Log Date: 12/7/95
Log Intro: Rillwhisper has spent most of the Whitecold at Willowholt worrying
about Strongbow, ever since his unfortunate encounter with the dreams
produced by Dawn's burning of mushrooms in a campfire -- and his remembrance
of killing Tash. Strongbow has been holed up in the Starwillow for eights
of days, and although Moonshade has sporadically emerged to bring her mate
food, Rillwhisper has barely talked to her. The chieftess has had to
turn her attention to other visitors in the Holt, and as spring draws into
the Holt's environs, she socializes with DarkAsh, a wandering trader who
has come back for another visit. But her chat with him and with No-fur
and Duskshadow is interrupted at a sudden, abrupt and worried send
from Moonshade: ** Take care of him. ** And then, nothing. Alarmed,
Rillwhisper sends back to see if Moonshade and Strongbow are alright....

----------
You locksend, to Strongbow: ** Archer? Tanner? Are you two alright? **

You sense in a locksend, No-fur . o O ( ? )

You sense in a locksend, Strongbow starts a little, as if roused from 
  somewhere else. ** Yes. ** The word is quiet, and applied only to himself, 
  and only for the moment.

You locksend to Strongbow, Rillwhisper frowns. ** Archer, where's your mate? 
  She just sent to me... **

You sense in a locksend, Strongbow seems sort of distant at that. ** She's 
  going home. **

You push aside the leather door-hide and step through into the den.
Quiet Den(#115R)
A tiny den just large enough for an elf or two, this nook in the Starwillow is 
  softly shadowed, its floor covered with a few thick, soft furs. A single 
  shaped hollow in the wall contains a tiny candle that smells of pine when 
  burning.
The Daystar shines brightly down on the hazy green willows, waking the forest 
  from its long Whitecold sleep.
Contents:
Strongbow
Obvious exits:
Out  

Rillwhisper peeks in, frowning worriedly, looking for you.

Strongbow stands by the back of the tree, a scrap of apparently unused leather 
  in his hands, though he seems unaware of its presence there. He startles a 
  little as he realizes you've come in, and looks up.

Rillwhisper studies you searchingly, expression openly worried. "Moonshade's 
  gone?" she asks, tone rather disbelieving.

Strongbow looks at you as if he doesn't really understand your words. A few 
  breaths later, he nods once, slowly, as if unsure of the answer.

Rillwhisper glances around the den, and frowns again, at the notable lack of 
  the tanner -- and, she realizes abruptly, of the little wolf-cub. She comes 
  nearer into the small den, crouching to avoid banging her head, and asks 
  gravely, "Why... didn't you go with her?"

Strongbow bends to a crouch from his bent stand, then sits, rather abruptly, 
  and looks away, as if the answer requires deep thought. Finally, he returns, 
  ** She told me...I was to stay...? **

Rillwhisper kneels in front of you, brow furrowed.
You say "Do you _want_ to stay?"

Strongbow looks at you, expression a bit confused, eyes unreadable; to that, 
  he offers no answer, as if he hasn't considered that at all.

Disturbed by this -- the Strongbow she knows should not be so stunned, so 
  helpless-seeming -- Rillwhisper lifts a hand to your cheek. ** Are you 
  alright? **

Strongbow closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again, confusion gone, 
  replaced by hurt. ** She...believes...I need something here... **

Rillwhisper sighs. Tell him, she wonders, what Moonshade sent? That the tanner 
  asked _her_ to take care of him? ** What do you think? **

Strongbow looks at you for a long time, quiet. ** I...don't know if what I 
  need...that way...is anywhere. ** He looks away then, down, at the leather 
  in his hands. He seems a bit surprised to see it there, and drops it 
  listlessly onto the pile of furs and clothes, where its decidedly Moonshadey 
  color blends in with the others.

Rillwhisper moves her hand down to your shoulder -- but keeps it there, 
  suspecting that the contact is needed. She sits down before you, green gaze 
  gentle. ** Do you want to go after her? **

Strongbow blinks, gaze lifting from the pile of leathers to meet green eyes. 
  ** I...she didn't...seem to want...? ** The idea obviously hadn't yet 
  occurred to him. He lifts his hand to cover yours, clasping it to his 
  shoulder, taking some small comfort in it. His brows furrow a bit, and he 
  sends, as if it's just now hit him, ** Have to go on. **

Rillwhisper sends gently, ** Do you know what she thought you needed here? **
Rillwhisper thinks, to herself, do you know she wants me to help you?

Strongbow shakes his head a little. ** You, partly. To heal. ** He looks away, 
  distant, then back at you. ** Heal, ** he repeats, almost a laugh this time, 
  a wry one. ** Just go on...anyway. Past...is past. **

Rillwhisper brings her other hand up to your face, her fingertips cool, light. 
  ** Over four eights of turns of the seasons, ** she agrees, ** though for 
  you, now, it's as if it just happened, I think? **

Strongbow nods, eyes registering a just-found truth. He sighs slightly.

Rillwhisper adds, one eyebrow slightly quirked, ** I don't need to be a healer 
  to see that you're hurting, soul-brother. Tell me, though... if you'd been 
  walking around all this time with a thorn in your foot, and just now found 
  it, would you leave it in, or try to take it out? **

That flicker of a smile crosses the archer's face, and he nods a little to 
  your wisdom. ** What, then, if it's grown over? **

** If it's keeping you from walking, ** the chieftess answers softly, ** take 
  your knife, and cut it free. To let your foot heal cleanly. **

Strongbow looks away. ** It isn't the same. The cut's been 
  made...but...nothing. ** He sighs a little.

Rillwhisper offers, ** Perhaps... you need someone else to help you find the 
  thorn? **

Strongbow nods once and looks back at you, still at a loss despite his 
  agreement.

Rillwhisper loops an arm around the back of your neck, her face very close 
  now. She sends: ** You promised to show me... perhaps I can help you find 
  that thorn, archer. **

Strongbow is quiet for a long moment, looking away, thoughts his own. When he 
  turns back, his eyes are clouded, though his sending opens up somewhat to 
  you, a tone of hopelessness threaded through it. ** Too...harsh. ** His 
  brows fall, darkening his narrowing eyes.

Rillwhisper, with her right arm still curled behind your head, brings her left 
  hand forward to smooth that dangling forelock out of your eyes. Her gaze 
  softens. ** It might hurt less... if I help find the thorn. ** A 
  glint of gentle humor in her eyes, then, and: ** I could at least rub your 
  wounded foot, for you? **

Strongbow looks back at you, eyes for once glimmerless, seeking the glint in 
  your own. As if struggling to let the send go, he assents to that much.

Rillwhisper's gaze speaks -- of distant sheltering leaves, of a quiet stream, 
  of a haven and a refuge, at least in the mind. What she sends, though, is 
  unadorned with the trappings of earlier shared dreamings: only the 
  friendship, affection and concern in the soul-behind-Runnel. Only her wish 
  to help, in whatever way she can.

Strongbow sighs very softly, listlessly. His next send is almost apathetic 
  despite the memory it's soaked in, and unusually dull-edged for the archer's 
  mind's voice. ** You would remember, then? ** Barely a question, he 
  continues without waiting for an answer. ** It seems very little to tell. ** 
  As an echo: ** To see. **

Rillwhisper doesn't move, doesn't look away. ** Show me? ** she suggests, very 
  gently, encouragingly. ** Even if it's not much. **
Rillwhisper slips her left arm back to join her right, encircling you lightly, 
  loosely. A protective circle, she hopes. Perhaps you'll feel safe enough to 
  share this hurt, within it.

Strongbow lifts a hand to his shoulder, where his bow ought to sit, and, 
  feeling only the leathers there, he shakes his head. The slightest trace of 
  a wry grin tugs at his mouth, as if the bow would be of no comfort anyway, 
  and he knows it. In another place, as the archer finds your mind with his 
  own, the bow is there, idle; steps in the trees have proved as swift as 
  sighting through concealing leaves allows an arrow to fly. It's waiting 
  instead of hunt and chase, and it suits the memory's hunter poorly. The 
  archer in the den drops his hand, gentle fingers resting on your arm.

Rillwhisper mentally clasps at your contact as though it were a hand that 
  she's holding, for comfort. She is there, patient, present.

Strongbow closes his eyes. Somewhere, he's conscious of the circle made, and 
  leans slightly into it; his neck is tense, though, as memory comes clearer 
  than yesterday, though tinted by flame's reflection. Taunting, or is it? No 
  prey bares its throat to the blade; even a stag, wounded and resigned to 
  dying, breathes his last breath with more anger than this. The welcome 
  almost seems amused, like a cub who doesn't yet fully know the difference 
  between a game and a real hunt, where blood is spilled.

Rillwhisper drops her eyes closed as well, and immerses herself in simply 
  Listening, without intruding on the offered memories. Tree-Rill, she thinks, 
  she must be steadfast as the Old Willow, for now... later will come the need 
  for water-Rill.

Zalen locksends ** <carefully> Chieftess? **

You locksend ** <distractedly> Aye, Zalen? ** to Zalen.

Zalen locksends ** Oh. Appologies. **

You locksend to Zalen, Rillwhisper partitions off a bit of her attention, and 
  assures, ** Am I needed? **

Zalen locksends ** Oh! No, not at all! **

You locksend ** Alright. Tell the others I am with Strongbow -- Moonshade's 
  left. The archer's... needing my help. ** to Zalen.

Zalen locksends ** Me? **
Zalen locksends ** There ... are no others. Just me. **

You locksend ** As you see the rest of the tribe, tell them... I can't spare 
  much to send. <worry> I need to listen to what the archer is telling me. 
  He's... troubled over killing Tash. Now that he's remembered, it's as if he 
  just had it happen... ** to Zalen.

You sense in a locksend, Zalen sends what limited support he can. ** I will 
  tell the others. **

You locksend ** Thank you. <gratitude> ** to Zalen.

The hunter doesn't rightly know how to respond to one who begs for death, 
  grinning through the request. So much harm and hate and...laughter, dry, 
  bitter laughter, echoed into itself with time. The seeking took so long; 
  hunt must end with the contest, prey against predator, that is its way, 
  wolf's way. Now should be the time for lunging, but instead it is the prey 
  who leaps, and who tints his struggle with, bafflingly, unconcern. The bow, 
  as useless as a weapon as it is for comfort, is loosed and forgotten.

Rillwhisper, sent to -- from elsewhere, briefly -- diverts her attention, as 
  much as she can risk sparing. But most of her remains with the hunter, or at 
  least near him, watching quietly.
Rillwhisper frowns softly. Tash... _wanted_ to die? Baffled, she stretches her 
  sending's senses, and Listens.

From there, it's hunt-song in the blood against something hunt-song can't 
  understand. The prey becomes the hunter, then slips back again to bare its 
  throat, offering the kill. The archer shivers in your encircled arms as his 
  own hands close in elsewhere; his teeth clench on his lip as once they did 
  before, locked in concentration, walling himself off in the Way against 
  battering sends. It seems to be slower than breathing, slower than living, 
  this dance of madness and anger, and the pulse and throb of breath and blood 
  is palpable in the hunter's mind, as much as beneath his hands.

Rillwhisper risks a sending, careful, but offering steadiness, the reminder 
  that what is being shared is past and not Now. Her arms remain where they 
  are, as slowly, she bends her head to yours.

He shivers at the mindtouch, but continues his memory, refusing to lose the 
  trail, once tracked so far. In another breath, Strongbow of another time 
  clenches down on that pulse, the battering sending fading to return 
  to...begging? Taunting? Send him to the Palace, send him...the archer's 
  hands tighten, eyes squeezed shut and tearing, breath coming in long 
  shudders and gasps. His foe, the hunter-prey, is calm, as if he doesn't 
  believe in death...until the last pulse, weak, meets the tension of the 
  archer's own. Sending once laughing, wry and sour, turns to shock in less 
  than a heartbeat's time...almost surprise. With that, the archer is left 
  suddenly alone in his mind, the echoes of the shriek fading like sighs. 
  Dismayed, he grasps at anything he dares believe -- and collapses, finding 
  nothing except that last breath, the sound of, perhaps, a mistake.
Strongbow shivers in your arms, mind open and numbed.

Rillwhisper sucks in a soft breath, and tightens her arms, just slightly, 
  enough to draw you to her. "High Ones," she thinks, but doesn't say it, 
  fearing perhaps to wound that achingly open memory.
Rillwhisper frowns to herself, not yet trying to absorb what she's just 
  received -- she's not quite certain she fully understands it, not yet. But 
  that her soul-brother aches because of it she does not doubt....

Strongbow shivers softly, slowly letting his mind fade back into himself, 
  sendsharing closing. He doesn't, however, retreat into the distance he'd 
  been in before, and after a long breath, picks up his head and opens his 
  eyes, looking at you with an unasked, silent question.

Rillwhisper exhales, a barely audible sigh. When you meet her gaze, her eyes 
  are saddened in their green depths, glimmering a little, as if she might cry 
  at what she's just been shown. But she answers the unvoiced query only with, 
  "Moonshade... asked me to take care of you." Her voice is low. "If you want 
  to go to her, I'll understand... but if you stay, I'll do my best to do as 
  she asked." A pause, and then, "I don't think you should be alone."

Strongbow looks at you still, big brown eyes liquid, but question gone. He 
  nods, once, with sendless, wordless assent, and closes his eyes, leaning 
  into your arm with the slightest sigh of, perhaps, relief.

Rillwhisper smiles a bit, nods a bit, perhaps to you and perhaps to herself. 
  "Rest," she murmurs, lying back; with her freer arm, she chooses a fur and 
  drapes it round you, then gently tugs you down to huddle against her. When 
  you're where she wants, she strokes your hair, as though you might be a cub, 
  and says nothing more.

Strongbow shivers slightly in your arms, managing a small send of gratitude 
  before slipping into sleep.

[End log.]