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+--- Thread: PRP [event] mind your own soul (/showthread.php?tid=7057)
[event] mind your own soul - Sólúlfur - 2/25/2025
It was a shrike that zipped by overhead that first caught the Sun-wolf's attention. A small, silver and black bird - anyone giving it only a glance would assume the tiny thing to be a songbird. Solulfur's breath misted on the air, as her gaze followed the brisk wingbeats.
She knew the efficient, clever predator the shrike was, and the snow creaked underfoot as she followed the bird for several feet. Its feathers glittered silver in the sunlight, and Solulfur was momentarily distracted from her patrol by the bird's flight. Then, it veered sharply into the pines and disappeared. Solulfur huffed lightly, already turning to return to her path when a pink petal drifted by on the lightest breeze.
Pink petals, fat and rounded at the edges, drooped off the blossoms that clung to the dark branches lining the path that lay before Solulfur. The branches were thin and jagged, the blossoms a stark contrast with their springtime lusciousness conflicting with the harsh winter still icing the edges of every pine tree that stood stoically nearby. Strange. Stranger still was the swath cut through the snow, lined with those petals and healthy green grass. Solulfur's paws carried her down it before she could think, equally curious and so unnerved by it all she couldn't help but stick her nose into what was surely trouble.
This disaster was the last thing they all needed right now, she thought. The sweetness of the flowers that hung so low on their heavy branches a couple of them brushed the top of the Sun-wolf's head was almost cloying, and she was relieved when she seemingly finally reached the end of the path. Alpine sweetness, pine and snow wiped the floral stink clean, and Solulfur sucked in a deep and relieved breath.
Her gilded gaze searched the horizon for a familiar landmark to orient herself.
It was the jagged, slate-colored cliffsides of the Jawbone that filled her vision. The mountain range had been named for its silhouette - resembling the fanged bottom jaw of a wolf unfathomably large, curving just slightly to cradle the bottom edge of a valley and an unknown expanse on the southern, nearly impassable descent. Solulfur didn't care about descending.
It was the high peaks and icy caves she'd been raised in. It was her birthplace Solulfur made a break for, gliding up the treacherous terrain and finding familiar footholds with a speed borne of taking this route up the mountainside countless times. There - just ahead - loomed the darkened maw of the cave she'd been born in. Solulfur came to a halt, her heart racing from anticipation and not the brief climb and brisk trot it'd taken to reach this summit.
Not a single scent, not a familiar voice, no wolf-fur dared enter her line of sight. The Jawbone was empty of all lupine life, although the snow was shed in some spots to reveal the earliest springtime flowers and bright green grass. A bird whistled to itself in a far off tree. A deer trail's scent criss-crossed Solulfur's own path.
Not a single Isblod remained.
Solulfur realized perhaps not even herself.
RE: [event] mind your own soul - Aurelia - 2/25/2025
The sun felt warm against her fur as she padded quietly through the Vale.
Loss weighed heavily on Aurelia's mind, flickering between visions of Olive, of Tiberius, and of Genghis - not as she had found them, but as they had been. Olive, gentle and comforting with her pale coat of white shimmering in the dawn; Tiberius, proud and upright, a dark monolith of strength and stability that had carried them through so many seasons, weathered so many storms. His scarred hide had been part of who he was - a story behind every jagged line that cut hard through his flesh.
And Genghis. Not cold, drowned, sinking beneath the frigid waters. She could see him against the horizon, a constant presence, ever-watchful and ready to catch any who might find themselves falling.
Like fine grains of sand they all blew away, and then Aurelia was alone.
She once found solace in solitude. Now it was almost as if she feared being with her own thoughts, plagued by the endless parade of vignettes that showed her the faces of the dead staring back at her with empty, hollow eyes.
Could any of their deaths - or her father's absence - ever have been stopped?
Maybe Tiberius had left them because he couldn't bear to be reminded of the woman, of the life he had lost. As different as they all were, her fine features were etched into her children's faces, carried on in their gait, their eyes, while some even echoed her voice - Euphemia and Dalmatia had always taken after her the most.
Perhaps it had been too painful to stay.
Solulfur's scent drifted along the wind, and Aurelia changed course. A hunt would be a nice distraction, she thought tiredly; it didn't need to be anything grand. Even a hare they might chase together through the trees would be better than the yawning emptiness that threatened to swallow her hole.
With the Black Sun's scent came a strange sweetness, and she found herself surprised as a sudden wad of floating flower petals clustered themselves against her face. She shook her head, scattering them in an arc around her - and blinked as a path appeared before her, lined with flowering, high-reaching trees in such a way as to suggest it had always been there.
It hadn't.
Solulfur's trail led down the path.
Aurelia followed it -
- and found herself somewhere entirely new, far from any landmark she could recall. Was she dreaming? How could she tell if she was?
There were indentations in the snow that led up a dangerous trail toward one of the high peaks looming overhead. Solulfur must have gone there - but why? What was she tracking?
With nowhere else to go but forward, the Shakti-Vaes followed.
RE: [event] mind your own soul - Sólúlfur - 3/3/2025
The sun shone high overhead, but Solulfur felt low.
Hollow. Everything Sol had promised to shield, to cultivate - gone. Everything she'd been promised to inherit - from her people to her power to the world itself - gone. She didn't know if she'd really expected the Isblod to realistically stay atop the mountain, with how many of them had been disappeared to this strange new world, and their dwindling numbers and morale even before Solulfur had been taken. Some part of her had known they'd dispersed already.
But she'd been born to this birthright, and to see and smell and feel her homecoming robbed from her was...devastating.
But Solulfur fra Nordri knew she had not been able to come home, truly, since she'd left to kill a man. Even that first attempt had felt hollow. She'd come back changed, and she'd come back to a changed place. It wasn't the home she'd left and she wasn't the girl who'd gone, either. She'd been trying to get back home since that day.
But finding Nottin hadn't fixed it. Asking her Afi for guidance hadn't fixed her. Finding Hades and learning some portion of the truth hadn't let her come home.
Climbing up familiar pathways to her birthplace felt different, because even her paws didn't fit the same - a little bigger, her body more matured, and Solulfur didn't belong inside these nonexistent borders. Once, even coming close to their inner edge had felt pointless for she wanted nothing to do with anything outside of what was hers.
Now, Solulfur could only grieve what she'd lost of herself, of her past, and think with increasing worry about how she was going to get back. To where she belonged. A part of her wanted to plod into the cavern before her, for Solulfur knew the path to her little alcove in the stone tunnels she had claimed for herself blind, even now. But she knew she wouldn't find rest, there, with only the scent of stone and snowmelt surrounding her; only her own breathing echoing in the loneliest chorus off the walls.
Footfalls made the Sun-wolf's ear twist behind her, before the rest of her mist-clad shape moved to turn and face the approaching wolf.
You do not have to do this alone, said the universe, it seemed.
A sigh of relief punched out of Solulfur's chest, sudden and unexpected. There was a shed tear staining her right cheek, but a mild and tired smile graced her features.
Aurelia....How did you get here?
RE: [event] mind your own soul - Aurelia - 3/12/2025
What was almost as surprising as suddenly finding herself in a completely foreign landscape was the way Solulfur looked so natural in it. Keeping pace with the woman proved a challenge even for Aurelia, a wolf who had grown up surrounded by craggy mountain peaks and wildly varying terrain; by contrast, Solulfur leapt ahead like a deer in its most natural environment.
Abruptly she stopped, sides heaving and staring at something just out of view from the Shakti-Vaes. Slowing down to a careful, tentative walk, Aurelia felt the lingering suspicion that she was intruding on something important - perhaps she should turn back -
Oh,she said, caught in the act.
I - sorry -
Something wet glistened against Solulfur's cheek. Had she been crying? Confirming her suspicions correct, Aurelia immediately bowed her head, ears twisted back apologetically.
I followed you.
It sounded... needy.
Maybe she was needy.
Wanted to see if you'd be interested in a hunt,she admitted,
And then I just... I don't know. I suppose I could have called out.
Why didn't she? Was it nosiness, spying - or something else?
Where are we? This place doesn't make any sense to me. It should not be here, and yet - it feels so real.
RE: [event] mind your own soul - Sólúlfur - 3/13/2025
An apology, and Aurelia's crown dipped under the weight of Solulfur's attention. Sol's brow quirked downward slightly, a pensive frown creasing her features. She was relieved to see the familiar face of one she would trust with....this. This was an untapped and deep-cut well of grief nestled in beside the Sun-wolf's heart, this land and all it represented. It surged within her like the tide, threatening to fill her lungs with the saltwater of her own cold sorrow. Amongst the scents of wind-scoured pine and ice-capped snow, Solulfur's own blended seamlessly into the mountain. But winding through the wintery breeze was now something richer, deeper - foreign to these lands yet it put the Black Sun at ease.
A hunt, Aurelia said. Solulfur reached up with a paw to scrub at her tear-stained cheek, ruffling the fur there before seeking to meet Aurelia's gaze. It made her feel...strange, to know Aurelia had been on her trail, for Solulfur's company, when they'd been transported here. Warm, but not like the fierce fire Solulfur carried within her - the self-driven edge of ambition that she cultivated and fueled with painstaking care. This was something different.
It's alright, I'm...Your company is always welcome, Aurelia.
This is where I was born.She did not say home, and that was not a mistake.
The Jawbone. We're right at the heart of it - I don't know how...I followed the petals, and then I was here. It's like the caves, but...She bumped her shoulder against a jagged wall of stone, brushing the edge of her tail against it. There was an instinctive drive to mark this territory, even though she knew it wouldn't last.
Even though she knew she didn't want it to.
Solulfur didn't want to be stranded here, alone, away from her pack, away from the Frostfang's now-familiar terrain, away from...the Shakti-Vaes, Solvi, all who'd grown so important to her. And she would never, never wish for Aurelia to be dragged across realms, separated from what remained of her family, stranded from all she'd worked so hard to build - no matter the gain Solulfur might stand to acquire. The realization was another ten-foot-tall wave within the flow of her emotions, threatening to eclipse the sky and earth alike.
But it's real.She finally finished. This friendship, it was real; as steady, as sturdy as the mountains they had both grown up on.
Would you like a tour?The Black Sun flashed a toothy, bright grin.
Or...have you ever tried your paw at hunting mountain goats?
RE: [event] mind your own soul - Aurelia - 3/27/2025
A twinge of relief relaxed the remaining nervousness she felt at invading Solulfur's privacy as the Black Sun welcomed her presence. She shouldn't have followed her trail in the first place - why hadn't she just howled? - but there had been a strange, almost voyeuristic desire to see what it was she got up to when not performing her routine pack duties.
A peek into Solulfur's life - into Solulfur's world. It had been wrong, and if it were anyone else, Aurelia would have chastised them for being a creep.
Her cheeks burned with barely-restrained shame.
Yes.
A hunt.
The feeling quickly dissipated when Solulfur spoke next, thoroughly diverting Aurelia's attention away from her own embarrassment when she realized what the woman was saying. This wasn't the outskirts of the Vale, or anywhere near it - according to her, this was somewhere else entirely.
Home. Solulfur's home.
It suited her. Hard stone and sharp edges, sheer cliffs and unforgiving terrain - this was where she had grown and cut her teeth, shaping the frá Norðri into the formidable force she was today. So consumed by this realization, Aurelia didn't even consider how she might return back to her own home.
I should love to see the rest of it,she said with absolute sincerity, stepping forward with a surprising lightness to her gait. Was it Solulfur's smile, or simply being allowed in?
I've never hunted a mountain goat to success, but I have chased them with intent. They're very nimble.
She had questions, so many questions - yet she didn't want to ruin the moment.
Aurelia grinned back, and she meant it.
RE: [event] mind your own soul - Sólúlfur - 3/31/2025
Aurelia smiled. It was as always, all moonsilver teeth bared; like expressing emotion was something Aurelia had to approach with her weapons drawn in case it turned into a fight. Solulfur let the knives in her own smile gleam in the sunlight, the edges turned away so they were harmless. Aurelia offered a simple, but sincere I should love to see the rest of it, and Solulfur's shoulders visibly dropped as she set down the last dredges of tension she hadn't realized she'd carried. There was a simple warmth in her molten gaze, and she met Aurelia's spring-bloom green to convey a hint of appreciation held in the golden depths.
This place, hollowed out as it was of her kin, was a place of pain for Solulfur. Like a thorn wedged deep in her paw, it ached with every beat of her heart. But Aurelia's presence here, her unshakable steadiness and quiet enthusiasm, dislodged that thorn from its presence in Solulfur's mind for the moment. There were good memories and beautiful things on this ancestral land of hers, too. Solulfur wanted to share that with Aurelia. She wanted to....not rot, in this moment. But to blossom.
Her tail whisked the air at her hips, and she turned toward the cavern she knew lay just ahead before Solulfur stood and beamed dumbly at Aurelia for so long it became awkward. A strange kind of fluttery nervousness took up space in her chest. What to show first? Perhaps she shouldn't - maybe a hunt would be more productive, assuming the carcass would follow them back into the Vale's embrace once they returned. Her mind skittered across landmarks, memories from her childhood that she had put out of her mind for a long, long time. She hadn't quite made a decision about where to begin, when she realized her pawsteps had already chosen.
The mouth of the cave was stone, but hardy alpine lichen and even some moss dappled the piled stones and footholds in the mountainside. The top of the cave had an outcropping of stone, a ledge that Solulfur had spent many mornings atop and many thunderstorms sheltering beneath, watching the rain pour off the edge of the ledge with the resting piles of her family nestled in the winding cavern behind her.
She stepped inside without hesitation, listening to the sound of her exhale bouncing off the frigid stone walls, and glanced over her shoulder at the silver she-wolf Solulfur hadn't once doubted would follow.
This is as good a place to begin.They would find a goat to chase on the way. She didn't want to admit that she had never caught one, either. She'd broken her leg as a pup, then gone with her mother to hunt a man down once her leg was healed. There hadn't been a chance for her to tackle that kind of challenging prey, but she knew the concepts behind it.
This is where I began. My brothers and I were born here, and my cousins. My mother and all her sisters and brother before her.Her father was a foreigner, his blood warmed by the springtime lushness of the Gossamer Pool down by the seaside. Maybe that was why he'd - no.
She would not sour this too-precious moment with the Shakti-Vaes with pondering him and the wound he'd left on her soul. Aurelia deserved the whole of the Black Sun's attention, and she gave it with a assessing glance over her shoulder at the other woman.
RE: [event] mind your own soul - Aurelia - 4/30/2025
It was uncharacteristic of Aurelia to follow anyone, preferring to take the lead herself, but now she trailed behind Solulfur like a curious child with bright eyes and a deep interest in anything and everything her companion cared to show her. This was a rare opportunity to catch a glimpse into the other woman's shrouded past, a history she often seemed to avoid as if tasting something bitter.
Aurelia realized she didn't have anything similar to offer. All of her ties, all of her time had been spent in the Vale - or various iterations of it, if one counted the world she'd been dropped in from - but ultimately they were all the same. Tall, vast mountains encircling a haven for her family and packmates, sheltered and protected through the years from both the harshest storms and adventure at large.
Father had been protective - stifling. She understood why, now that she'd grown older and gained valuable perspective, but fleetingly she wondered how she might have turned out if she had been afforded looser boundaries. Tiberii had rebelled against them outright, running away one fated night to embark on a righteous mission to seek the missing - but Aurelia held no such defiance, whatever the cause.
Father had been Chieftain, and his word was as good as any law.
Now she was in a position of freedom, even something akin to leadership as the resident Wisdom, and up until this point she still squandered the opportunities it afforded her.
Today was the first time she had ventured somewhere new and not turned back.
Solulfur led the way, entering the cold stone cave ahead with unusual confidence and perhaps even a glimmer of excitement. Aurelia fought the urge to smile. It looked good on her, she thought.
The Black Sun slowed as she began her tour of the cavern, and Aurelia marveled at the many generations that had found their beginnings here. It was with a start that Aurelia realized she hadn't known much of Tiberius' origins - or Olive's - and felt a strange disappointment that she could offer nothing of like value to Solulfur or her curiosity.
Aurelia simply came from the Vale, and that was the start and end of it.
What was it like?she asked, stepping up to the woman's side.
Tell me - tell me the good things. And the bad things. Tell me -
The Shakti-Vaes hesitated, then continued.
Everything you can. I want to know. To be here, with you - to imagine what it was like.
RE: [event] mind your own soul - Sólúlfur - 5/21/2025
Aurelia's request wasn't one Solulfur even thought to deny, not even when the latter part of her question brushed across those opened scars within the Sun-wolf. Solulfur was not sure if there was a request Aurelia could make she would not make it her mission to fulfill - for when had she ever led her astray, and when had she ever proven anything but extraordinary, far beyond having earned whatever loyalty Solulfur could pour into their bond? And moreover, Solulfur wanted to tell her. She wouldn't have wished for anyone else beside her to share this strange, magical moment with; Aurelia deserved to know who it was she had shared so many of her own vulnerabilities with. It came as a small surprise, that Aurelia wanted to linger here with her; but the surprise faded quickly, replaced with an emotion powerful as a riptide but inexorable as one, too.
Solulfur sat down where she stood, parallel to the smaller, silver woman. The darker shadows of the caves yawned before them, and Solulfur could almost imagine just ahead in the darkness still lingered her greyscale cousins, her aunts, her dark shadow of an uncle, the Hetjan who had killed the monster of her childhood tales, but who remained as harmless as a feather around the pack.
The caves were always cool, as they are now - but my whole family slept within these alcoves. I was never cold, and never alone; there was always someone around. I would fall asleep, counting how many of them I could hear, their breaths echoing off the walls.It was perhaps, one of the smallest yet most poignant things that she still missed about the Jawbone.
There is a little outcropping that hangs over the entrance. I used to climb up there and watch the sun rise over the valley every morning. It was...She turned a fond smile onto Aurelia.
Beautiful.
She glanced away, then, and her ears pinned to the base of her skull.
I wish....I wish I had more good memories, or bad ones. When I was younger, it felt like I'd lived here a lifetime - to me, then, I had. But I only had six months of sunrises before I left with my mother's hunting party.There had been the months on the hunt, and of course a few miserable months once she'd returned - but Solulfur wasn't sure she wanted to sully her pleasant memories of her youth by folding those moons into the ones before her life had changed. If Aurelia was near to her, Solulfur would lean slightly to brush her shoulder into the Wisdom's pelt.
It seems trivial, the amount of time I have spent here. By blood and birthright, I was fate-bound to this land, yet I have spent more of my life upon the Vale. You are - you all are - the best choice I have ever made. But I still...
Solulfur was quiet, ears twitching as she caught the sounds of their twin breaths echoing in the stone-enclosed space. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft. Sol was painfully aware she may very well trod upon thin ice with her questions.
You still live upon the Vale you were born to, but much has changed from your puphood. Do you...ever find yourself homesick?
RE: [event] mind your own soul - Aurelia - 6/27/2025
It wasn't necessary for Aurelia to close her eyes to envision it. She could see them all, her mind conjuring shapes and shades of grey and black as their sides gently rose and fell in the darkness of sleep, Solulfur a small figure buried somewhere amongst them. The vision reminded Aurelia of her own youth, she and her siblings piled eagerly against Mother as they soaked in her scent and her warmth and her love.
How deeply she regretted the distance placed between them before her passing. Mother hadn't deserved it - Aurelia had been young, petulant, a child lashing out under the burden of loss and responsibilities she did not feel ready for.
Her attention returned to the present; to Solulfur. Aurelia distantly wondered if she had ever been cold a day in her life - the woman had an exterior chillier than ice, and her words were sharp enough to cut down even the strongest wolf from sheer force of will alone.
Solulfur was far too strong to let cold bother her.
Despite the ledge being out of view from their current vantage, she turned her head regardless to look toward its general direction; Aurelia resisted a small, shy smile that tweaked the corners of her mouth, realizing this was perhaps the first time Solulfur had offered such gentle pieces of her soul so readily.
I have always enjoyed sunsets,she said after a moment, taking an idle step closer toward her companion.
The sunrise often reminds me of how much there is still to do, but I agree it must have been... beautiful.
Aurelia realized her eyes were lingering over Solulfur's own golden gaze as she said it, and her breath quickened as the same uncomfortable feeling from before clenched at her chest.
At the Black Sun's next admission, her expression - normally so controlled - broke into one of astonishment.
Only six months? That is how old you were?she said incredulously. That was far too young to be on the move for so long, Aurelia thought; perhaps it was her own sheltered upbringing, but to her, skills were better learned within the safety of your home territory in places that were familiar, and even then they only hunted in short outings.
Solulfur truly had been forged in a different fire.
But to then say that she - no, it is not so selfish - Dawnbreak - the Vale itself was the best choice she had made in her life saw Aurelia blinking in stunned silence, and to her dismay, she felt her throat tightening with emotion. She was growing soft as she aged, she thought agitatedly. The Shakti-Vaes swallowed the lump with as little noise as she could manage.
I cannot express how much I am honor-
It sounded so formal, she stopped herself. This was not just anyone, not just a packmate. This was Solulfur.
... How much that means to me. I still can't believe you've... stayed, for so long, and given us - given me - so much of yourself. It is more valuable than any reward, any prize I could imagine.
The Black Sun sent her a curveball.
Homesick. For the past?
Aurelia had never thought of that before.
She thought back to her childhood, when the world was simpler and full of comfort and love; all of her siblings together and safe, her parents alive and warm. It was not many moons into her youth, however, when her innate personality began to develop. Even at the tender age of three months, she had already felt determined to make herself useful, struggling to teach herself and her sisters how to patrol the borders, attempt smaller hunts, anything to be better, more helpful, more productive. Aurelia had never been an idle child.
Now she had grown, and all of the things she had fought to master and learn were so much closer.
I miss...she struggled.
I miss Mother. I miss Father. The sound of their voices; her soft sighs, his deep rumbling. I miss their scent over the snow, and their absence is a hole I do not know will ever fill.
Her gaze flickered up.
I don't miss being helpless. There was nothing I could do when we experienced our first disappearances and panic set in; I couldn't even venture out alone to help search for them.
The question seemed to answer itself.
Perhaps in a broad sense, I don't. I'm not homesick because home is - where you feel right. It is, I think, a present state, and I have already lived the past; there is so much more to experience, and maybe even better things.
Aurelia quirked a brow.
Complicated question, though. Did you have friends, growing up?