all gods dispense suffering without reason & all paths are drowned deep in shadow

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When Eira hadn't caught sight of Riannon he didn't panic immediately. He made sure to give space to her and her children, to give her room to do her tasks and do what she needed for Frostchant, too. His role wasn't to take away from her shine, but, to just admire it. But he'd caught her a meal, wanting to give her fresh meat and nothing from the cache and couldn't find her. He checked her usual haunts, hearing a storm rumbling in the distance; the air was heavy with the scent of its progression.

He wanted to check in with some of their packmates, but no one seemed to know exactly where she was. Eira couldn't even remember who he'd talked to specifically - he had just run the whole of Cloudrest as the grip of anxiety had slowly risen. After everything that happened with @Olive and then thinking that something, or someone, had taken Riannon? It set him hard on edge. While he stressed, elsewhere, Riannon struggled. What had set her off and sent her elsewhere he didn't know and he had yet to realize just where she was. Even if he had known where she was, he wouldn't truly have thought that much of it until he knew the way that she was and how poorly off she happened to be.

Her first moments of the lives of their new brood was full of miserable worry and stress. It was full of pain, and the moments that she should have spent fawning over her young she spent in agony.

His first moments of fatherhood was all panic.

He had finally found a trail that seemed the most recent, tracking after her as the storm started to kick up. It seemed to consume the very world around him, wind whipping the rain hard and brutally. Everything was a mess - he could barely even see and her scent wavered beneath the onslaught of the storm. It wasn't until the storm started to abate that he managed to pick up her much weakened trail and start the hunt again. The meal he'd just abandoned, calling her name until he was hoarse. It wasn't easy, he struggled, but he was too determined to let go. Not of her, not of finding where she was and to be certain that she was safe. That their children were safe too.

A soft, wavering sound was all he heard, seeing a freshened stonefall caused no doubt by the rains. He made for the bottom of the valley, award that Windmere's scent had dwindled and seemed all but gone - he didn't know where Tetsujin or @Elowyn might have been. Maybe they had gone on, moved to somewhere else. Maybe after seeing how the Tundra and it's dangers were, they had made for other places. “Riannon!” He never used her actual name. He gave her titles, he offered her words and whispered praises, he promised her the world and vowed their children would have it all. The worry that had been slowly growing had all but taken over now, his teeth grit together as he sought her out.

The sight he found before him, when he was finally near her and could smell her, and fresh life, and fresh blood - it all was so overwhelming to him.

“Ria?” He spoke so softly that he might not have even said it out loud. Maybe he only thought it - loud enough that she might have felt it more than she heard it. He let out a little whine and lowered himself to his belly, crawling towards her with placating little sounds. He was no threat. He wanted her to know that. He wanted to see her and he wanted to be sure that she was okay - he wanted to see their children, who he could still here but hadn't laid eyes on yet. He just let out a little breath in a huff, trying to lick at her chin. Just begging to be closer to her.

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the first thing she knows is darkness. it surrounds her, cradles her in its warmth, comforts her with its simplicity. she holds no fear of the dark, as it is all she knows, all she has ever known. 

the second thing she comes to know is silence. this blackness she's enveloped in bears no sound, not that she would know if it did. at first she lacks the ears to hear, and when she has developed them, they are closed tight to her skull. 

she finds a home in this space, where no light or noise exists; a silent place where she lives in peace. 

and then, without her express consent, she is abruptly pushed into the world with all its evils.

her first experience beyond her mother's womb is fraught with a harsh, freezing chill. her little body, covered as it is in a thin, useless layer of downy fur, is defenseless against the cold. it seeps into her bones in a matter of seconds, chilling her to her core. the new sensations cause her to cry out, an emotion she's never felt before blooming in her little chest like a bloody red flower. its roots grasp at her heart and squeeze the delicate organ in their tight grasp until it aches. she shakes and shivers and howls her fear to the winds, though her own voice cannot breach the seal of her ears. 

something shifts around her. a warm, wet thing caresses her coat, and she shudders in relief at the touch of warmth. something else presses against her side, and her head spins as she's pushed forward and and into soft, squishy warmth. she nestles against it for a moment, quieting. the slight heat calms her briefly, and then she realizes the new ache in her belly and starts up her anguished cries once more. 

all her wriggling and fussing upsets her place against the squishy surface, and in her tantrum she finds herself latching on to the first thing she can get her tiny muzzle on. 

instantly, a sweet substance hits her tongue. she wiggles happily at the taste, then falls still, suckling contentedly. she falls into a blissful half-rest like that, occasionally shivering from the chill all around her. 

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note: the cold is exaggerated here, as she is a newborn and isn't used to it. also sorry this post sucks ;O;

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The storm did not abate. Instead, it worsened, and the winds whipped up in such a fury that it wrenched Olive from Cloudrest and she went elsewhere to attend to the Gods’ unlimited wrath.

Her mind thought to Tiberius, and of Archon, and wondered if such weather was affecting their own wayward journeys; and she also mused upon what might possibly be able to placate the universe and soothe it so, for had the past year not been utterly bipolar? From squabbling with Benry (whom she held most dear) to her servitude under the walrus King (which was unending in mind, though her body had since replenished and recovered), to abandoning Little Haven for for the haunted hallows of Frostchant — the ashen sylph greatly desired to exit the carousel she was on, to find lasting peace with Tiberius and engaging midwifery with her Sotaherra. This might be her best chance to appease the Gods, when they thundered for their supplicant the most.

Olive made it no farther than the cradle of earth that existed just adjacent her own, and she came upon a most demure commotion. The scent of blood and birth was thick on the stillness of the post-storm draft; and it certainly was a shock to learn that it was Riannon who had pupped early. All this, Olive learned from scent alone; for the woman was attended to, by the wolf who had fathered her offspring, and thus wielded a force that was far stronger and more effective than any healing knowledge she had cleaned over her short life.

The woman stood near by, waiting, not feeling it was necessary to announce her presence. This moment — it was not for her. These things happened, litters came early, and very rarely was this a life-threatening experience. But still Olive waited, all pointed and at attention, assessing the situation as best she could so that she could seamlessly fold herself into the solution.

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The long-looming storms drove the pale Ijiraq towards the mountains, specifically towards what looked to be the earliest reaches of a great chain of their kind. In part, she had gone willingly into their natural pull, but rain and wind and rolling thunder that finally cracked through pressed her into haste too easily. She was glad she did and there, the wanderer could hunt out some semblance of shelter and almost feel secure--only for a moment.

Though the mountains would keep her safe, she was keenly aware of her solitude as the hours spanned on.

When the weather seemed to settle for a spell, she had begun to press out on her own again, getting too curious of new vistas and their possibilities to wait to wait. There as she prowled a rangy trot through the low in the valleys, she heard a strange cry rise to the winds, perhaps a plea, even. To her ears it was a stranger, albeit eerily close, and more than enough to be worrying. So near that this would not let her rest otherwise, skin prickling with unease. Suddenly with a turn of heel, she aimed her wandering towards a heading finally, intent to investigate the call.

More of potential story came to light as she neared, but none of it put her heart to rest. She smelled other wolves--some with more clarity, but they all had something similar enough about them to make her hope this pack did not find threat in a lonesome ghost; especially in what could be a time of trouble for their lot if she was reading the signs right. By now, she deemed herself too close to not follow through and find out what was going on.

Irura perked up her head and looked beyond when she came into the freshest signs of wolf traffic that seemed to converge nearby. “Hello..?” she voiced to the unfamiliar stones most of all while beginning to track a very fresh trail of another woman. Her nose wiggled, and concern for the possible situation at play made her more wary than usual, but the storms and all the trails that come after had guided her this way for some reason. Perhaps this might be it, whatever it may truly entail beyond. It was not like she had anywhere else to be.

When she found them, her chest got tight and she kept an attentive distance when she made herself known. Maybe they wouldn't want her company at all and she would take the first hint if she needed it. Irura was not one of their villagers, but she was no threat, either.

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 Something shuddered. Glass breaking in the near distance as tiny ribs expanded and heaved. The warm home that he used to know was disappearing around him. Piece by piece, it was fracturing, falling down all around him, and all he could do was fall. Instead of being brought into another room of a residence, he was exposed to the frigid universe. Cold enveloped him like an old friend; cradling him in its grasp underneath the rumbling storm passing overhead. 

 It was not for anyone to see but his very own mother; but a baptizing had happened. Blood smeared across the russets and burnt browns of his coat. Unlike his bloodbound siblings beside him, he was quiet. Not even a soft whimper came from his lips. If anyone saw him lay as still as he was currently, they might have thought he was dead. It wasn't until his mother's touch corralled him into her warm body. Maybe he would have never wakened. And yet, his small body brought close to the intoxicating smell of home, Rourke was alive. Family, the lifeblood of his body and home, the strings that strung his heart up. 

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The sweetest little breath was taken in the midst of all calamity; tiny lungs inflated as oxygen receptors were tickled for the first time. It was all consuming and overwhelming to senses which, at all moments prior, had been befuddled and muted. From darkness to light; from nothingness, to knowing.
 
Thankfully, there wasn’t much more for her to do than feel the full force of her new existence, and life, and body. She mewled but it was more a consequence of breathing than anything truly communicative. Like a sunflower, she drew towards the sensation of comfort and warmth. Then she continued to exist, in a bubble of her own making, as she always would amidst the storms that found her.
 

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