Evening, the gully.

[multi_facets]

When Silent opened his eyes, it was darker, the waxing moons rising and crickets chirping; somewhere, a prairie owl called out. He lay there quietly for a while, secure in his mother's hold, listening with ears and mind. Then he yawned and stretched, sliding from Heartstorm's arms to have a drink at the little stream and wash his face, silent as

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[carnivaltoday]

Gust was still sleeping, and Moth wasn’t going to be the one to wake him, if he had any say in the matter. He’d grumbled enough when Moth had untangled himself from the wolves and his brother and taken his warmth over to the stream, where he crouched down, first to drink a few handfulls of water, and then to dunk his head and chase away the last lingering wishes of sleep.
Moth missed his den. He missed his father and his aunt and the thick heavy furs of some sort of woolly mountain animal he had never seen but had imagined looked like a shaggy bear.
Early evenings had always been his own. When he’d been a cub, he’d often crawled away from his sleeping brother and gone out to watch his father fletch arrows or climb the trees around their den until Gust would finally crawl out of his furs, sometime after the moon had risen, and they could go play or hunt with some elder who didn’t mind them tagging along.
Moth flicked his hair back and shook as much water from it as he could before he peered down, wondering if there were any fish he could catch for a small meal before they would start on their way to wherever it was they were heading.

[carnivaltoday]

Moth looked up at Alder as he came up to the stream, his thoughts of fish and food interrupted briefly by his elder's arrival and all the conflict that the older elves and his opinions of them brought. But this was his tribe now. His parents were dead, his aunt was dead, and aside from his brother and his wolf-friend, there was no-one else. He knew he needed to accept them--survival depended on it.

"I slept ok. But, it's not as comfortable as a den." He replied, when Alder smiled and spoke to him. Alder was kind enough, he should try harder he knew. Gust liked him well enough, and he shouldn't complain. Moth tried to force a small smile, to keep from sounding childish.

"We can keep up." He said, hoping it were true. Wanting to believe it were true, because his mother never would have accepted any sort of Failure from her sons and although long dead now, he still felt the need to make her proud and live up to her expectations, which he could only imagine.

"Where will we go? Will we see forest again?" He asked, letting a bit of his youthful insecurity sneak through carefully constructed walls without realizing it.

[carnivaltoday]

"I wont lie to you,"
Moth didn't twitch at the words, but looked down at the water and his own ripple-blurred reflection. Those were always the words that preceded a lie--But Alder couldn't know where they were going, so it really couldn't be a lie.
It confused Moth, and made him hesitate, unsure of what to do or what he should say next.

"I hope so too." He said finally, looking over at Alder and feeling very young and more insecure than he wished. He didn't like being so young sometimes, but couldn't help himself. "How long do you think, until we see trees again?"

[foxfire74]

Moonfall checked the edge on his stone blade before resheathing it, dodging Ashes as she pranced excitedly around him. "Hope won't dig the dens or track the game, chieftain."

[foxfire74]

"I'll look forward to a full belly. After that-" He shrugged. "A night's ride, and maybe there'll be something else the next sunset."