out of my cage through an open door

I'm looking to get to know any number of fellow pack mates - happy to have a longer thread or super short one.

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Surely, at some point, he'd leave the Nameless Mountain and venture out into other places.
Surely.
At some point.
Just... not quite yet.
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.
(If we're being honest, probably not tomorrow either).

Element shimmied out of the rocky entrance to his den and paused at it's entrance to stretch out his forelegs, tapping his dark paws gently on the rocky surface and following it all with a good shake from shoulders to tail. It was a new day on the mountain, and he'd even managed to sleep in a little longer today than he had in days past. Come to think of it... had he even woken during the night? As he finished his stretch, Ele contemplated the thought. He didn't remember waking in the dark - something he'd done every night since... since his much more meaningful wakening. How long ago was that now? How many times had the sun and moon switched places in the sky since he had switched from the realm of death to life, switched from one world to this one.

The young-again wolf shivered, although the day was bright and the stones almost felt warm under his paws having soaked up the morning light. His memories were still hazy, and his thoughts were still and unsettled and tangled mess. Some days he felt more willing to try to unweave them than others. Today was neither a day for untying knots or leaving the mountain. Today, he decided, was a day to... socialize.

His talk with Hydra had cemented something in him. A desire to work towards building something special, here on the mountain. He needed it right now, right up there with food and water - this desire to be a part of something and not just be so, so alone. Not for the first time, his day started with an ample amount of time spent wondering where he'd be had Hydra not come across him as he'd awoken, paralyzed by fear and uncertainty. The second step in his morning routine after stressing out about that for a little while was water. Finishing with his stretches, he turned and regarded the little entrance to his den with something like affection in his gray eyes. One step at a time, he'd figure it out. With that, he trotted off towards one of the streams he knew to be a little ways down the slopes, hoping to run into someone else who was also seeking some late morning hydration.
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Today, he was starting to feel the springtime a bit more. Still subtle, it lured him all to the creekside, making him wonder about what fish he might find here so early on in the year. It had once been an important pastime on the slopes of Moonspear to him, one he inherited from his mother because he had often been able to track her own when she was fishing; one of the rare times he was able to when he was very small. Nevertheless, was here much the same, and did all the same rules for fauna apply? In a great many respects it seemed to be some of the case, and as it always had, the mountain looked out for its guardians.

Anyway, while he was not wholly committed to fishing or anything like that right now, he did want to range over the waterways to their fullest extent and try to scope out potential good spots (since this time he did not have his dam to point them out to him). Jarilo wanted to convince himself that having more securities like that in mind would help him feel more.. settled into whatever this path was life had turned upon, so off he went, following the creek's edge down the elevations. He followed the flow, and really only diverted his focus from the waters when he heard footfalls coming in closer through the scenery.

Turning allowed him sight of an unfamiliar face, so he perked his head with interest--with a deep breath, quite content to match a scent he'd noticed around with them lately to sight of a particular face. Jarilo already knew this someone had come beneath the wing of Hydra's approval, so by that decree, her brother had no qualms so far; his tail waved softly to say so. “Hi there,” he chuffed, pausing midstep, only a partial pivot away from the stream to greet the stranger.
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Ah, well, it seemed he was in luck - as Element had hoped, he was not the only one to have wandered down to one of the nearby streams this morning. With the wind behind him, the other wolf had likely caught his scent as he finished his approach, and sure enough, as Ele dipped through a scraggly patch of foliage across the way, a pair of minty green eyes were already upon him. A second stroke of luck was his to be had, because those eyes seemed friendly, and the way the other's tail waved side to side seemed to back up that assessment.

The creek separated the two of them and the sound of the trickling water occupied only a short gap between the steely-coated male's greeting and Element's own "Hello." There seemed to be something ever so slightly familiar about the other wolf, but he couldn't exactly place it. Something about the way he held himself, or maybe something about the hues of his coat. Element examined him for a moment, feeling suddenly unsure of himself while he remembered how one was supposed to interact with -- a pack mate? That was it, wasn't it? That was the thing that felt odd, but also left him with a strange, pleasant feeling in his belly. Hydra had taken him in under her raven wings and offered him a home, a pack, and a place to belong. Here he was, meeting someone for the first time, who she had told him would become like family.

...What if he made a terrible first impression?

A jolt of panic went through him at the though, eyes widening momentarily in a stunned silence.

Don't be weird.

He had to recover - regain control of his anxiety brain and function like one normally would when meeting someone new. Distantly, he considered that the whole "functioning normally" thing would have been easier to do had he still not been grappling with the whole "coming back to life after maybe having died of old age, all while being in a new place back in your young-self's body again"...thing. The silver-peppered wolf heaved a short sigh, throwing the other male a sheepish smile and mirroring the friendly tail wag with one of his own. "I'm Element," he started softly. "It's nice to run into someone else".
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Going into this with no outlined expectations besides baseline, decent-enough encounter, a greeting back was a very nice start for him--who always couldn't help but worry if maybe he was invading on something private, or interrupting something otherwise, for just a beat when he came rolling up on someone like this. But, judging by the return he was met with, no alarm bells were going off, so Jarilo kept his easy countenance about himself, trying not to think into it too much.

If anything, it was bound to be best for both of them that way. Jarilo could barely remember the last time he had met someone he could categorize as entirely new like this, not someone related to him or that he had known for moons prior in somewhere and time. He did good to remind himself that maybe it was the same for the other guy too. So, best not to get caught up on the little pauses. “Yeah, it is. It's been a quiet morning so far for me, but early still,” he smirked a bit to accentuate. “I'm Jarilo,” the Ostrega went on to add in fair trade for his name: Element. In a breath, he decided it would be easy enough to remember. The fellow, all dressed in darks and grayscales, almost looked like he could pass for one of their own blood relations based on hues alone. Faintly, he hoped it wasn't another gap in his memory somehow, but.. really, he had other distinctions about him that kept making Jarilo all too curious to really think that with any seriousness.

He was bright eyed, but willing to forge ahead to find out more. “I'm just guessing that maybe you met Hydra--she's my sister. I.. ah, woke up here not that long ago, too.” he provided, leaving it up to Element if it was helpful, or an awkward place to start.
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A few soothing breaths - long pulls of air and quiet, controlled exhales - helped to quench the anxiety in his belly. That, and the fact that the stranger hadn't fled back into the trees and away from him, nor was he staring at Ele like he was some kind of fool. It's fine, he thought to himself quietly. He's part of the...your pack. The "your" was still a hard one to accept, even though Hydra had never once made Element feel anything other than completely welcome, it was his own head that had a hard time wrapping itself around it. So far though, this was going fine, and he took one final heavy breath before trying to will himself out of his head and into the present moment.

"Jarilo," Element repeated after the other had said it, hoping he'd have no trouble recalling it later. Was he someone who was good with names and scents, or terrible with them? He couldn't remember. That didn't bode well. This whole not knowing who the hell you were and how the hell you got here thing was really getting old. One stroke of luck though - it seemed that maybe the other wolf was not in too dissimilar of circumstances. Ele's head quirked to the side as Jarilo spoke of waking up, a look of almost-pleased surprise moving across his features. "Me too," he responded, perhaps too quickly, hoping he hadn't cut the other off before he'd completed his thought. A momentarily pause, before he realized there had been more said he hadn't responded to yet. "Hydra - yes," he stammered, his tail giving an involuntary pleased swish at the mention of the inky matriarch. "She found me - when I woke up," he elaborated. "I just... I don't really know how it happened. I just suddenly was in an area nearby, and there she came, and she offered me a, uh, place here." Element gestured vaguely with a sweep of his head towards the peak of the mountain before refocusing his gaze on the other male, trying to assess his reaction to the tale and feeling a swell of curiosity. It then clicked that he'd mentioned his relation to her, and there again came the pleased swish of his white-tipped tail. "Oh, your sister!" Ele exclaimed, excited by the revelation. "I know she was searching for family... I haven't really run into anyone yet. I'm glad you two found each other again." And because he was curious, and because it may shed some light on his own situation: "When you woke up... what was it like? Do you know..." what even was the best way to start? "...why?"
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If anything, and his admission flopped entirely, he was honest, he supposed. He did not hinge a lot on Element's reception, but as he finished his own words, he was.. curious when it didn't seem to be outright confusion that he inspired, or worse. Actually.. why did he seem almost glad to hear it? Jarilo wondered if he would just get used to feeling so surprised any time soon--they had a good bit in common, actually, and he couldn't help but have his jaw slack as he listened. Eerie how this was, but also a very strange sense of relief, one that came in a time when he needed any of it he could get.

“Okay, I am glad we can relate. It all sounds so  weird to say, and.. exist with,” he laughed softly, soothed by the sway of his companion's tail too. He sighed before he would go to elaborate. Though unfortunately he did not have any stunning revelations to shine light on this with. He was prone to thinking about it much too hard, so this was ground he had tried to cover with himself, and Hydra some too. About these circumstances, could definitely say his piece: “I don't know why. I don't know what happened. I think.. something did,” he said, expression furrowing a bit then. Why else would he have left Moonspear? Because this was not Moonspear, and yet...

Which... for some reason, the name felt so heavy in his thoughts and strangely delicate all the same. Like he mustn't touch it or it would leave.

Focusing on Element got him going again though. “I just woke up here, further up this mountain a ways by a little cave.. spooked that it was definitely not.. my usual sort of spot, I guess,” again he punctuated with a laugh but one more wry as he gestured vaguely towards the higher elevations, snout first. Some of this felt personal in a way, a careful admission of what had bothered him deeply but again, he supposed it was one way to really break the waters. “Eventually Hydra found me too and filled me in a bit, then I've explored some since. It almost feels like our home before in some ways but isn't in many others. It's.. disorienting, and worst of all I can't remember everything. I know I always lived in one place, with Hydra and Dirge, all the others too, but...” There was where it got really fuzzy for him sometimes, and he was keenly aware of a very big absence. Maybe several? That would make him want to fidget if he loitered. “I don't know why here. I mean.. I like it though, don't get me wrong, but it's been weird to wrap my head around everything.” Jarilo was trying to make such meandering considerations concise enough. “But what about you? Do you remember anything about, ah.. any before?” he asked, eager for other perspectives when he was.. almost certain their histories had not overlapped until now.
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Jarilo appeared to be as mystified by Element was, and the dark wolf could almost feel the threads between them pull tighter and begin weaving, at least in part, their two disparate tales together. Even though Element had found himself sharing shreds of this awakening before with a handful of others, Jarilo had been the first to seem... well, willing to acknowledge that it was just absolutely weird. Ele had been prone towards downplaying the way waking up here, amnesiac and afraid, had affected him when speaking to others about it, because so many that he'd interacted with seemed to be of the opinion that they should just stand up and move on. No one had been cruel, no one had been dismissive of his feelings, but no one had seemed eager to speak about the mystery of their strange origins here.

His steely-coated packmate laughed, a refreshing sound that drew a further smile out of Element in turn. He breathed a mental sigh of relief and made a final attempt to dismiss any lingering anxiety that still clawed its way around in his chest. "It is weird," he agreed quickly, pairing the words with a rapid nod and a brusk laugh of his own. "I honestly don't know what to make of it". As for the feeling that something had happened to bring them here... that was something to puzzle on. Whatever that had occurred that had brought him here - the things that may have happened that his dreams hinted at - they made him deeply uneasy. There was a voice inside him he tried to keep quiet that just wanted to scream that it was all wrong, that he was forgetting too much, and he needed to find his way home.

He didn't like the voice, so he cleared his throat and shoved it deep down into the depths of his psyche once more.

It was a stroke of fortune for each of the dark wolves that Hydra had found them - and another interesting similarity in their stories. "Hydra mentioned a little bit about where she came from, but no real detail", he voiced thoughtfully after Jarilo had finished speaking. Not for the first time, it caused some amount of heartache and even a shred of jealousy that so many of Hydra and her kin had awoken here together, and he'd just been... alone. Without realizing it was happening, his ears drooped at the thought and his tail ceased it's excited quivering. "So many of you all seem to have ended up here together," he offered, a heavier tone coating his words than there had been previously. "I'm a little envious, maybe," he admitted after a thoughtful pause. "I don't really remember... sometimes something flashes across my mind, but it feels like when I try to focus on it it slips away." Sometimes he dreamed, but this he didn't share, feeling a little to vulnerable still to mention that he'd been dwelling on what may arise in his slumber each night. "Bits come through - faces, or voices," he continued, looking down at his paws as he did so. "I know I was somewhere else before. I don't know how long ago it was. Or where."
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The more he heard, the more solid of a confirmation it was that they were both on the back-end of some confusing times lately. As weird as it all was, they were left here to try to make the best of it, and thankfully Element seemed open enough to consider it all with him--though Jarilo did agree, he didn't know what to make of it either but it did feel good to air some of his thoughts about it properly. And he would gladly be a willing listener too. Now knowing at least that Hydra had not shared much of their prior home, he could test the waters of interest there a bit: “It was a place called Moonspear, a mountain a lot like this one, honestly.. but not this close to the sea. Lots of forests, and caves. Everything.. we ever needed,” his tone, nostalgia slung heavy over its back, threatened to wander but he was swift to right it. “We were born there, trained there, and I think something happened to separate us from the mountain, but I don't know.. what it was, or could be,” he frowned. There were only glimpses, and he couldn't separate the reality from dream at that point, none of it was clear. 

But carrying on, even where their similarities ended, Jarilo was keenly interested; Element revealed more about his time before, leaving him to try to understand why him too, and why here of all places? Maybe as he wondered.. it had been a different time he had been plucked from, maybe that was where their paths had crossed over similar ground somewhere once before.. enough to pull them back to here, together, somehow. And truly--he did feel for him, knowing damn good and well how massive of a mess he would have been had it not been Hydra of all wolves to find him upon his awakening, and if he were a million miles away from anyone familiar. To be able to reunite with her and a good handful of others already... he was very thankful he could almost assume a normal life with them in it.

But likewise, there were still his own gaps too. “Yeah.. it's.. a lot. I wonder if in time, more might come back to you, somehow? Or if someone you knew before that before might turn up still.. who knows,” Jarilo theorized, considering how some that they knew had trickled in slowly. He could mull it over in a few directions. “I feel the gaps too. Like I can't puzzle out what's supposed to be in these empty spaces, no matter how I try.. and it feels like I'm forgetting something so important, somehow, even with so much of my family turning up here too..” he then shook his head, conflicted over the meaning of this. He had so much, so why should he fret over something he didn't have, or didn't truly know if he had it anymore. “But even so, I think something pulled us all here for some reason.” He just didn't know what that was meant to be yet. “And even with our memories half-scooped out, we're doing okay so far, I think, right?” he laughed gently.

And going forward, that would not change. He was glad to get to know Element more, and already felt a sense of camaraderie begin to grow. It was worthwhile to trust Hydra and Dirge's judgement, after all, and to him, it was time well spent.
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