Post by Kaziph on Apr 13, 2010 15:32:15 GMT -5
The days passed and seasons changed beneath his weary old feet, and as the spring turned into summer, Carrick found himself once again alone. His wanderings had taken him out of the forested lands, away from Larka, for many weeks. He knew by now that, if she had chosen Atka as her mate, new cubs would be in the Ravilin. He also knew that those cubs would be old enough to be left alone, or at least with another member. It was time, then, for this final confrontation between them. He was more than ready to be done with it, with everything.
There wasn't much joy in the old wolf's life, and there hadn't been for many years. He had known hard times and misery, plenty of it, and felt he pain of loss of love and the betrayal of a friend. He knew anger and disappointment, sadness for things he couldn't even begin to fix. Yet he was alive, he was breathing, and so long as his body held up he wasn't about to go to ground just yet. He had a few more seasons on him before he was through on this side of the River.
His form was gaunt and thin, and even though he was still large framed beneath the wasted musculature, his strength had depleted considerably since he had last been in the woodlands. His face was thinner than it had been, but the fur was still thick and rich in its deep red and russet hues. He still looked like he had just emerged from a mud bath - brown hairs streaked with gray. But now, white laced through his facial fur and chest, shoulders. Even his dark brown eyes seemed somehow different, sunken in perhaps. They weren't, but anyone who had known him before his present state would have thought him to be sickly now. To newer folk, he would just be an old wolf without anything left in his life to give. Not to clan, not to kin, not to Larka.
He was through.
Carrick was still technically a member of the forest clan, even though before Larka had once threatened to remove him. He'd hated her then, despised her. She was a fool when she was young, and he wondered how much age had tempered her wild mannerisms and insane sense of abandonment. She'd chosen all those mates, hadn't she? Well, her heart had left her wondering many times why she was so alone, raising cubs without their father. He didn't know this other brute that had arrived, Atka, but he wondered if he was to be the one to answer all of Larka's hypothetical prayers.
The forest shafted the bright afternoon light down through its canopy of boughs onto the carpeted floor. It was there that the brightness finally touched the old brute, mingling upon his pelt like shimmering, liquid dapples. He moved without the grace that he'd once flounced about with, for time had slowed him down. He was big, had always been, but it's the unfortunate truth of nature that the biggest usually go first and fall the hardest. So it was with Carrick.
His scent permeated throughout the area, telling of his presence again. He was making his way toward a particular spot, though, a place he vaguely recalled. The terrain sloped downward, arching into a natural spring that lead away from him. He followed it, moving along its shores, leaving behind wide paw-tracks that were characteristically his. The trickle of water grew, joined other trickles, and soon the wolf was trailing the course of a creek. In the autumn, he recalled, it was merely a dry run. And caribou often walked down it into the deeper forests.
A flashback touched him, caressing his mind and easing the memories. He and Larka had hunted near here, hadn't they? Back when he was in his prime and she was but a yearling. He'd been instructing her on hunting techniques, things he'd learned in the north. She'd chased their quarry down this very run, and he'd… climbed a tree. A twinkle sparkled in his old brown eyes, remembering the days when he could do such impossible feats. It had been a severely sloped tree, to be fair, but his balance and ability back then had been… perfection.
He pulled himself from his reverie and glanced around, knowing this was the spot, the place to finish things. His white-tinged muzzle lifted back, forming into the wolfish "o" shape to howl, and a bay let loose from his chest - as strong and formidable as ever.
"Larka, it is past time we spoke…" Spoke of their history, spoke of their future - his future. He had already decided. He knew what he had to do, to fix things for himself and the others he had once cared about… all that was left was to talk to his one-time alpha.