[html] Fatin had told him that he would find Phasma in Storm, and it was by luck alone that he was able to come across it relatively easily. Though she had more or less pointed him in that direction, getting there did take a little time, and he was thankful not to get lost between Point A and Point B. The flat, forested plain of Storm rose like a cathedral from the ground against the glittering white, the tall trees were deprived of their leafy coats. When he had reached the border (or what he thought smelled like the border) he had slowed to a stop, his mind running wild with the stories that he had been told. Storm was only one of the packs where his mother had lived, but it was the first pack that his father and aunt had lived in. There was ever a sense of pride to be found in the heart of the Valiant son, who soon thereafter let out a howl strictly for Phasma to respond to. He hadn't seen her in what was literal ages, and he was far from the princely little brat he had been in Syemv. [/html]
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indentIt wasn't very often that anyone came seeking her specifically, so when the call was let out into the air the brows of the raven woman perked up. She was in her cave, curled up to a small fire that she'd managed to keep going through the cold days, resting. It was often where she could be found, wasting away and waiting for something to happen. First it had been Tsunami, he'd returned with news of thier son, and she hadn't seen him since then. Skoll came afterward, which hadn't turned out pleasantly, and now this. Curious as to who it could be, she rose quickly from her spot, not even taking a moment to stretch before heading outside into the snow.
indentFour paws were quick to take her to her destination, the location of the call, and because of where she had chosen to live it didn't take her long to get there. Slate eyes slid over his form as she near and, for a moment, she might have mistaken him for Lucifer if it weren't for the eyes. As she neared, though, something she never thought she'd come into contact with again came smacking her in the face. The scent of her old friend, her once-Alpha. "Valentine?" She questioned bluntly, even before she fully reached him. If not him, then who in the world could it be?
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[html] “Yep.” Cue a silly grin. It had been a long time since he had seen Phasma, but she had aged well, he figured. There was ever a harder gaze set on her face, but it was still the same face that he remembered from all that time ago. “It's been a while. Guess I'm not so little any more,” he joked with a friendly wave of his bushy tail, not quite closing the distance between them. What if she wasn't happy to see him? That thought hit him a bit late, but it was a possibility. He had never washed out the memory of how they had all just up and left one night. [/html]
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indentOne single, ever so simple, word confirmed it. It was Valentine, Akumu's son. With that confirmed, almost immediately after he spoke it, her tail began in an almost frantic wag. She honestly didn't believe that she would see any of them again. "You certainly aren't." She commented quietly, taking a moment to look him over closer. He looked like his father. Taking a few steps forward, Phasma closed the gap between them just a bit more, smiling a genuine smile, which was almost rare for her now.
indent"I'm surprised your mother doesn't have you stuffed in a box somewhere." She gave a bit of a chuckle at this thought, easing herself to a stop and dropping her rear to the ground to sit. "Have you been well?" There were to many questions to ask, to maybe people to ask them about, but all of those would come in time.
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[html] Once he had affirmed just who he was, that cold stone barrier between them seemingly dropped; the grin on his face spread easily. It had been far too long in his eyes—well over a year—which made being able to talk to her again open up his own desire to get questions answered. But he knew better than to jump headlong into such questionnaires, sating his want would come later as he preferred to indulge her first. “Oh, I assure you that she shut me in a few when I was small enough. But I learned to get out of them just as quickly,” but by then he had long been eased out of being bratty. His mother had her own obscure parenting practices, much to his dismay and his father's. “And I have been well, but what about yourself? It's been far too long and I've missed seeing familiar faces.” [/html]
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indentThe smile on her face only grew with his words, finding the memories and sudden new images quite amusing as they played inside her head. She never was quite sure what Akumu had been up there back then but she also had never questioned it. Her friend knew what she was doing, Phasma was certain, or else she wouldn't have done it. "I suppose it would be hard sticking someone your size inside of a bow." He'd grown so very much, much more than she ever would have imagined. Then again, she still had the vision of that mischievous little pup inside her head, which she could now replace.
indent"Things have been a little rough here and there but I make it through." She answered honestly, forcing herself to realize that he was now old enough to understand such things. "It's moments like these that I wait for though." And she smiled even wider. Being reunited, waiting for something good to happen. That was all she could hold out for.
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[html] He imagined that things had been rough, because for a while things had been rough on him. He had never wanted to leave Syemv, but he had never been asked for his opinion. The inner cynic wanted desperately to toy with the what ifs of everything around him, but he knew there that was little he could do about the past. If it was one thing he had learned from either parent, it was that dwelling on the past did anyone little good. Perhaps it was out of spite to his mother that he was destined to not be like her. “I imagine that things have been rough. I tried going back to the house where Syemv was… and well, I managed to catch a glimpse of it. I didn't realise that the coyotes had it now.” Maybe waiting a little more than a minute wasn't exactly what he had in mind when it came down to inquiring about Syemv, but it went right in a row with hardships. [/html]
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indentSyemv was an emotional subject for the raven woman, one that brought a sad smile to her face when mentioned. She'd tried so hard to keep it together, did what she thought she had to do, and in the end she'd been abandoned. "Near the winter our numbers were drastically low. Chimera and the few wolves they had came to our lands, we called ourselves Aremys then." She began, to look on her face a bit more serious than it had been. "Sometime near the end of winter Inferni attacked. We were taken by surprise, forced to retreat to Chimera's lands. It was my decision to retreat. My decision not to stand and attack for fear of losing more lives." Sometimes she thought that others looked down on her because of that.
indent"I could tell they weren't happy, being so used to living in the house and the other ways that we lived. After a while I took whoever wanted to join me and we moved to the city, we went back to being Syemv. You wouldn't believe how wonderful it was there, how happy everyone seemed to be." She smiled again, smiled because of the memory. Of course it was obvious that things hadn't worked out. "They started to leave eventually, just up and disappeared most of the time. We were down to three when I made the decision that we weren't going to make it." Even now, she felt like she'd failed.
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[html] Even now there was just a spark of bitterness over how they had left. His face easily lost the sunshine that had been there, half settling for one that listened to every word that Phasma shared, and half falling into disarray for emotion. Though he wasn't sure what he would have done in her respectable shoes. He wasn't a fighter, and tact hadn't always been his best suit, though he was fond of knowing how to use words to his advantage. “I'm sorry,” he offered, feeling shameful that he had dove straight into the topic now. But he wished things hadn't happened like that, because that house had been his home. He had been born there, so there was a natural inclination to want to be there within him. It wasn't as though Jaded Shadows didn't have everything he could ever want and more, but he had yet to feel truly at home within its mountainous, and cavernous locales. “Is there anyone still around from then besides you and I?” [/html]
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indentPhasma felt nothing ill toward her friend and the decisions that she'd made. Had the raven woman thought her own children would have been better of elsewhere, she would have made the very same decision that Akumu had. The sad fact was though, that even now, she was still greatly unsure of why Inferni had attacked in the first place. She'd trespassed there, when she thought Segodi was still ruling, to search the beach for her lost child and lover. Kaena had taken half her ear that day. Phasma hadn't returned since, until recently.
indent"Rurik came back right before Inferni attacked, he left shortly after I came here. Lucifer and Deuce are in Jaded Shadows, but I'm sure you know that. Dierdre is here in Storm with me but, aside from that, we're really the only ones left. " Almost all of them had disappeared and then returned, only to disappear once again. "I suppose your mother and father stayed behind?" She questioned finally, wishing to know that they were well.
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[html] Only a handful of names that he knew out of the mass that lived in the house. From the young to the seeming old, all of them were either dead or gone, he could figure. Rurik had come back around to his surprise, and perhaps in some regard the grey pirate could have almost been his father if the timing had been right. The way he had caught his mother talking about him made him wonder if she regarded him in the same light that he saw his father, and the idea had always interested him. But there was no denying who he truly was, because that was as black and white as day and night. Things really had changed and in Valentine's eyes, ultimately for some worse equivalent. He would have liked to turn back time, thinking if he had acted different they wouldn't have moved on. But no, there was little sense in going over what was said and done, he had to remind himself.
“I wanted them to come here with me, but they didn't want to. They didn't want me to come back here either, but I think it was finally decided I was old enough to make my own choice,” because compared to the group he had grown up with, being two years old was more than old enough to be out of Mummy and Daddy's godly good care. “But they're well. I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't settled back to being vagabonds now that I'm not constantly in their hair.” But he didn't know for sure. For all he knew—and on a certain level cared—they could have been procuring siblings for him. Some ploy to draw him back home, though he couldn't say which parent really didn't want him to go the worst. Both of them had put on convincing displays, though he had slowly distanced himself from them a long time ago, as any child did from their parent at some point. Adolescence was a wondrous thing, in jest. [/html]
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indentShe couldn't blame them for not wanting to come back, really. Akumu and Cross had known how things could be in these lands, perhaps even better than she knew, and she couldn't have expected them to come back willingly. Perhaps it was curiosity that had brought Valentine back, a longing for the place that he was born and the people he had been born around. Unfortunately, all of those things were gone now or, at least, they were out of reach. The old Syemv house could be seen from the beach just outside of Inferni if one took the time to look for it. Phasma knew that because she'd gone there now and again, just to stand and look at it.
indent"It's wonderful to see you and to know that your parents are well, even if they didn't come back here with you." And it really was good to see him. "So you're staying in Jaded Shadows?" She'd caught the scent of Fatin on him and, quite frankly, she couldn't be happier about it. She knew that Jaded Shadows was a wonderful place and Fatin was like a mother to her. There was no better place for him than there, though Phasma, at this point, hadn't the faintest idea that she would soon be joining him.
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*finally drags out a table for the hell of it*
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The future would prove to be sourceful, at least in unwritten terms. Most of those who hadn't moved on from Syemv, he had learned from Fatin, were in Jaded Shadows. A place that had bounded itself tightly with family—the very thing that he knew Syemv had been founded on—and though he was very much an outsider, he was ready to assimilate at the first chance to prove his worth. “That I am, it was the first place I thought of going to when I couldn't get to Syemv. Mum said that it would be a good place to go to, since she knows Fatin.” Though really, now that he thought about it, just how good was her knack of foresight? He almost briefly wondered if she felt the foundation of things crumbling, never quite grasping what had been so bad about being in Syemv in the latter of his youth.
They had been well protected, at least. Rogues and pirates, wolves with skills that were more than useful in a world that had been a diamond in the rough. “She… was a little eager to take me in. I didn't expect to get in that easily, but I guess not every pack here is as tight-knit as what I've become familiar with.” Some were very reluctant to take in strangers, travellers, whatever washed up. Others prided themselves on family, which was exactly what Jaded Shadows did. “What's Storm like?” The name didn't simply very much, though from the looks of it, it seemed like it wasn't all that much different from half of the places he had seen. Flat and lumpy, forested; it was picture perfect for a pack, he imagined. At least, as picture perfect as one could get, though the scenery didn't grasp his interest like it should have.
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