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It was fortunate that it was summer. Hemming's winter fur had been coming out in handfuls, and he faithfully collected it. Using the spindle he had made weeks ago, he had spun a good amount of it into yarn. The wolf had a fair sized ball in front of him now, and he twisted the loose end back and forth in his fingers as he thought. Hemming was sitting cross-legged, surrounded by the tall grasses of Serena Reserve, and with a foot he held open a large hardcover book he had found in one of the little towns nearby. He stared at the diagrams on the pages, trying to figure out how exactly one would perform this old human task: knitting.
A few hours ago he had collected a handful of sticks from the woods and whittled them down so they were round and almost perfectly smooth. The wolf had done six in total, and they at least roughly matched each other in size. He dropped his carving stone back into his den, which was starting to get more cluttered and more like his old home, and grabbed his ball of yarn and the book before heading out into AniWaya lands. For what seemed like the first time in many days, the rain had stopped falling, though dark clouds lingered on the horizon. Hemming would take advantage of the nice weather while it was here.
He did find it a little odd that he was making things out of his own fur, but for now it was all he had. Perhaps the mane of the wapiti that roamed AniWaya would be a good source, but he wasn't willing to sneak up on them and didn't want to kill one either, unless their meat was needed. So, the wolf held twisted lengths of his own fur held in his hand, one of the smooth needles in the other. He was determined to figure this out today, though he found the picture instructions slightly cryptic. The first step was a cast on, and after trying many interpretations of the images he eventually had a crooked row of stitches on the needle. Turning the needle around, he picked up the other and started to imitate the other steps. This time he wasn't starting from nothing, and if he made a severe enough mistake it was likely that he might have to take it all out.
After a while, he seemed to have gotten a handle on it, making the stitch successfully as long as he didn't get distracted and forget which part of the loop he was supposed to stick the needle through, or which way to wrap the yarn around. A row or two later, and he was grinning happily, repeating the simple stitch over and over. His toes still held the book open at the page, but merely out of having forgotten they were still doing so. Once and a while he would stop and inspect what the piece of fabric that was growing slowly and frown at a lopsided or twisted stitch, but overall he felt as if it was going swimmingly, even if he had spent an hour or so and only had half an inch of his knitting to show of it.
Dagrun, as usual, was sitting happily on his head. She was quiet, save for the occasional thoughtful mumble as Hemming held up his work. The little bird was more interested in the chirping of the other birds in distant trees, and the hungry flight of hawks.
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She was here to talk to Ember.
Four white paws stepped daintily over an assortment of brush and fallen debris, the unshifted wolfess making her way past the border and into the territory. She had been given permission to come to Aniwaya whenever she liked when Ember had crossed into her lands to gather the horses that she had wanted. Naniko had no interest in the herd or in learning how to ride a horse; at that time, several different wolves' bodies had been in various states of disrepair, and she, as a healer, had been quite busy. Too busy to be worried about training horses.
Now, though, her days were filled with a lot of nothing. She was no longer the leader of Crimson Dreams, having been kicked out of the pack for endangering darling Cambria's life...so now she was seeking out one of the only family members who probably did not know of her shame. She was still getting over everything, and was still very bitter toward the new leaders of her old pack. She needed to know who she could count on to try and help her and who she couldn't count on.
The pale female's jade eyes drifted slowly over her surroundings, almost lazily as she attempted to locate her younger sibling. Ember had to be around here somewhere, and it was just a matter of time until she found her or someone who knew where she was. She had heard that her sister was very devoted to her tribe, a change from the way that Naniko remembered Ember to be. Now Ember wasn't being reckless, picking fights with wolves much bigger and stronger than she was. She had learned. Naniko knew about almost all of those fights, as she had been the one to stitch the girl up and baby her afterwards.
The sight of the male sitting amongst the grasses made her falter and then stop completely, unsure if she ought to continue. He looked busy, and she wasn't looking to disturb anyone. "Uh...hey."
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Though he was getting the stitches down right, Hemming hadn't quite optimized the procedure. His hands were twisted in a rather awkward way, the left one grasping the needle from beneath and his right hand wrapped tightly around the back of the other needle, and the strand he was using weaved through his fingertips unnecessarily. The wolf was still holding the book open with one foot, and had the other leg folded up to stabilize himself. He was too involved in his work to change positions, and on top of that he felt as if he would get out of the groove of the art and forget how to do it if he moved at all. It was quite a contorted posture that he had adopted, and on top of all of that there was a bird on top of his head. Truly (hopefully), this must have been the most ridiculous Hemming had looked in a long time.
The absurdity of his appearance was not even a fleeting thought, and when someone else grew near and uttered a greeting, he paused for a moment, looking up with his tongue secured between his teeth in concentration. He froze his fingers in the exact position they were in when he had stopped knitting, as if the act of abandoning their posts would lead to certain failure. The wolf wasn't making anything special, but he tackled the test run with intent. After the half a second it took for him to shift from thinking so hard about the string to realizing he didn't recognize this wolf, a small smile crossed his face. "Hello. Watcha up to?" he asked, his mind still too tied up to really think about what he was saying. The question really should be passing the opposite way between the wolves, as the other wasn't doing anything particularly odd, but it seemed like a common greeting and Hemming was still easing into the part of his thought process that dealt with social interaction.
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When she had lived in Crimson Dreams she had rarely left it. The only times that she'd gone out had been to go to the city to get more of the drug that she had been using at the time or to go and locate a family member. As her addiction had grown she'd stockpiled more and more of it in the basement and had been more and more reclusive, but she had stayed inside the packlands. So now that she was out of it, the woman didn't know what to do with herself. She probably wouldn't venture to other packs besides this one...this one had Ember in it. The others didn't really interest her. And she didn't want to make anyone else angry at her.
She didn't know what reaction she would get when she would find Ember, whether the girl would have heard about what had happened to their neice or not, but she was going to expect the worst. She had already braced herself for it, prepared herself to be shouted at or even ran out of the territory. Bad news travelled fast, after all. Maybe this male knew about it, too.
But if he did, he wasn't showing it. She got a simple greeting, a question, something she hadn't expected at all. She looked him over with more attention to detail, from the sticks in his hands to the bird that sat atop his furry head. She liked animals in general, and wouldn't try to mess with the creature. When she had very first started healing, she'd fixed up many woodland creatures and had learned to talk to them along the way. Anyone who had befriended an animal was a good person in her eyes. She didn't know about the spirit-animals of Aniwaya.
"Just wandering. I hope I'm not being a bother; I came to this tribe to look around for my sister. I'm...a loner. So...if you want me out of here, you can just say so and I'll leave. I don't have a pack to defend me. But I hope you might let me stay for just a little while to try and find her." She said it all at once, breaking her sentences apart with very short silences. "I noticed...you have a bird. I used to have one, too, a birdie that would find animals in trouble for me to heal. A magpie." Naniko said.
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Hemming was still frozen, his eyes and his mouth the only thing he dared to move. He listened to the female as she spoke, just barely picking up on the upset that lay within her voice. The wolf was usually fairly oblivious to the emotions that leaked through, but the words the loner spoke betrayed them. "Oh, I don't think I want you out. Who's your sister?" he asked, wondering if he might know her. Hemming had met a few females within the tribe, so it was possible that he knew who this female was looking for.
He smiled at the mention of his Spirit Guide. "This is Dagrun," he said softly. "You must be good with animals, to have a magpie work with you. They're smart creatures. And you're a healer? I've helped a few animals get healthy again, but I have no real skill.. just patience." Hemming smiled faintly, again, and looked down. The memories of the creatures he had saved and also the ones he had failed to save were a powerful force. Joy and sorrow moved through him in a way that was almost subconscious, seeping through his veins in a similar manner to how adrenaline would fly through. He didn't think about these feelings, except when he was unable to sleep, but they affected him nonetheless.
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She was considering returning to Crimson Dreams some day, but she wasn't ready for that just yet. She wanted to see what other packs were like, too, along with reconnecting with some of her family. She would need more help, she knew, to try and break free of the drugs that had taken control of her life. She wanted to try, at least, and wanted to succeed so badly. "I don't know if you'll know her...but she's Ember Phoenix. She's an adopted sister." She said. It was good that he didn't want her out of there--she wasn't going to cause any trouble. Maybe he saw that.
"That's all that it takes, sometimes." She replied, sitting down now that she knew that she wasn't going to be removed from the lands. "I always liked animals. I don't do much healing any more, but I'm thinking about starting up again. I have to find a new stock of herbs." She pointed to his sticks with her black nose, looking at them more closely. "What are those? I've never seen anything like what you're doing"
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The wolf's eyes widened a bit when the female mentioned the name of her sister, and he grinned broadly. "Oh, I know her! Nice girl, isn't she? Don't know where she might be today, though." Hemming continued to grin as the female sat down, lucky to have some company to rescue him before he became completely neurotic. He continued to hold the needles in his hands, the stitches completed until half-way through a row. He was still worried that if he put the pair of needles down, stitches would start to fall off. The male would have no clue what to do then, and all would be lost.
Hemming didn't think much about what she had said and replied impetuously, still not quite completely distracted from his little project, "New herbs? How come?" Learning a little bit more about healing was something that the male had been hoping to do for a while, but he always seemed to find such wonderful things to be distracted by in AniWaya and its surrounding territories. Perhaps this female had run out of something that she had collected far away, or maybe in the period of time that she hadn't been healing they had just gone bad. The knitting wolf didn't really know much about herbs, and he was too caught up in his repetitive task for these thoughts to squeeze through, anyway. It was so much easier to just ask.
When the little sticks that sat at his side were questioned, Hemming realized that his role in the conversation was becoming more involved and he couldn't just float through it by muttering whatever words came to his mind first. "Sorry, just lemme finish thi..." he mumbled, bringing the needles closer to his eyes again and completing the row. Sliding them further into the middle of the needle, so they wouldn't fall back, he finally put them down, sighing as if it had been an inordinate amount of work. "They're kuh-nitting needles... I found this book in a little human town, and thought I'd try it out." He dragged the book toward him using the foot that was already resting on the pages inside, and held it up to show the cover to the female. There was a funny (at least Hemming thought so) photograph of three humans posing in gigantic sweaters. "Kuh-nitting, nitting, I'm not really sure how to pronounce it. That K has got to be in there for a reason, right?" He shrugged it off, grinning a little sheepishly and feeling slightly hysterical from all the effort he had used on such a seemingly simple task.
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"Ah." She said, slightly disappointed. She had thought that finding Ember would be easy, but it seemed that it wouldn't be so. Hemming seemed very nice, though...maybe a conversation wouldn't be bad. It wouldn't be long until he would hear about what she had done, too, though, and then he might not welcome her to stay so readily. "I wouldn't mind talking for a little while. If you wouldn't either. Are you new to these lands? From lands far-away? I was born very close to here...a few miles, in fact. Just over that mountain"
She shrugged at the question about the herbs, picking her words. "I left my old pack, where I had a garden. Now I've got to try and find them in the wild" She said. Naniko was interested in seeing what the needles were for, and what he was making. It certainly was interesting, that he was using his own fur. What did the humans use, though, when they had done it? They didn't have any fur. "I think it's a silent K. Kind of like the E on some words out there. Do you know any other languages, other than English?"
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Hemming smiled. He had been on his own for far too long to not realize the value of speaking with others. "I wouldn't mind," he said softly, and nodded when the other mentioned that she was born fairly close by. "I wandered past those mountains when I came here... I was born a good distance to the west, near the middle of this continent. When I was young, I travelled to this region, but I stayed north of here. Just a little while ago, I decided to wander south, and here I am." The gray wolf shrugged a little, to conclude his story. He hadn't told his path to anyone else, and when he did he found that the explanation was much simpler than the actual route. Hemming was, by nature, a wanderer, and he had taken a serpentine path across much of the continent. It was a long way to travel, and he had seen many things.
Giving a nod as she explained why she needed to find new herbs, he gave a gentle "Mm." He was sure it would be difficult to find all the ones she had before amongst the many wild plants of the world. Starting anew was one of the hardest things he could think of. When he had lived in the forest, he had accumulated a large collection of books on most every topic that interested him. He left it all behind, save for a few books that had gone missing along the way anyways. The wolf had yet to take a trip to a town to find some, but the new world he found himself in distracted him enough to prevent him from thinking about it.
Knitting. He pondered the word a little more. The female had made a good point about the E on the end of some words. Hemming had thought that since a letter was there it ought to be pronounced, but now that she brought it up he could liken it to just a rarer version of the silent E. "That makes sense to me," he replied, grinning with the revelation. He didn't speak any other languages, though he had memorized the scripts of a few foreign pieces of art. When he was growing up in Quebec he did learn a few words, but they were long missing. He didn't really have a knack for learning languages, though he found them beautiful. "No, I don't. The little town I spent my first year in had all its words in French, but any of it that I picked up I have forgotten. Do you know any other languages?"
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He was being gracious, allowing her to stay here, and the female knew this. She did not often roam into lands that were not her own, but occasionally did run around to other packs to see how relatives were doing. Maybe that was the problem, that she hadn't kept up with her old friends and some of her old family members...she'd let them drift away from her. Just because some of them hadn't managed to catch up with her in a while in Crimson Dreams didn't mean that she couldn't find them and keep in touch with them herself. It was her job, as their relatives. She hadn't seen some of them in months...Cercelee, she hadn't seen since the female had taken refuge in her lands during the Dahlia-Inferni battle.
"Have you any family here? You seem like a nice enough guy" The type that would have some kind of family. Naniko had once had a family of her own...she'd been pregnant with her mate's pups and all had been well. It was funny how quickly things changed. "And has anyone taken a shine to my sister? She's a pretty one, I know." Perhaps he had, even. Maybe she could get news about Ember even though she hadn't been able to find her this time.
The story of his previous life made her nod--she had never been outside of these lands before..but had no doubt that there would be a very wide variety of wolves and wolf packs in other places. She had just never stumbled upon any because she had always lived here. She looked over at him, nodding once more. "I do know French...and bits of Itallian. My sub-leader...or, I guess, the new leader of my pack speaks Itallian. I wanted to be able to communicate with her; I could barely speak to her when she first came to the pack. Are you intersted in learning? I'd like to learn whatever that is you're doing there, that knitting thing. We could make a trade."
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Her statement surprised him somewhat, the link between her two sentences a little fuzzy to him. "Not nice enough, I suppose," he laughed, "No family. AniWaya is like a family, though." The relationships he had fostered so far could represent those that were found in a family, though he wasn't completely certain what real family dynamics were anyway. There were tribesmates that were very helpful, those that were good to just chat with, those that were fun to play with, and as every family requires in one form or another, an annoying little brother. Hemming had found all of those so far, and felt quite at home. It was a feeling that he had never had in his birth pack, despite being surrounded by wolves that must have been related to him somehow. Having his own flesh and blood family here in AniWaya was not something that he had thought of at all, and allowing it even a fleeting thought somewhat startled him.
Hemming grinned widely as she mentioned that she spoke almost three languages. Italian and French were two very beautiful languages, and the gray wolf had a special fondness for Italian. He did like old human operas so much, and though he had the words of a few memorized he had no clue what they actually meant. Perhaps she would be more comfortable with teaching him French, since she implied that she knew more of it. He was only just learning to knit himself, but he felt capable enough to teach her the main stitch. "I'd love to learn some! A trade would be wonderful. I even have some extra sticks, er, needles." He grinned as he held two of them up. Being around wolves was so much more wonderful than being alone, and part of that was because there was such a well of knowledge in others. The wolf's smile almost reached to his ears.
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[html] http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v515/ ... itbann.jpg); background-position: top center; background-repeat: no-repeat;"> Can we fade to black here, do you think? I don't actually know french Or just cut to after the lessons?
She looked at the needles curiously once more. Oh...it would be so neat to be able to make things with them. She had heard about the needles themselves but didn't have the faintest idea about how to actually use them. She could make a blanket, maybe! Or some gloves or something like that. Surely she would be able to put the needles to use, in any case. Hopefully Hemming would be able to use the french lesson. She could bring him a book to help him learn after this first lesson, the same book that she learned out of. And if he wasn't here she could give it to Ember to give to him. "I'm really excited to learn. It's been a while...I haven't actually learned anything new in a while" Maybe the rule was that you can't teach an old dog new tricks...but she was young! And she would pick this up quickly.
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Hemming smiled as he placed a couple of the knitting needles before the other wolf. "Oh, it will be fun! I'm excited to learn, as well." He pulled the knitting he had done so far off of his needles, as it was just a practice run anyway, and unwound it, making a little ball that he could give to Naniko to teach her. Casting on would be the hardest part, the male knew, but hopefully it would go well. He hoped that his instructions would be clear enough, but the two could always refer to his book if need be. Once the art was figured out, it seemed logical and clear, but before the mechanism was understood the stitches seemed to be a chaos of knots and strings.
The two wolves worked to cast on a few stitches, Hemming struggling a bit because, though he had practiced performing the stitch many times, he had not yet perfected the method by which they were placed on the needle to begin with. They were patient and had them soon enough, so Hemming started to teach Naniko the easier knit stitch. As they turned string around wool, the female crooned some French words, and the gray wolf tried to replicate the precise position of her tongue. He was not one that was able to pick up languages easily, and he strained to make the right sounds come out. The struggle made it all the more rewarding when he succeeded.
It was a pleasant set of activities, just sitting, knitting and speaking a strange language, and the wolf reflected on it with a soft smile on his mouth even as the light started to fade and the two had to part ways. It was always pleasant to spend a day in another's company, and Hemming hoped that he had made a friend out of her.
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