spirited away

attn @Medvjed

---

The matriarch did not only search for her mate. There were again missing fragments from her mind; Hydra felt like a puzzle piece that had been scattered. The pieces left still made a full picture, but the missing pieces left the matriarch with a sense of loss she was not even certain she should mourn. What had they been? Or perhaps the better question might be who? Hydra could taste the approach of a storm, and flashed her teeth back at the sky.

She maneuvered expertly across the more difficult terrain Empyrean's heights offered as she picked her way toward where she could look upon the horizon. It felt new to her, but there had also been this sense of... rediscovery lately, inspired by a man she had just met. Hydra let her own sense of wonder settle over her shoulders like a cloak as she headed toward one of Empyrean's ledges that offered her a grand view of their coast. A coast that felt new, but... was it?

Hydra did not appreciate the uncertainty.

the staff team luvs u

 He ranged, he roved. These things kept him quick and agile. If he stayed still for too long he would begin to think — and such a thing could prove dangerous. Useless, perhaps.

 A small itch in the back of his brain to range down the river, back to where he had been found. As if answers of what had been might lay there still too. Thoughts abandoned by the lake he had been rebirthed at. Yet one of those thoughts lived here! In the mountains!

 It lived, it breathed. It watched out into the expanse. He did not ignore the way he wove towards her like he had become attached by a tendril.

 “You're looking,”

 He did not know if her answer changed from that day at the lake. A mate she did not know to be found. It twisted something in his gut.

the staff team luvs u

Shadow manifested to the form of the man who occupied much of her thoughts. That day at the lake had been the beginning of an end, and perhaps from that, too, another beginning. Her head turned toward him, hearing his observation, and she drawled, “it feels as though everything has changed,” in a low breath, “and for the first time, I have no explanation for it,” a thing painful for her pride to admit—and strange that she should do so, before this man who was so new to her. But it, him, had been the breath of fresh air she had been starving for more than ever as of late. Finally, she could exhale; she looked upon the only other man that carried the weight of her thoughts, now, other than Dirge... and quieted.

Perhaps it was too soon for such things. She should not put so much upon him. Hydra could bear it all well, but was frustrated for the lack of knowing.

She hungered for knowledge. And for certainty. Medvjed had tilted her world upon its very axis, but she could do nothing without it.

But Hydra would indulge him with the truth, “my mate had gone to seek our cubs that had been wayward. He is a good man. A great one, truly. ...Only death would keep him away, this long,” she drawled. But she owed it to him, to their family, for this final search that Osiris had ventured on. That Nyx, too, would surely wish to partake in. Still, the flatness of her voice... she had begun to mourn. She would need to be strong for their cubs, when he returned.

The bear alongside her had been alone, she recalled. So too had she, but she had not always been. Hydra looked to him, and asked, “have you any children?” with pricked ears.

the staff team luvs u

 His lips thinned, the look of a man who knew and understood.

 For the world had devoured him whole and spat him out like a slick newborn. Had it not been for Hydra he would possibly not still stand. Perhaps he would have wandered into his own end without a guiding hand. He did not think himself weak for the thought. Only that he, too, had limits. A mortal flesh with boundaries.

 The sadness felt thick, sweltering like a collar come too tight around his neck. He did not know the man — never would at this rate, hm? — and yet he had been a husband. A father. It was a thing to mourn from anybody. Especially as he had come to learn of the tight knit weave of family among the mountain. How many children too would follow in the black coated mourning of their mother?

 Yet her question only prodded that thick emotional swath deeper into his throat. A bubble that formed softly and offered a gentle crackling to the start of his words.

 “One.” He had known loss. He had worn it like a tarnished coating for too many moons once upon a time. Nobody had ever told him that these things happened and that sometimes a parent outlived a child. Perhaps he did not need to say this for the grimness of it to slide across his face in apparent lines.

 “My everything has changed too. I did not leave much behind, but I still...left. Somewhere. Something.”

 Faces that would not think death had taken him. Faces that would only assume he had moved on, tired of the way things had been. Empyrean had been a blessing — but at the sudden jarring cost of leaving a known world behind to plunge into a new one.

 “We do not always get answers when we want them most.”

 And suddenly he felt as if he had already said too much.

the staff team luvs u

He did not; she heard it in his voice, or perhaps saw it in his eyes. There was a deep fracture there, one unrepairable. But Hydra did not think that aspect of it so terrible. The scars, the pain… Hydra near relied on them, proof that things had been real. One only need to run their fingers along the knotted, gnarled flesh that had been left open and weeping for too long, enduring one infection after another that made it scar in the first place. And beyond that, the picking at this old wound as one mulled, if I had done this one thing differently… would that have made a difference?

Hydra had dealt with such survivors guilt after the death of her younger sister. She understood, albeit in a different way, the loss of one you were not meant to outlive.

One was one too many.

But Hydra kept Galaxy alive, in each of her lessons; do not travel alone, call immediately when help is needed, trust no stranger—and the harshest of all, that no one was invincible.

But they both spoke of the past, and of unknowable things. And she appreciated the way he spoke, his wording: when we want. It felt important. It felt to her like she need only bide her time to discover what she wished to, and that… that she could do. Time had very rarely not been on her own side, and her patience was an endless thing. Time would surely tell; it always did.

“We will continue on,” she hummed, “and discover these new horizons before us. I think it more of a boon, than omen,” Hydra admitted. It kept her young, somehow; her mind never stopped mulling these things, tireless and always wishing to learn. They had spoken of loss. And now, Hydra would speak to him of its opposite.

Licking her chops, Hydra drawled, a hint of amusement in her voice, “I think I will become a grandmother, this Spring,” her eyes drew toward him, bright with mirth. How would he see her then, she wondered?

Why did such a thing matter!

the staff team luvs u

 She did not judge. She did not take her claws and root around in the exposed flesh he had given. She did not question if it was a lacking of his fathering or a lacking in mothering.

 He had not realized that somehow the lack of judgement here would hit harder than anything cast upon him before. A wellspring of emotional that bubbled forth so freely he found the breath in his chest heavier. Yet quickly he tucked it back in. Buried beneath a breastbone that he wore like a shield. A thing to protect those he loved, no matter if they were here or beyond.

 And they would continue on.

 Her a grandmother. Him a guardian of Empyrean.

 “How many do you expect? Or hope for?” His own weight softened some, a gentler look upon his features. Yet he neared her closer and closer. Wished to align a shoulder along hers and tether himself to this moment. Afraid that he might drift off or that he would awake again, some place far from here.

the staff team luvs u

Hydra drew nearer, too, unable to entirely resist the gravitational pull there; she the moon, he the ocean in this moment—closer to her now than the distant sun, whose absence she lamented. Perhaps, though, the man before her might better be compared to the night sky—

Her poetic thoughts waxed and waned.

But still she stood alongside him, content for now. The matriarch smiled to his question. The right thing to do might be to say, oh, I would be happy with any!… and while true, it was not the question he had posed. “Many,” she grinned, “so many. But there is plenty of time for that,” Hydra drawled.

She wished to be closer. Hydra moved to nip at his shoulder, the movement playful and halfhearted as she hummed, “they will need the packs protection. Are you up to such a task?” she queried, humming, “A threat could come at any moment, and be just as swift in its effort to escape the consequence,” another impish nip then, and even if it struck only air she began to dart away from the ledge then, sinking into a low bow, gaze brighter.

“You must be swifter,” she demanded of him, before she thrust herself upward and sprang away, the thing that he must catch.

the staff team luvs u

 Many.

 It seemed the most grandmother answer to give. To wish for millions of little ones from the little ones you had brought forth. He too could look forward to such the thing, the sounds of spring scattered along the mountainside. Little bodies that would be herded like goats away from sharp drops until they understood them.

 Yet he felt, as he looked sidelong at her, that any blood from her knew the mountain at birth. Each river a vein of the family, every tree a body established with long roots.

 “You have asked once, now twice.” He swung his grand head as she moved away. A dancing figure of shadow and nightsky. She commanded his very bones and soul with her words. If she had said he must jump into the void below, to see to the safety, he may have very well have.

 Now he only charged on thick limbs, knowing that she spoke truth. His endurance would not match that of a swift coyote or dashing eagle. He had only his brute force to snap down upon any intruder. Her nips at his skin the start of his blood pumping.

 Without thought he followed, leaping and lunging after her with soft clicks of his teeth. As if he aimed to herd her off! Yet the opposite held true in his heart.

the staff team luvs u

Hydra might ask a dozen times more—that he remained, and was unbothered by it… that he still was willing to gave her much peace. He understood her circumstances; he did not run away.

He ran toward.

And Hydra moved swiftly, springing onward. The matriarch would not push his pace before he was unfamiliar with the terrain she maneuvered herself expertly. Or was it that she enjoyed him so near, just on her tail—

Such fun she had not had in much time. Hydra turned to meet him, parting her jaws so that her teeth might meet his own in a jaw spar! She kept moving all the while, not wanting to be a stationary target while she defended.

the staff team luvs u

 She spun and this time the cut of her handsome jaws sprung for him. Not the flesh of deer or any prey — unless he was her prey. A bearman felled by the nightsky hunter. The creation of Ursa Major.

 He did not shy away from it.

 His jaws met hers and he felt the soft tug of the tender flesh around his mouth. Now he dared to swing his body at her moving obstacle. He cared not if she pulled and tugged his flesh with his body turned sidelong. His goal here was to become a shield, to show her that the mass of him would be a moveable mountain for Empyrean against those not aligned like them.

the staff team luvs u

Hydra thrilled at the clash of fang against fang. The impact rang through her body, her senses alight as she snarled with the movement (though the sound, then, was all show!). She was quick to release anything she might have come to grip; her goal had never been to bleed him. No, this had been it; she felt the weight of his attention upon her, a heavy thing she was too willing to bear. But Hydra was keen-eyed, and observed what his body became against her sword—

The matriarchs gaze was approving as it roved over the then-guardian. In him she could see no weak points, his limbs no longer shaking from exhaustion as they had the first day she had found him. Blink and one might miss the relief that softened her visage for one moment—and her muscles grow taut as she sprang toward his hindquarters to nip at his heels to spur him to movement and see what he might do!

the staff team luvs u

 Her at his rear, the strong nipping of her might. Their roles changed and she became a shepherd. Yet he did not wish to yield!

 His own snarl rippled with a brilliant delight. The sound waves an aurora borealis to their dark night spar. He moved with a heavy thud of his paws against the earth, wishing to shove his body sidelong into her own. To test the harsh heft of his weight against her mountain carved form.

 He awaited further retaliation of her own defense.

the staff team luvs u

An opponent who knew how to use their weight; when to move it, when to be still. Such was rare, and her gaze shone with appreciation for it. Most with his weight could not understand how to throw it well, she had found—it was easy to use it against them. This would not be so easy!

Hydra’s expert eye observed the way he moved, anticipating—the heavy thunder of his footfalls and the low timbre of his snarl invigorating as she danced away from impact on lighter feet in a swift sidestep.

Her teeth clicked open air as she taunted him closer now, his proximity a snare in of itself for the she wolf who hardly wanted to move any further from him than she was. A warm huff of air came from her nostrils, her eyes having yet to stray from him.

the staff team luvs u

 She had swiftness, the light steps of a woman who knew this mountain like her own body. He but a man who fumbled the beauty of it beneath his desire to prove protector.

 He made no move to further push her boundaries, to test the sharp snip of her teeth and how it might feel if it even accidentally caught his flesh. His sides heaved with the weight of their exchange. His mass held many things against him. The things that her fleetfooted behavior gave her.

 He stood in the defense now. Prepared should she shove his weight or bring the ivory of her sword closer. He would be ready to take it.

 “Am I up to such a task?”

 His voice the tired husky tone befitting a guardian's spar. A guardian who needed to learn the new grooves of the earth beneath him. A man with experience in a place not like this.

 A man who could not pull his dark gaze from her sharp face.

the staff team luvs u

The weight of her sword, in the shape of her streamlined muzzle, would now only seek to tap gently upon his shield, no longer insistent or probing. It made no demands, asked nothing else of him then; she felt she had only seen a sliver of his capabilities, and he hers, but she had seen all that she had wished to. Hydra felt as though her long nights of dreaming had forged this man, and if she dreamt then, she was not so keen to wake. The bear before her was strong, and sure on his feet even in terrain that might be new to him. Perhaps he had fought on mountains before, even if not this particular one.

His question was answered with an affirming rumble, and the sway of her tail. “I am glad you are no enemy of ours,” she commended the warrior. Hydra blinked softly, circling loosely around him so that she could arrive at his side again.

She wondered at this ability. He should be proud of it, she felt; she hoped that he was.

“Where did you learn to fight?” she asked of him, stepping toward a familiar path and inviting him along with a gesture. Hydra would not see their time together end this day just yet, it seemed.

the staff team luvs u

 They softened, as much as creatures like them could. The spar softened back into a familiar walk with one another. He did not shy away from the spot at her side. A soft brush of his fur against her hip, but he would push no further.

 He was not a dog, he had not forgot what she went in search for when she found him instead.

 “A grandfather. He helped my mother with me from time to time.”

 He gave her trinkets of himself again and again. Yet he too sought these things from her in return, with the way he peered curiously at her before he volleyed it back with little effort.

 “And you?”

the staff team luvs u

A grandfather, he spoke of first, and then his mother again. She knew neither of them, but had gratitude in her heart for both. They had done well, she thought. The trinkets provided she took happily like the dragon that she was, hoarding these treasures that revealed to her more of the man before her. He asked the same of her, and Hydra drawled first, “my mother, and my father,” with a wave of her tail at the memories that came to mind. She looked to him and drawled, “but I never stopped learning, beyond them,” she shared. Even then she learned! She had taken much from their spar together.

To be able to protect those that she loved? Nothing was quite so satisfying as this. It also was an effective way at settling her nerves like few other things could. Their spar then had been efficient in shaking off most, if not all, of her current stressors. The matriarch did not step away from him, letting their furs mingle idly. She was distracted, but less by the past then—she thought more of the present. More on the things he ought to be aware of, though she felt he might already be.

“It has always been important to me, to be able to protect my own,” she drawled. There had been a reason for it. It clanged around in her head, but her old enemy had been defeated—it must have found its resolution. The matriarch was not one to forget her enemy, after all. Hydra looked solemnly to the man, speaking plainly: “I would kill for you.”

His loyalty to Empyrean, to her, would be matched in full. And she would have him know it for certain.

the staff team luvs u

 He smiled, a brief fleeting thing. A look that seemed out of place on a usually stoic face. Yet he too could easily be touched by the matters of family. Along with the way she seamlessly mentioned her continued learning.

 It was the mark of any good warrior. Laziness oft the killer.

 Her declaration did not strike him as anything other than raw loyalty. She had saved his life and now he would lay it down for her, for Empyrean. In his own mind this would be a simple thing. Only it had never been expected. To be swept up so quickly in a time rife with change and find himself slotting in like a puzzle piece had been missing. Did he flatter himself in thinking he sat so well among her?

 Surely not, otherwise she would not treat him like this.

 “And I for you.” Only the softest dip of his head to her. To show that he knew his role along her side as protector, guardian, knight. A shield and fang.

 “But I hope I kill any first, before you have to.”

the staff team luvs u

His words were a bright light in a time that had been both dark and cold. She was further warmed by the sentiment there, and the protective note she thought she heard in his voice as he spoke again. Hydra hummed, as though it might be a daydream, “perhaps we might together,” with a sway of her tail. She trusted him enough to believe him capable; trusted him enough to want for him to fight by her side, should the need for it arise. Hydra continued to move, observing steam lap at her ankles and the temperature rise as she brought them to a place where their muscles might find respite.

It had been a great find, during the days the temperatures became unbearable—not to step into, but to linger alongside. Now that it had warmed, she did not fear for either of them freezing upon exiting it once they were done. Hydra picked her way down a narrow path, then up once more, until they reached their destination[/b]. In the open arms of a small, secluded valley were pools of hot springs. Hydra peered toward Medvjed to see how he might react to them.

the staff team luvs u

 Together. He did not stop the way his heart skipped softly, tumbled and rolled all about in his chest. This he kept hidden behind his breastbone. Like a boy too nervous to show the class his project. It felt very much the same, at least.

 Especially when he followed her closely, noted the soft wet shine of stormy nightlight along her. Followed by the mysterious welling of misty around their legs. He had not realized all of it was not some sort of mystical power she wielded like her sword. Instead it seemed to be nature itself bending to her.

 The hot spring.

 And that boyish moment shone through briefly. The want to ease back into something physical and playful, perhaps. He wasted no time in a brief charge, plunged himself into the nearest one. Prepared to submerge in a nearly crocodilian manner and await her.

the staff team luvs u

He was a picture of unbridled joy as he plod heavily into the waters. She watched as they moved around him, about him, rippling away even as she created contrasting movement in moving toward. Her own joy was not hidden, the loose wave of her tail evidence of what her stony features did not often express. But if one looked closely enough, they might see the corner of her eyes crinkling with the feeling of it, even as she slowed to prowl toward him in a pantherian fashion.

She jested! Hydra too sank alongside him, into the heat; she let it encompass her and emitted a happy, contented sigh. Her muscles needed this, and she as a whole needed it too. Months of unbearable temps that, truth be told, none ought to have survived made heat like this too divine. But she did not think of herself as she peered toward him and remembered the way that his limbs had quaked the first time they had met. “All in here has properties that aid with soreness,” she drawled. Then she grinned, “I could not name them, but they smell like the rest I have encountered that have done such for me,” Hydra crawled a little closer, exhaling as she asked, “do you enjoy it?” not all could tolerate the heat. Hydra herself did not love heat, preferring cold... but this? This she enjoyed.

the staff team luvs u

 There was a want to reach for her with the curves of his teeth. He knew better, he knew far better. So he stayed submerge, chin beneath water too. As if covering half his head might somehow keep away an impulse.

 He only raised it slowly, dripping now with the warm water, to respond to her.

 “I could not sit here all day, but I think it is nice.” The warmth and steam would devour him whole and do more harm than good. He held too much mass and fur to be of use to such humid, steaming climates. However as a respite in the mountains? He welcomed it wholly for the good it would do post-work.

 “What do you call the place?”

 He dared to drift nearer, nearer, nearer...

the staff team luvs u

His honesty was refreshing; he painted the whole picture, not only a part. Hydra was glad for it. She too could not sit here all day... nor would she want anyone to laze in such a manner. But when it was needed, that it could be appreciated... that was what mattered. His next question was something she had not considered yet. A faint rumbling in the distance sounded off. But as Hydra looked to the sky, she saw the outline of the moon peek over the clouds, its beams illuminating the springs they both lay within. As he drifted nearer, Hydra remained rooted—letting him, perhaps.

“Tsuki — Moon Springs,” the matriarch decided, looking back to him and translating, “The word means moon, in the language of my mother. I am not so creative,” Hydra admitted this with a low laugh, that rolled then with the distant thunder. A gentle rainfall began, but the storm was still far from where they stood. “You stand upon The Nameless Mountain,” but somehow, it suited the place Empyrean had chosen to be home. But perhaps in time, they would name this too.

Hydra looked to him in the dimming light with still bright eyes. There were still so many stories to be created, here—things to be done. And now, he would be a part of it and their creation. Good humoredly, Hydra pondered aloud, “what would you call it?” and now, her bones and muscles warmed, she stepped out of the waters and nipped gently at his furs (unable to help herself) on the way out.

the staff team luvs u

 Why?

 He nearly wished to ask it. Why need to be creative when one had...everything else? Sometimes things did not need to be creative. Sometimes a tongue different from another's was seen as creative enough. His tail lashed in water behind him, humored that she had humored him.

 She asked a thing of him in return and now sought to remove herself from the spring! If not for the nip to his body he might have stayed within. Only to twist and turn, to feel lighter than he was upon the earth. Instead he lifted himself, moving until he was only ankle deep.

 “This place? Kraljičina kupka,” He hummed and yet the expression of humor that fluttered upon his face was well deserved. “Queen's Bath.” For here the mountain queen had soaked, had bathed. Here he had been invited into it. Medvjed perhaps overestimated himself in this little joke. Yet sought to quickly verbally skip along.

 “The mountains? I do not know them enough to think to name them.”

the staff team luvs u

Hydra enjoyed the words that he spoke, even when she did not understand them. And she appreciated them all the more when she did. She rumbled her approval, already contemplating a combination of the two to name this place. It somehow felt fitting—and she appreciated, too, his little joke!

She wanted to know more. And so Hydra asked of him, “would you teach me your language?” with a slow wave of her tail.

Though to the last bit, she dared to hope aloud, “alright—I will ask you in a year,” him, here with her—in the future. She let herself feel the emotion that came over her as she studied him then, though she was not able to then identify it.

the staff team luvs u