurel couldn't help but be a little worrisome. Nikita had been coughing in her sleep (which had woken him up a couple of times) and whenever he caught a glimpse of Ahren, the blonde looked more and more ragged than before. He had tried to stay away from the sick as best as he could, but it was getting harder not to touch them, not to get close enough to hear them breathe to make sure if they were still alive.
“You mean Laruku?” he asked, surprised that the mustard-coloured hybrid had a child. Regardless of her answer, he continued speaking. “He's here and so is Ahren… both they're pretty sick right now though and so is Ahren's kid, Jasper.” He paused, mulling over his options with a sincere look to her—if she had come there to visit, should he let her be exposed to whatever the two had?—and gauged her reaction accordingly. “I can take you to see him, if that's what you're here for. I'm Laurel.”
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[html] The name barely got past the strange man's lips before Rachias was ready to yell and scream, to proclaim that he was exactly who she was looking for. Instead, the girl kept her excitement contained, bouncing carefully on her toes as he continued to speak. Her small bounce of excitement was quick to cease though, dreadful words seeping in to her head just as soon as they were spoken? "Sick?" She questioned immediately, quietly. Her head cocked to the side, eyes trailing across him. He seemed well, at least from the looks of things. "How sick are they? All of them?" Though Jasper was someone that she hadn't ever met before, she still felt the need to be concerned over him. Ahren had shown her kindness in hard times, taken her in when she was certain that her father hated her.
"Please, I'd like to see him." She nodded along with her words, shuffling a few more steps forward, ready to follow him. "Do you have any idea what it is or if it's even the same thing?" She supposed they were all close enough, connected enough that it might have been the same thing. "I've been gone for a while, went across the mountain to try and find my brother. Never found him though.." There was a quiet sadness there. "But I've been looking for my dad ever since I got back." It had only been a week, perhaps two. "I'm Rachias."
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“Sick enough that they're delirious sometimes, pretty weak. It's like a cold, but I think it's a bit worse than that and nothing that I've ever seen before,” partly because he had simply never gotten it before. Laurel wanted to liken it to a hangover with a cold, with the way that Laruku had reacted to light when a door opened or the way Jasper asked odd questions to whoever peered in on them. “We've got them shut up in a little shack thing that Jasper's mate built so that they stay out of the wind and rain and so far that seems to be keeping them from seeming any worse.” He didn't mention that he was afraid it was spreading beyond that and thought it was best to keep it out of the picture.
Getting back to the camp site was getting progressively easier and easier to accomplish because he had done it so much. The razor leaves of the poison ivy no longer bothered him just as he was able to avoid the thorns and burrs that often wanted to either cut him or cling to him. “So you're from the other side of the mountain too? I heard about the fire,” he said, trying to spur just a little bit of conversation before they ultimately reached the point where they needed to be. With a fast walking pace (not the usual leisure he went with for once) they would be there soon enough, so the question would have to suffice.
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[html] The first thing that came to mind was a book that she had read some time ago. Some sort of plague that had taken over and killed many humans. From what Laurel said though, it didn't really sound like the same thing, and Rachias breathed a sigh of relief. "Doesn't sound like they'll be going anywhere, then." Concern in her voice, Rachi furrowed her brows some. She would have taken him away, off somewhere so that she could tend to him and keep the burden off of them. With the state they were in, at least the way it sounded, she wouldn't want to risk moving him at all. "If you wouldn't mind terribly much, I'd like to hang around and take care of him." It was a lot to ask, she knew, but it was also her father they were talking about. "I can hunt for us and bring fresh water, even for everyone else, just to help out."
She was quiet for a time as they walked, finally lifting her head to glance at her strange companion when he spoke up once more. "Yeah. I was living over there with the rest of my family, Inferni, when the fire started. I tried to go back to find my brother but my oldest brother, Gabriel, he wouldn't let me go." She looked away then, hiding the hurt in her voice. "No clue how it started, or I haven't heard, at least. It spread fast though." Far to fast for her liking.
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Well, at some point at least, she had been with Inferni. Or still was, for that matter, he couldn't really say because he had never been to the place. Which to him was an interesting thing, but not all that surprisingly in the long run. It was as he had been told, the place where coyotes were supposed to belong. “I don't mind if you stay and I don't think anyone else would either,” he said as they neared the camp. He chose to stay quiet about the fire and Inferni, knowing it wasn't his place to pry into her past. The past didn't matter much anyway behind their walls.
“This area up here is our campsite and the shack where we've got everyone is over here. We've got a lake a little bit to the north that you can use to get water from if you want or to wash up and I think there's a couple of little streams not too far off to the west either.” Gesturing to the appropriate places, he then led her over to the shack but stopped just a little bit short of opening the door to let her in. “I know I shouldn't have to tell you this, but you know if you go in there you're liable to catch it, right?”
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[html] "Thank you." She offered him quietly, as politely as she could with all of the thoughts that were bogging down her brain. She hoped that he understood that she did appreciate it, but also that the fact that her father was ill was something that suddenly worried her. Rachias stayed quiet for a bit as they continued along, allowing a moment every now and again for her eyes to sweep the area around them, taking in what she could so that she would remember the area in the case that she left and came back. It seemed easy enough, a straight shot through the lands.
The girl breathed a quiet sigh of relief as they came upon the camp, suddenly paying much more attention than she had been previously, forcing her mind away from her worries long enough to hear his words. She followed the motion of his hands with her head, searching the areas that he gestured to with her eyes, and nodding as a sign that she understood. Finally, just as they reached the shack, they stopped. She turned to him to thank him once more, but her words stopped even before they started as he spoke again. A frown settled on her face, staring up at him, and she nodded. "I know." Her tone was grim and serious, it was obvious that even that would not stop her from entering. "Thank you again, Laurel." Her last words before she turned and made her way toward the shack.
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