hold back the river

It wasn't a terribly long walk from the foothills to the mountain, but Ries had set the pace slow. He was certain he'd talked too much by now, but the silence had felt oppressive, and he'd been so glad to have a traveling companion again. He'd hardly been without one in his travels before he'd rejoined his family, always surrounded by new and interesting people, but they'd been harder to come by when he was stationed in one place.

Belenus did not talk as much, but that was fine. Ries had never been turned off by a quiet companion, so as long as they'd not ask him to stop, he'd fill the quiet with idle chatter, spinning little stories here and there, sharing tales of past adventures.

"...and the mountain is pretty steep, so you want to be careful when you're climbing. I've taken a tumble down a cliff or two - nothing too bad, but still. It takes time to get used to it," he rambled on, snow crunching underfoot, birdsong overhead. It was a cold day, but not unbearably so, and the sun was shining above.

Ries' nose twitched as the scent of deer trickled in and his stomach growled a little. It had been a while since he'd eaten, and though he wasn't starving, he could definitely eat.

Side-eyeing his companion, he confirmed that Belenus was, indeed, a pretty big guy. Between the two of them, they could probably bring down a deer, if it was young or old or hurt.

"Are you hungry?" he inquired, then, voice a little quieter than before. If the deer were close, he didn't want to spook them.

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Walking became easier with every motion, but everything still felt almost fleeting. Like any blink would cause the world around him to dissolve into gossamer threads. It left him stiff and distrusting on his march after Ries, eyeing every swaying bit of grass and whistle of wind as though it premeditated an attack. His body protested his vigilance, claiming he was only mortal, but he’d sunk his teeth into the feeling, and now he couldn’t find it in him to release it. Not now.

The talking, however, helped. Ries’s words washed over him like the faintest of mists, enough to keep him aware of his surroundings and listening. On them, he could focus, anchoring his presence to the world and to the nature around them. He hummed and grunted at every opportune moment, sometimes offering a quiet rejoinder if he felt he needed to.

“Sounds like it hurt.” Belenus spoke, shaking bits of half-melted ice from where they’d become lodged in his pads. The winter sun was kind in this strange new land, offering a distant reprieve and a gentle warmth if he stood in place long enough. He’d felt it when he’d taken a moment to stare in shock and no small amount of existential horror at a distant, absolutely massive tree. It still itched at him, and he couldn’t help but eye it. No tree in the world should be that big.

“I could eat.” Not that he was very good, but he could do as directed. His stomach had long learned he would ignore it, but he could feel the faint cramp of emptiness in the core of himself.

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A laugh escaped him at the comment and he shrugged. "Sort of. A few bumps and bruises, but nothing major," he assured, unaware of his companion's inward plight regarding the tree. It loomed in the distance, tall and imposing, but familiar. "I got lucky."

He always had, with injuries. Ries had been fortunate to never experience anything too terrible, physically. A scraped chin had been his last reminder to be careful scaling the mountain, and it was all he'd needed to keep his paws steadier and his pace slower on the slopes.

Belenus was hungry, too, which made for a perfect excuse to stop and snag themselves a deer. Surely they could manage it, Ries figured. It'd been a while since he'd hunted with someone else, and longer still since he'd hunted large prey, but he was optimistic. If it didn't work out, it was no skin off his nose. They'd get it next time.

"Do you smell the deer?" he asked, looking off in the direction the scent had wafted from. He couldn't see them just yet - they were likely obscured by some hill, - but they were there. "If we get an old one, or a young one, I think we could take it down. What do you think?" If his companion was not so confident, they didn't have to try, but he at least wanted his opinion.

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Deer, Ries mentioned, and Belenus raised his nose up to take a quick breath. He was right, he could taste them on his tongue. Thick, musky, masked by only the slush beneath their feet. The bucks would be antlerless by now, if his brief memory of deer held true. It was a perfect time to trim the fat of the herd.

And yet a part of him shied from the idea of spilling more blood, and yet another chimed in that he’d never hunted a deer before, just watched them in a memory so old it felt more like an impression that a true recollection. But there was two of them, and if their target was old, or harmed, or even an unprotected youngling, he could see this working. Perhaps he’d even have a present to take with him to Ries’s home. He’d seen councilors lose their minds, scraping up anything they could to gift to coming others of high breeding or high status. So, ideally, that would be his best impression.

“Don’t see why we couldn’t.” Belenus mused after a moment, and ears held lightly back as he thought it over.

“Between the two of us, it shouldn’t be so bad.” That was, of course, his full and complete hope. If it came true? He’d commend himself on having some measure of hope left in him.

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Belenus seemed keen on the idea, and Ries brightened a bit, tail swishing through the air behind him. This would, of course, stop once they actually started hunting in favor of a stealthier approach, but he was glad his companion didn't shoot the idea down immediately.

It shouldn't be so bad. Ries was a little rusty, but once you hunted one deer, you never forgot how, right?

Right.

That's what he would tell himself, anyway.

"Alright!" he said brightly, eyes creased in a smile. "We can pick out a weaker one and I can run down and herd it back toward you." That way, Belenus wouldn't have to push himself too much, and Ries was confident he'd be able to at least guide a deer in the right direction.

Finding them would be a simple task. Ries kept low and quiet as he crested the hill. It was a small group of deer, which would make it easier, and he zeroed in on one older, thinner doe with what appeared to be a bad hind leg. She limped on the edge of the herd, just a short distance away from the others, but it was enough.

Ries bolted toward her and cut between the doe and the rest of the herd, aiming to nip at her heels and guide her back toward Belenus.

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“Right.” He had his orders. Belenus forged forward into the grasses, only stopping when Ries did. He craned his head up, immediately ducking back down when he had the position of the deer in his mind. Footsteps posed that his traveling companion had engaged, and that left him time to strategize.

He’d been known for a strategic mind, before. In those moments when he was allowed, he thought up battle plans, let them fester and ferment in his mind. Dreamed one day to be heard. It had been a pipe dream, one that died where it lay in the dust. He moved to his feet from his crouch, lunging down the hill. Thrill kicked his heart into a drumbeat, familiar adrenaline washing every thought from his brain beyond the knowledge of his teeth in his mouth and the stomp of his feet. This was familiar, this was everything he’d ever known.

Until he realized he probably should not be flinging himself down a hill so soon after pulling up from the dirt. A cramp stiffened his back leg, his front right bent back beneath him, and Belenus found himself tumbling the rest of the way down with a cut off grunt of surprise. The doe, for her part, soared up and over the tumbling wolf, clipping his ear with the corner of one of her hooves.

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Oh. Maybe Ries should have thought this through a little better, but in his defense, he was completely unaware that Belenus had quite literally dug himself up from beneath the earth. He'd thought he was simply tired.

Things were going well for about seven seconds. Ries had steered the deer away from its herd, and Belenus had started to run down the hill after them, and then Belenus was tumbling down the hill instead and Ries had to skid to a stop to avoid crashing headlong into him.

Luckily, the doe leaped over her newfound obstacle as though the wolf were simply a log on the ground. Ries huffed out a short breath as the deer bounded away and rejoined its herd, where they all disappeared over the nearby hill.

Turning his attention back to his companion, his initial response was concern, eyes round as he flitted around him, trying to check visually for injuries.

"Are you alright?" he asked, brows knitted together and ears pressed back to his skull. "You're not hurt anywhere?"

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Belenus took stock of himself as he tried to rise again. Thankfully, only bruises and a bruised ego. Except when he twitched the clipped ear, but it was just a shallow cut. It probably wasn’t even bleeding. For a brief moment, when his travel companion turned to him, he stiffened. Waiting for venom to rise on tongue, waiting for anything to rise in the wake of their failed hunt. When nothing came, he tried to release the tension from stiffened muscles. He rasped his tongue over his front limb, then hauled his body upwards. The cramp made itself known in an instant, and he hissed through his teeth.

“Guess I should have stretched.” A measure of humor to hopefully offset any coming anger. His eyes turned to where the deer had vanished, no doubt fleeing as far as they could. He stretched out the cramped limb, nose rising.

“I could track them?” He found himself offering, malcontent with concern in the face of what he expected. Had he done such a thing on the field of battle, he would have either been trampled, killed, or dressed down. But in offering to track, he thought, he could prove he did have at least one skill. Not that it was a particularly useful one for catching their quarry, but he could find it again, at least.

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Belenus was stiff, favoring a forelimb, hissing when he put weight on it. Ries felt like an idiot for suggesting they hunt right now, when the other man was clearly not well enough to do so, but he genuinely hadn't thought it was as bad as it was - nor that he would chase after them as he had. Any preexisting injuries were likely exacerbated and any new ones just added to the list.

Guess I should have stretched.

A surprised laugh escaped him at the joke, unaware that it was simply made to ease any anger that might thrown his way. He'd find none with Ries, who was simply glad the other man wasn't too injured to stand. There would be plenty more deer in the future, but not if he was too hurt to hunt them.

"Maybe we should take it easy," he said in lieu of a yes or a no. It wasn't like he could tell Belenus what to do in good conscience, but a gentle suggestion couldn't hurt, right? It wouldn't do the other man any good to push himself too much, especially after that. "If you're really hungry, I can go get something for you. It doesn't have to be a deer." Surely he could scrounge up a rabbit or something if the situation was truly dire.

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There was no anger, just a visible concern that seeped from Ries like a river. He didn’t understand it but currently, he was too tired to question it. Perhaps at a later date he’d circle back, question why kindness was offered to him on a silver platter. But now wasn’t the time.

“Nay. You don’t have to do that.” He stretched the cramp affected limb in front of him with a spread of his toes, before he rested it against the earth. Belenus winced, just slightly, but the cramp decided to release him for the time being, and he stood as steady as he could on the limb.

“I should be offering to go get you something. I’m the one who took the fast route down.” Another flash of humor, more suspected appeasement, but he half meant it. In a way. Maybe he was actually trying to be funny. Or maybe, he really did just need another nap. As if he hadn’t been asleep for god knew how long. The cloying call of sleep fluttered around his head like butterflies, easily swatted away, but persistent in its own right.

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Of course he didn't have to do that, but in a way, he did. Ries had mentally decided that Belenus was his responsibility, and it would be outright cruel for him to abandon the other man to whatever fate awaited him out in the unfamiliar wilderness. He watched through concerned, scrutinizing eyes as Belenus stretched his leg and toes out, his face contorting at the pain in his limb.

Well, that just wouldn't do.

Belenus joked again, and Ries snorted unattractively with laughter. "I'm not the one who just went head-over-heels down a hill, am I?" Ries teased back, eyes glimmering with amusement and tail swaying. "It was a fast way down though. Very efficient, if that's what you were going for."

Maybe it would be a good idea to rest instead of more hunting attempts. The mountain was not too far off, but Ries really did not want to push his travel companion at the moment. Still, he didn't want to embarrass him either, and so as he stepped onto his left hind foot, he let out a very dramatic gasp and sat on his rump in the snow.

"Oh, ow," he whined, turning his head to nose at his not-at-all-injured paw. "I've twisted my ankle." He hadn't. "I can't go on like this." He could. "I think I need a break. At least for a few hours." He didn't. At all. Ries was used to traveling long distances with little rest, but perhaps Belenus was not, and Ries was beginning to suspect taking his weight off that leg might do him some good.

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He snorted inelegantly at the laugh rising from Ries. At least his jokes landed well enough, he supposed he had that going for him. Belenus watched the man with that same critical eye, the way his eyes came alight with his laughter, the way he seemed to suddenly realize pain was in his paw.

For a brief moment, he felt his ears pull back, a frown touching his brow and the corners. But then, he caught on, and sighed a soft, half relieved sigh. He was just pretending, theatrical in the way of a new noble recruit trying to get out of anything they could. Not that it ever seemed to work. The battlefield knew no man was above the other. They all died the same. But there was no war here, and even if Ries’s family did watch over their pack, he didn’t seem to be like anyone he knew.

For one, he was willing to allow him rest. Belenus huffed out a half laugh, slumping down onto his haunches. Perhaps it would be good to sit and rest for a little while. Continue his observation of the world around him, cataloguing the differences he could spot. Waiting, for what he did not know.

“’pose a break couldn’t be bad.” He capitulated, pale gaze wandering away from Ries to stare hawkishly into their surroundings. It was wide open, thankfully. Beyond the hills, he could see anyone coming for miles.

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Fortunately for the both of them, Belenus did not argue and so Ries would not have to push and wheedle and nag him into a break. Because he would have, if he needed to. It just would have been annoying - not for Ries, but likely for Belenus, to have the smaller man flitting around him like an anxious bird.

Ries was pretty tired too, he discovered as he settled down. His paws stung a little from the cold and nonstop walking, avoiding settling down for too long in one spot and eventually returning to the mountain as if he were a magnet flipping back and forth between the push and pull. He laved a tongue over the pad of his paw, laid out halfway onto his side not far from his travel companion.

The return wasn't as difficult with someone alongside him, he found. He thought of his father, of course, and his chest felt heavy with the loss, but it was a little more distant now that he wasn't coming back alone.

He turned his attention back to Belenus, studying him for a moment. Had his eyes always had that burst of gold toward the center?

"What're you looking for?" he asked finally, noting the way those multicolored eyes scanned the horizon.

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He looked back at the other man sprawled out in the snow, looking at him with curiosity. Then, back out to the hills, adjusting his posture to be tall and imperious. Statuesque, a gargoyle perched on the edge of a church. He settled his tail over one back leg.

“Anything.” Came his gruff-voiced reply. Could he truly explain this? Could he be the one responsible for the light dying in those eyes? Had war ever touched the mountain, or did it lord above those who would try? He tracked his gaze to the distant, cloud ringed peaks. He could almost see it, the looming shadow dwarfing would be conquerors until they were forced to turn tail and run. Too large to surround without a force of thousands, and commanding legions came with its own dangers. Belenus shifted his stance some, ears rotating once, before they settled into a neutral position.

“Its the good thing about hills. You can see anything coming.” And, if you tucked yourself in the valley between them, you could hide, or get the jump on your enemies. He scanned the horizon one more time, just so he could be certain.

“Don’t see anything.” That didn’t mean there wasn’t anything, his gut warned, that part of his mind that never stopped whispering and hissing suspicion.

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Anything seemed a vague response. Surely, with how intensely Belenus scanned the horizon, he was looking for something specific. Almost as if he were worried about something, like they were in danger.

But there was nothing here. Belenus said so himself - or at least, he hadn't seen anything. Ries was not accustomed to looking over his shoulder and spooking at shadows. Not because he was capable of defending himself - that was hardly the case - but because he'd simply never had a bad enough experience to cause this type of hyper-vigilance. It had been a nice, pleasant life so far, aside from...

Well. It wouldn't do any good to think about it now, though he could feel the absence like a wound in his chest. Like someone had ripped out a lung. Like it was harder to breathe just because someone else was missing from the world.

"I don't think anything's out there," Ries supplied unhelpfully, tilting his head, and then smirked a little. "But if there were, I would protect you. Don't worry."

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I don’t think anything’s out there. He wanted to turn to him, tell him of the last time someone had made a flippant comment on watch. How they’d come from every direction. How their teeth curved into his skin, deep enough he’d felt the scrape against bone. How out of an entire regiment, only three had come back. He’d never seen the other two again, never known if their hearts were still beating, or speared open on a desolate rock somewhere he would never know.

“Guess you’re right.” He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let the words fall from his mouth like unsheathed daggers, each one meant to hurt. Belenus was many things, but cruel had never been something he could lay claim to. The added comment got the edge of a tired smile, as he folded his front limbs beneath him and lay down with a soft whumf of dispersing air.

“Never hurts to keep an eye out.” He half mumbled, head dropping down onto his front limbs. He watched through dark lashes for a moment, before the itch of paranoia drove his head to raise again.

“Your family. Are they all on the mountain?” He asked after a moment, digging for anything he could find to keep his mind off the steadily growing itch to look over his shoulder.

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Ries could not understand - would likely never understand - how Belenus had struggled and fought in the past. Would never understand the conflict and fear and agony that came with war. The closest Ries had ever come to rending flesh with his teeth was hunting, and there was no terror or hurt outside of a few scrapes and bruises. He did not know how it felt to constantly be looking over your shoulder. Did not know how it felt to be hunted.

Still, Belenus agreed with him, begrudgingly as it seemed, and lay down in the snow and grass, which Ries took to be a personal victory. It was nice to see him relaxing. He didn't seem the type to simply take a load off and take an afternoon nap, but Ries was hoping to get him to be that type today. His head dropped to his paws, and not long after raised again, as if he could not get himself to relax.

Never hurts to keep an eye out.

"Guess you're right," Ries echoed, an almost playful edge to his tone as Belenus watched the open plains and Ries watched Belenus. He'd probably be more handsome if he cleaned up a little, he thought absently. Maybe after a nap, Ries could convince him into a bath. But that was step two, and Ries was currently on step zero, so he was definitely getting ahead of himself.

And then Belenus asked after his family, and Ries' heart sank. This would not, under normal circumstances, be a bad thing to talk about at all. Ries adored his family, would do anything for them, but thinking of them right now made an inexplicable tightness rise in his throat.

"Um, yeah, for the most part," he said, casting a glance back to the mountain in the distance. "My mother recently stepped down and my younger brother is leading. Some of my siblings are there, too." The ones that remained. Ries could not help the way his smile morphed into something closer to a grimace, the ache in his chest like a physical wound.

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Cold sunk into his skin where he lay, but it was gentle, almost. Unlike the frozen knives he’d experienced. He used one paw to push a little mound in the slush, then flick the resulting water droplets off his paw. This world felt soft, in a way he hadn’t seen since the watercolor of before, where everything became a pale replica. But this wasn’t a washed out reminder of where he came before. This was a new painting, a canvas he didn’t know. He tried to summon up the ability to be excited about something new, but he remained as he was.

Ries began talking about the family he had left, and Belenus winced, looking away. He folded one limb over the other, staring at his paws. Flexing his toes, he finally looked back, ears wilted like daises.

“My apologies, I seem to have misstepped.” And here, he bowed his head until his nose touched the ground, as deep an apology as he could manage.

“I didn’t mean to bring up anything that would cause you distress.” His words were half mumbled, waiting to hear his apology was accepted before he picked his head up. The shame burned hot beneath his skin, flushed his cheeks beneath his fur. The only good thing, he supposed, was it chased away that gentle cold.

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Ries' ears perked and his head popped up at the apology, at the way Belenus seemed to deflate and retreat in on himself. He hadn't meant to make him feel bad, and certainly not to the point where he felt he needed to touch his nose to the dirt in an apology.

"Hey, no, it's fine," he floundered, eyes round in his initial panic. "It's not - I mean, you didn't know. I like talking about my family. I don't mind you asking." And it was true. His family was one of the things that Ries loved talking about the most. Just because thinking about the loss was difficult did not mean the love that existed had faded in the slightest.

Without thinking, and if he was not snapped at for his efforts, Ries would dip his head down and nose beneath Belenus' chin to lift his head up for him.

"You don't have to... to do that," he'd say, face lined with concern. "You didn't do anything wrong."

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The movement was sudden, so trapped in guilt as he was. A nose, sweeping under his jawbone to lift his face in the air. The itching beneath his skin was suddenly quiet. Belenus’s breath stuttered, his heart skipping an anxious beat. When was the last time he’d felt a friendly touch? Or even a touch at all? He couldn’t think, suddenly, and he let his tongue slither out nervously to drag over his nose.

“It seemed to distress you.” He managed to wheeze out. His heart was beating so fast it sent his head into a spiral. Did he want more? Did he want to move away? Belenus checked what little of himself he could see from the corner of his eye to see if he was actually on fire, but all he could see was rumpled waves of fur. He slowly lowered his head, blinking almost sheepishly.

“Either way, I apologize.” He punctuated his statement with a little thump of his tail against the packed dirt. The fire burned beneath his skin, and he wondered if it would scorch him clean. Let him begin again, free of memory, of obligation. But who would he be, after the fire ran out of material to burn? He didn’t particularly have a mind to find out.

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Oblivious to the full breadth of internal chaos he'd caused in the other man, Ries simply watched him, brows knitted and guilt of his own gathered in his stomach. He hadn't wanted to place his own struggles on someone else - especially someone who was having such a difficult time, themselves.

"It's just... sad. But it's not because of you asking. It's hard to go home when not everyone is there waiting for you," he admitted, voice a little tight, hushed. And maybe it was a ridiculous problem to have. He still had family. He still went home often. But there would always be that someone missing, when he felt he should have Hieronymous there as well to catch him when he returned.

There was guilt, there, too, for being gone so often and so long. Guilt that he hadn't spend enough time with him. Guilt that his father might have thought Ries wanted to stay away.

Either way, I apologize.

A small smile, a little sad, a little exasperated, a little amused in spite of everything, crept onto his maw.

"Alright," he said finally, a little of the heaviness easing from his chest. "You're forgiven. But I want it on the record that there really wasn't anything to apologize for, so you've been forgiven for no reason."

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He listened.

It was what he could do, in this moment. He had never truly related to the talks of family given by others, or known what to do when asked about his home, or his family. That was a thing others held close to their chest, but Belenus? He didn’t have anything to hold there. But Ries did, enough for the pain to be a visible wound. A death, his words explained, maybe more than one. It made his own heart heavy, to know this kind, talkative man hadn’t escaped hardship himself. Even if it wasn’t to the level he had experienced, it was still a light dimmed. It was still a pain he would carry in the same manner of Belenus’s own. Maybe one day, they would both set those burdens to rest.

He almost huffed at himself. There was that hope he thought was dead, wasted on something that would never happen to him. He did reach that hope across the way, hoping to one day see the burden slide off Ries’s shoulders.

“I accept forgiveness anyway.” He spoke in a tired half laugh, letting his shoulders relax in faux relief. The fire still scorched his insides, but he focused instead on keeping the conversation going. Without words, the paranoia itched, the fire roared, and he would quickly rise up again to scan the horizon. With them, perhaps he’d stay down for a while longer.

“Hows your paw?” Belenus pointed to the apparent offending limb with a rise of his brow.

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It would get easier with time, Ries knew. Grief would come and go in waves, and he would grow around it, and life would eventually feel sort of normal again. His father had always seemed so large a presence that it was impossible to ignore his absence. How could he, when Hieronymous had been the wolf he had modeled himself around? Had been his role model?

It was why he tried not to think. Tried to busy himself with other things and other wolves and kept himself moving and active. Too much stagnancy and the grief would threaten to drag him under, and he could not allow that to happen.

Belenus carried on the conversation for him, and Ries found himself relaxing again, soothed by the other man's breathy voice and attempts at laughter.

At the inquiry, Ries could not help the smirk that crossed his maw, and he flopped onto his side, extending the wrong hind paw out. "Agony," he complained, maw set in a pout, grateful for the change in topic and the opportunity to settle the jester's mask once more over his face. "I don't know how I could possibly go on. We might have to chop it off, even."

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It was all too easy to get swept along the tide of humor. Distractions had always been few for Belenus, true ones that swept him away from all circumstance that could harm him. But Ries offered him an olive branch, and he was all too happy to take it, even run with it. He watched the wrong paw be thrust out, tucking one of his own beneath his chest.

“Well, that won’t do.” He said in a musing tone, raising his untucked paw to scrape against his chin a moment. Playfulness danced in his eyes, even dulled by his ever present tiredness, and he stared at the limb for a moment. Then, he heaved a melodramatic sigh.

“If we must, we must.” He rocked that smallest bit closer, extending out his neck to aim a few whistling nips at the air. Never close enough to connect, but enough the displaced air could be felt along the fine hairs of the paw. He couldn’t help the warm chuckle that tried to rise from his mouth.

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This was what it was for. There was still a heaviness that had settled in Ries' very bones, but the humor afterward helped alleviate the worst of it. It was all too easy to fall back into his role - felt more natural and comfortable than the melancholy he'd expressed before. He was grateful, too, for Belenus' playing along.

Laughter burst, sudden and barking, from his chest as the other man nipped at his completely, totally uninjured paw, close enough that the air brushed it.

Amusement glinted in his eyes as he rolled onto his back, paw to his chest, dramatic as could possibly be. "Betrayal," he accused, trying and failing to hide the grin on his face. "Don't think I forgot about yours," he went on, peeking at Belenus upside-down. "How's your leg?" Probably much more actually injured than Ries' own, if he had to hazard a guess.

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