Life in Cinstit

[Skrýthe]

Luke

As Luke lay under the clouds, a mere dot on a beautifully smooth-cut landscape of great oak trees and saplings, of rock clusters and tufts of perfectly green grass, he could almost feel himself turning, turning with the surface of the Earth. With his arms gently outstretched he felt weightless, the light gusts of wind pushing his hair back onto the ground behind him.

After a while Luke sighed and slowly but surely he lifted himself off the ground and clambered up onto a nearby rock. Once upon the rock he had a clear view of the cave in front of him. His cave. The healer's cave.

It still made him giddy. It had only been a few months since he turned sixteen and this cave was given to him. He had already filled it to the brim with herbs and materials he had gathered from the surrounding area. He was just about to start work on the garden, he had a bunch of seeds to plant and not a lot of time to do it before the season was over.

Luke had made the decision yesterday evening that today would be the day he planted the herbs. He had made some very significant preparations the previous evening (gathering fertile soil and fertilisers to ensure the best crop was produced from each harvest) as well as craft himself a rather professional-looking hoe with which to lay down the seeds.

So now all that was left was the actual planting.

Luke rose from the rock he was sitting on, steadying himself from his time on the ground and the sudden rush of blood from his head. He then strode forwards towards the designated patch of upturned dirt he was going to work with and picked up his hoe and seeds. Carefully he leant down and dug a small hole in the ground with his hands, placing a thyme seed into the dirt before covering it up with the hoe.

Outstretching his back once more he looked up towards the sky, the sun was still fairly low-lying in the sea of icy blue-white clouds above him. He had plenty of time to work on the herb garden as well as finish the production of his new woollen jumper, ready for the winter.

[Willow]

Jacquelyn swayed her arms, her head tilted back, her hair tumbling down her back in disarray. She was care free, but had a rock, permanently in the pit of her stomach. She would never hold another male, never feel the soft lips of their affection. Fane was dead, and that was that. She had Willow, her daughter, and only piece of her beloved Mate, but she was near the human encampment, trying to make her own Mate return to their pack. She had met Toran briefly. He was, nice, but he had been human still. 
She tried to push it from her mind, she needed to check on the pack, and first stop, the young Healer Luke.
Jacque  walked, more heavily then before out of the main dens of the woodlands, and into one of the meadow-ed areas.


"Luke," she called, but stopped, seeing the boy stretched out on the green, "oh, Luke, there you are, how is the garden doing?" she smiled at the boy, he was kind, gentle and loyal. 'He will make a fine Healer', she noted. She felt a tinge of pain, Fane would have been listening to her thoughts, would have spoken to her then. But she only heard silence in the now empty void of her mind. She surveyed the area around the boy, and saw one pile of turned up dirt and several seeds in a bag beside the boy. 'One seed planted, she thought, and yet someone could return ill after a hunt today.'

"I dare say the pack will not be unwell at all this season with such diligence." she said the last word a little more pronounced, he should be working during his working hours, and relaxing during his off time. The Healer must attend to the pack first, before his own desires. But she forgave him, she smiled, trying to soften her original statement, he was young, and inexperienced, he would learn soon enough.

[Їcё]

Cisi

Blue eyes ran across the landscape before her, until they came to rest heavily upon the two people standing in front of her. Cisi let a tiny ghost of a smile dash across her lips as she focused on Jaques. She could tell the she wolf was hurting, see it in the way she walked, almost as if she had lost a leg to lean on. Not that she knew the feeling of absence. Cisi couldn't imagine the voice of another floating in her ears, but it looked very important to Jaques as she spoke to the healer.

'What was his name again?'

It was literally on the tip of her tongue, but his name danced away from his thoughts as she continued to fix him with her icy gaze. Their actions were strange to her, Cisi had never really been around wild wolves, her tame roots never really bringing her into contact with any others of her kind. They seemed... different. Much more impulsive, much more prone to fight. She shivered a little, not from the cool breeze that played across her skin, but from the prospect of fighting. She had come too far, travelled too many miles to bring herself into fighting. Yet she didn't know her place yet, she still felt like an outsider to the pack without a rank or a mate of her own.


'Perhaps I will never find a mate, nor a home, but at least for now, aI can be content.'

Her smile faded a little as she realised she had been staring too long. A slight blush of embarrassment flooded her cheeks as she looked away, azure eyes focused at the floor instead of the two ahead of her. Nerves fluttered in her stomach, the prospect of potentially having to talk to these strange wolves felt a little daunting. She lowered her head in submission, dropping her shoulders and carefully clamping her shaking hands together. 

'Perhaps, if I make myself a smaller target, I will not be punished greatly...'

[Skrýthe]

Luke

Luke was sitting with his back against the side of the cave, facing outward onto the beginnings of his soon-to-be herb garden when the alphess, Jacquelyn, approached him. Suddenly he became flustered and nervous; he tried his best to come across confident even though he knew he should have been working.

"Luke," she called, stopping in front of him. Luke's face flushed red with embarrassment, "oh, Luke, there you are, how is the garden doing?"

The boy winced. He hated letting people down, least of all his alphess. He really should have waited until he actually had a break before relaxing, even if the sky did display such a breathtaking gradient of blue-to-white as it did today.

Noticing that Jacque was still looking at him expectantly, Luke decided it was probably best to attempt to answer her question; although it was probably meant only to discipline him - he still needed to behave curtly towards his superiors.

"I-" he began, unsure of where to begin, "I suppose I should get back t-to it."

Luke blushed again, spluttering out a nervous laugh at the end of his sentence. He knew that Jacque meant well and that he had nothing to fear, but still he could not help but feel slightly intimidated by her presence.

"I dare say the pack will not be unwell at all this season with such diligence," Jacque continued, a hint of sarcasm creeping into the last few words, making Luke's skin crawl with a nervous anticipation of her disappointment.

"I-I'm so-r-ry," he mmurmured, smiling apologetically. He hated this. It was all his fault. As soon as she left he would get back to work immediately. After contemplating this Luke carefully lifted himself off the ground, brushing a few specks of dirt from his rugged shorts.

[Willow]

-Jacque-

Jacque looked at Luke sadly, and shook her head.

"No Luke, do not apologize to a she-wolf who has wronged you. I am sorry I have said this. I forget you are young, new to this role in the pack. It is I who is sorry." Even though she was an Alpha, she smiled, and gently reined in any dominant power flowing from her. 

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a she wolf watching from across the field. She took in a breath, harshly, and caught her scent faintly. It was a pack member. Not a loner. She thought where she had seen the she before, and nodded. Cisi. 

"Cisi," she called, turning slightly, which an Alpha never did, away from Luke, her neck exposed to him, in a careless movement of submission. Jacque had no idea she had done it, growing complacent in her loneliness and lack of comfort. "No need to hide away, come and join us. We were discussing the herb garden."

She turned and looked back at Luke, gentling he face slightly. "Don't you just love the smell of herbs in the morning. It is so comforting."