5/21/2025, 12:37 AM
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?
