the pale club of the wind

The many changes the Olive was experiencing had begun to feel cumbersome and overwhelming. It wasn’t any one culprit she could blame, but it was the culmination of many; she constantly was worried for her puppies (she was simply plagued by nightmares of waking up and her belly had unceremoniously vanished), overly-desirous to ensure Duskguard’s borders and safety, and far too curious about @Tiberius and how all of this was weighing upon him. She couldn’t help but worry about her sense of freedom, and how she would cope with the monotony and challenges of new motherhood. These many different concerns bubbled up at different points in the day, triggered by the various goings-on of her life, and she wasn’t ever really certain what might be her foremost priority might be that day.
 
This morning, she was preoccupied with the un-arrival of @Archon back in Duskguard.
 
The last she had known, the banded young knight had departed from the Tundra in order to fetch his friend from the south — but that had been nearly a month ago. Always, after few weeks, her anxiety flagged the disappearance of someone closer to her. Similarly, she might have been concerned about the sudden absence of @benry , if they hadn’t gotten in such a row beforehand. The two had come to an accord after her kidnapping, but it had never been the same after Olive left Evenrise with Tiberius, carrying his pups.
 
This was one of many concerns that Olive forcibly placed on the back-burner, where she feared it might have to stay for good.
 
When she thought of Archon and his delayed homecoming, Olive’s immediate next thought was how quickly her pregnancy was progressing; when it was other mothers — other women — the days ticked by quite slowly. But every morning she felt heavier, and every evening the pups squirmed harder, and Olive knew she mustn’t blink, lest she open her eyes and the next three weeks had evaporated as quickly at the last. Then she would have a squalling brood of newborns, and little autonomy to investigate Archon’s absence. She was his mother... if she didn’t raise the alarm and push for an inquiry, then who would?
 
Even without the pups being born, travel would soon evade the gravid woman. In fact, in what Olive feared might be the last few days she could viably cover long distances, she took off and made way towards the Elsewhen. If he wasn’t at Duskguard, then perhaps he took refuge amongst another familiar place; the last place they had called home, before the Vale became their hearth and haven. When she arrived, Olive indulged in only the briefest of rests before surveying her holy site for even the faintest of the boy’s scents.
 
If she couldn’t find his scent, then at least she could pray.

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O Guiding Light, please be fortuitous. She's close to a territory she shouldn't be in, but the scent of the hunt has led her here. The Guiding Light above her, she knows she is meant to be here. There is an old game trail, and she can catch the scent of prey, but not wolves. She is in unclaimed land. She will eat well. But it is not prey that meets her gaze. No, instead, a she-wolf crosses her gaze. Anneke finds herself flattening down. But as she watches, there's a sense of franticness to the other wolf.

And it's not going to be long before she's discovered anyway. Keeping her posture as non-threatening as possible, she cries out in her warbling soprano, "Lo! The Light leads us upon the same road!" She takes a moment now to notice the swelling of the other's belly. Ah, Anneke assumes, a mother without a pack. Or perhaps stranded? "Is it fate that guides your steps, wanderer? To be this far from a den at the hour of your gravidity..."

She clicks her tongue. "Could perhaps I offer what assistance I can give? If, of course, I am in such a position as to give it. I regret to say I am not well-versed in these lands at all."
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Olive is quick to scry that Archon wasn’t here, and possibly never had been. As she looked amongst the underbrush, her movements were made with more and more haste, worries clouding her mind as her last viable assumption where Archon was slipped every so delicately from her grasp. Is this what it meant to care for something, as one’s own — that she would feel such distress upon this discovery? It was a wild thing to love something more than oneself, as a mother would do with her children (and Olive still with Tiberius), and Olive soon feared that with the puppies she would soon be anointed and acquainted with, she might lose herself completely.
 
In her wild searching, Olive found not her dark wayfarer, but instead a gentlewoman enrobed in luminescent lilacs. She spoke so eloquently that Olive was almost immediately compelled to unload her entire problem upon a stranger. The Priestess looked this woman up and down, aware that she could no longer truly claim this land as something that was hers. That title now belonged to Duskguard, and perhaps the Elsewhen to this studious woman.
 
But kindness was not so easy to feign in this world, and not with Olive. Judging by the tone of her voice & claim of being unfamiliar with such lands, there was no infraction. She came to face the other, allowing herself to take comfort in the others’ maternal energy. “I am vexed by the disappearance of my child,” Olive returned in a voice that was more stable than she would have assumed. “He’s a yearling, but…” She bit her lip, and her ivy gaze slipped to the ground, and she released a small puff of an exhale. How to explain that he was somewhat... youthful, in mind and maturity?

She moved on. “I thought he had been excited to meet his siblings,” she bemoaned, then. In all rationality, Olive knew Archon would not willingly leave her, as Benry had. But, you know, those pregnancy hormones hit hard sometimes.

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