go spin the wheel and see where it lands

It was like waking from a sleep he hadn’t meant to take.

Just a moment, he’d mumbled through blood-thick lips, sagged into the grass. Red bloomed like poppies before his eyes, sunk into the earth. His vision, blackened at the edges, caught more motion than true sight. Watercolor, gentle, the sunlight glinting off a droplet on the grasses. Then, his eyes had closed, his lungs heaving one great sigh, and consciousness was ephemeral, evaporating like the light on the horizon.

When he managed to drag himself upward, roots cracked and groaned, trying to draw him back down. Sleep, they bid him, sleep little soldier, you’ve done enough. But he hadn’t. Belenus swayed, his hips canting to the side, only stopped by a shaking foot planting into the beaten dirt. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t let the light leave him behind again. He had too many debts to pay.

He managed to stumble out from beneath the tree with several shivering steps, until he was brought low by a weakening of his hind. It brought him crashing to the ground with a grunt, the only reason he didn’t continue on his way. For a moment, he allowed the respite, staring over the gentle hills in front of him.

---

@Ries

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He'd always liked the meadows. The mountains were his home, of course, but Ries preferred the wide open spaces and freedom that the fields provided. Not as treacherous as the cliffs, nor as sheltered as the forests, but a space for both the mind and paws to wander.

So Ries walked. It was what he'd done his entire life - an itch that he'd never been able to scratch. Vanderfell was his home. His family resided on the mountain in the distance, and though Ries loved them dearly, he could not ignore the urge to move.

His wandering had become less and less over time, his grand adventure coming to a close and his permanent stay on the mountain sealed, but he still felt the call. Still resisted it each day.

The young Boesch had not expected company today, but it was never unwelcome. He hadn't seen the man's awakening, but he had witnessed him crash down to the dirt, and golden eyes widened in alarm, feet automatically bringing him to the stranger's side. He crouched down, concern etched across his features.

"Are you alright?" he asked, seeking out any injuries on the stranger's physique. Ries knew very little about healing, but at the very least, he could bring the man somewhere if need be. "Are you hurt?"

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Footsteps. Even brought so low, the universe never ceased in giving him a break from company. He eyed the sky with what could almost be called contempt, not for the young man he could see out of the corner of his eye, but for this as a whole. His legs were shaking when he moved them, but he managed to get one beneath his chest, lock the joint, and use the other to stab into the dirt to remain upright.

“Not hurt.” He rasped. At least, physically, beyond the bump he’d taken on the ground. Psychologically, his body remembered splits in his skin, wounds that no longer existed, and couldn’t quite keep up with his apparent health. Belenus blew out a gruff curse at one of his knees threatening to crumple.

“’s just been a while since I’ve moved.” He moved instead to eye the man in front of him, probing, seeking. What, even he couldn’t say. But it was second instinct by now, searching strangers for signs of combativeness, trickery. He’d been told before that wasn’t a good thing, the hypervigilance, but it wasn’t like he could stop. Battle fatigue or no.

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Not hurt. Okay. Good! That was... good. Ries wondered how long a wolf had to lay still to get as stiff as this man seemed to be, but far be it from him to question it. The stranger stared up at the sky as though it had wronged him somehow, which, under different circumstances, Ries might have found funny. For now, he was just concerned.

"You might not be hurt, but it sure looks like you're struggling," Ries pointed out, watching as the other man's limbs did their best to hold him up.

And then the stranger stared at him, and Ries stared back, unsure of exactly why he was being studied so intensely. It made his face prickle with heat, falling under this man's scrutiny, but he did not look away, confusion and concern brewing under his skin. He'd met a great many strangers in his life, but none that had simply... stared.

"I have something on my face?" he guessed, a lopsided, uncertain smile crossing his maw, tail easing into a slow wag behind him.

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To the words, his answer was a grunt. He looked at his straining knee, wavering beneath his weight. Belenus rocked his weight back, resting most of it against his hindquarters. His haunches twitched, muscles jumping from the strain of merely sitting up. It brought a quicksilver grimace to his face, gone the moment it caressed his features. He was a soldier. He had marched through blood-slick mud so deep the iron had scorched into his nose hairs, he had seen the worst of the world in the places where men went to die. He’d survived, and survived, a thousand times when other men hadn’t.

And now, he was about as steady as a newborn foal. Wretched claws of angry disgust at himself tugged at his innards.

“Nay. Only thinking.” He eventually settled on when he remembered his company, wobbling as he forced his limbs into cooperation. Up, to his feet, lock his knees. Routine.

“Do you have any idea where I am?” He asked when he was sure he wasn’t about to eat the dirt again. Assuredly, this stranger knew where they were. Where he could go, where his debts would come to him one by one, seeking what he owed.

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This was a strange encounter. Hardly ever did Ries feel the amount of concern he did for this man now, but the behavior had him wondering if maybe he'd hit his head somewhere. He'd no clue what he had experienced in the past to get him to this point - could not fathom the depths of war and gore and decay he'd seen. Ries had never known such things.

The man wobbled and Ries moved forward a little, paw rising uncertainly as if halfway reaching out to steady him, but thought better of it last minute.

"Dancer's Foothills," he said, far more confidently than he'd been able to give Raiden the name of the other meadow. Everything had clicked into place now. "Just a touch west from where my pack lives. We're up in the mountains. Vanderfell Woods?" Oversharing a bit, but whatever. Ries was the king of oversharing. It was unlikely this wolf even knew what Vanderfell Woods was.

Another moment of hesitation, and Ries' tail set to wagging again, expression opening a bit more. It wouldn't hurt to try to be friendly, would it? "Do you have a name?" he prompted hopefully.

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Dancer’s Foothills.

He didn’t know that name. No battlefield he’d ever set foot on had a name he’d known, peace was a far flung concept in which he could have learned them. Belenus was taken at the knees, his haunches lowering his body back to the ground with all the grace he could be afforded. This wasn’t where he had laid down, where just a minute stretched into eternity. It was just now sinking in, rising from beneath his mind like ground water.

He swallowed, thick. His eyes went to scan the distant mountains. Insects hummed distant to his ears, and when his nostrils flared, all they smelled was grass. There was no blood and upturned soil, viscera to stain and muddle the colors. The mountains rose silent and watchful, and he felt pitifully small.

“Belenus.” The only name he’d ever had, the only thing that had ever been really, truly his. His body was never his own, his mind a pilot for a bullet encased in fur. He inhaled the scent of grass, waiting for it to fill his lungs full of sweetness. Then, he released the air.

“And yours?” It was route, some distant part of him remembering how to be polite, rather than a conscious effort.

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It had become abundantly clear that there was something wrong here. Not necessarily that there was something wrong with this wolf, but that there was something wrong about the situation. He did not know the circumstances behind why the stranger was struggling to stand, or why he seemed so guarded and his mind so distant. He might never understand.

That did not mean he couldn't empathize. Couldn't be compassionate.

"Belenus," he echoed, the name rolling off the tongue easily. His smile brightened a touch, and his eyes creased with it. "That's a nice name. It evoked feelings of strength and warmth, though Ries could not assume that it suited the man's personality. Not yet, anyway.

His ears angled toward Belenus, then, at the prompting. "Ries Boesch," he said in turn, settling down onto his rump in a mirror of the other man's position. "It's nice to meet you."

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The peace itched at his coat. At his teeth. It dug into the lines of his gums, at the pit in his stomach. It hissed in voices he’d loved and lost, voices he’d never had to start with. This is not what you deserve, the words tumbled like dirt onto a grave. Rest, little soldier, the roots moaned like a dying breath.

The man sat beside him. Belenus could only wonder for a moment if death wafted off him in waves. But no, there was light in those eyes when they looked at him, and heat fluttered across his cheeks. When was the last time someone smiled at him and meant it? It was an unfamiliar look, an unfamiliar emotion cramping his gut.

“Yours is nice too.” His tongue was a limp, dead creature in his mouth, floundering with death throes. He smacked it against the back of his teeth. It was sinking into his skin, the fact this was his reality. Peace for miles, a voice not yowling agony, no blood matting his fur. For just a moment, if he closed his eyes, he could forget the debts closed around his heart, and what was promised to fulfill them.

“Vanderfell Woods.” Belenus prompted again after a moment.

“You live up there?” One leg raised to point at the mountain he could see from his seated position. Perhaps the prompting would draw more words from the man, would give him a further excuse to listen and not think.

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If there was anything Ries was good at, it was talking. This was not something he assumed Belenus needed at the moment, but rather something he simply could not prevent himself from doing when prompted. He very nearly thanked the man for the compliment - Thanks, my parents gave it to me, - but was just barely able to rein it in. Instead, his posture relaxed a little further, tail sweeping over the frozen ground behind him, visibly pleased.

Golden eyes followed where the man was pointing, mountains looming against the skyline, housing what remained of his family. The sight of it was both a comfort and simultaneously sent a small pang of sorrow through his chest.

"Yep," he confirmed, still staring at the blues of the mountain range. It had been harder to return lately, since Runar had stepped in. Nothing was his sibling's fault, of course, but knowing that their parents no longer held the reigns - could not, in his father's case, - made it more difficult to even exist within the territory.

This did not stop Ries from sticking close and coming home, but it did make his wanderlust all the more powerful.

"The mountain's called Fate's Summit. Vanderfell is the pack," he explained, though that wasn't necessarily what Belenus had asked of him. "My younger brother leads it now. We're mostly a family pack, but we're growing."

His attention switched back to the other man then, resolutely ignoring the strange mixture of homesickness and grief and flight in his chest. "I take it you're not from around here," he guessed, tipping his head just a touch to the side.

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The talking washed over him, a small reprieve in which he could gather his bearings. Belenus watched the distant mountain, one of his ears turned to Ries to hear his words. The longer he talked, the more it settled around him. That he was far, far away from those battles.

He turned one eye to his current company when the question came back to him. A family pack, a home. Surrounded by the love and light of others who’d known you since birth. A hollow feeling spread through his chest, easily ignored in the moment. His first answer was a gruff sort of laugh, more of an exhale than a true expression, eye sweeping back to the mountain.

“You’d be right.” He wasn’t from anywhere.

“Never actually seen a mountain this close.” He knew of them, of course, in the same vague way as he knew of warm, humid beaches and forests. From those waxing poetic of places they were from or places they had been. Belenus knew rolling highlands, fjords, and desolate taigas at the ends of the very world.

And, maybe, he felt a little bad for being so quiet in the face of Ries’s rush of words.

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It seemed almost unfathomable to Ries to have not seen a mountain, but of course he would feel that way, having been born on one. His new companion must've been from somewhere very far away from here to have never encountered one, though - Ries couldn't imagine he'd have been able to travel to this spot without climbing over at least one.

Maybe he hadn't traveled here at all. Stranger things had happened, hadn't they?

Belenus' initial confusion made a little more sense, now.

"Would you like to see it closer?" Ries invited without even thinking. Surely it wouldn't be of any harm, showing someone to his home. Belenus might not even want to climb it, after all, so they might just stop at a distance, but even if he wanted to, would Runar mind?

Ries sought out his companion's gaze once more, maw set in a lopsided smile. "Maybe we can catch something to eat, too," he suggested. What would be the harm?

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Would he like to-? A little laugh burbled in his throat like a death rattle. He was a fox in a henhouse, a hound at the end of a leash. Did his danger not emanate from his skin? Disbelief, because he had never been invited anywhere. But he was a hound without a hand on his leash, a dog without a master. A soldier with no army.

And his debts, he still had to pay.

Belenus’s face twisted into a smile, if it could even be called that. More of a rueful quirk of his lips. He hauled his body to all four of its limbs, pleased to find the rest upon the ground had actually helped some. He only faltered once, and quickly managed to keep from falling. He quirked his head to Ries.

“I’ll follow after you.” He gruffed, taking a moment to flex all of his muscles in synchrony. They burned, but not as bad as when he’d first lifted himself from the dirt. He hung his head a little, frozen in place without marching orders.

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The laugh Ries got in return was unlike any he'd ever received. He did not think laughter could ramp up his concern for someone even more, but it bubbled in his chest like a coursing brook. It had sounded more like a dying breath than a chuckle.

Had he said something funny? Ries often tried to, but rarely did the jokes land, and he hadn't even been trying to joke this time at all.

Belenus stumbled and Ries hopped up, ready to help the much larger man steady himself, but his assistance would prove unnecessary. This would be a slow trip, he reminded himself. A controlled pace so that his companion wouldn't have to push himself so much if he was already struggling just to stand.

"Alright," he said in turn, voice inexplicably tight in his throat. His smile had not wavered, but the lines of his lips were tense with concern that he'd tried to keep contained. Mother henning would do no one any good.

Ries took a few steps backward and gave a jerk of his head, gesturing toward the mountain. "Let's go, then," he urged, and headed in the direction of his homeland. The pace he set was casual and easy, no more than a relaxed walk, and he would check behind him regularly to see that his companion was still following, not struggling too badly.

He'd no idea what Belenus would do when they reached the mountain. Had no idea what Ries would do, even. He'd never impulsively brought someone home before, and couldn't even pinpoint why he was doing it now. All he knew was that he didn't feel right about leaving his companion alone and struggling in a field. Whatever consequences would come, he'd deal with them.

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