─────── 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐔𝐒 ─── 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐍 ─────────────────────────⯮
──────────────────────────────────────────── 𝙎𝙄𝙇𝙑𝙀𝙍 𝙇𝘼𝙆𝙀 ──────⯮
──────────────────────────────────────────── 𝙎𝙄𝙇𝙑𝙀𝙍 𝙇𝘼𝙆𝙀 ──────⯮
- LOCATION; trail > meadow cabin ─ TAGGING; Silver Lake pack ─ MENTIONED; (everyone) ─ WC; 2,044
- Gentle eyes regarded Ambrose as Marcus fell back to allow his packmates to lead the way down the sole path.
indentindent"I know, 'Brose," he sympathized, trekking over snaking roots and protruding rocks on sure feet. The wind pushing past the trees caught the collar of his flannel, aimlessly twisting it this way and that. As the russet trail meandered further among the evergreens and winter-bare boughs, Marcus's eyes found Billie, now engulfed in his jacket, as her fingers worked restlessly at something hanging from her neck. He felt for her, deeply. He knew closely how losing a parent was much like a piece falling out of a once-sturdy chain, and how the links required much time to mend and be close to what they once were ─ although they couldn't be expected to be exactly the same. They had been robbed of that time, the days of quiet mourning, by the arrival of the soldiers, but Marcus knew that these were not things that could simply be swept under the rug and forgotten about. They would get settled and he would ensure that they had a time and a place to remember, unrushed.
indentindentindentThe path eventually became slick with the leaves the trees had shed in their preparation for the coming winter, and Marcus followed his pack closely, as if he were the shepherd looking to ensure that his flock climbed the hillside without issue. Billie, in particular, as some whim had overtaken the soldiers and resulted in her having been sedated for the journey. Chills aside, she seemed to be coming out of it, but a familiar protective urge tugged at him to keep an eye on her, because he wished to catch any sign of a possible falter before she could fall. They did not know what might have been in that injection or what adverse effects could follow, and if something were to happen, they were a medic short.
indentindentindentMarcus himself knew how much illness and injury, those dangers he could not force away or combat in the stead of his peers, flooded him with a dread-filled sense of helplessness, which was an emotion he was not at peace with. It was much easier to be and to regard oneself as a bastion when bulk and muscle were all it took to ward off the threat and to know that, as long as he placed himself between them and it, there was nothing it could do to harm those he felt himself responsible for. Illness, old age, poisons ─ they were invisible, silent, gradual and creeping, and there was nothing he could do when they stole their way behind his back. How much he had hoped he could have simply shaken the years loose from his father's body and had him stand tall again, renewed and vigorous, the way he remembered Douglas from those many walks and adventures in his childhood. How he wished it were him leading the pack down the path, and not Marcus.
indentindentindentThere was one day he recalled in particular, when the clouds had drooped low and heavy across the sky, casting seemingly the entire world in a dreary state of slate grey. In spite of it having been sometime around noon, the fog among the boughs had been too dense for daylight, but they had gone to the woods anyway. Marcus had been barely an adult then, lankier, and certain about things not because he had known them to be true but because a young mind such as his was filled with wilful determination. Yet those had been both the days he could remember the weight of the inevitable future feeling as if it were at its heaviest, and the days Douglas had spoken to him about many things that had then seemed vague and too scattered to understand in their true depth. He understood now, as if Douglas had set the words in him those years ago and they had only later opened up to comprehension and closer examination.
indentindentindentAs far as Marcus knew, there had never been a time in his life ─ not even in his youth ─ when he would have been recalcitrant or lively to the point of being difficult, but he had once been eager to raise his fists and challenge every danger that would come to cross his path. Having taken care of Ambrose from when his brother was merely a baby and Marcus a teenager, he had learned patience and found a sense of calm early on, and although his impulse to take on the entire world for his family was not something he had given in to, Douglas had somehow always seen that it was there. For on that day, when they had been picking their way through a mountain pass, the alpha had lured him there with the promise that they were tracking some great danger to the pack.
indentindentindentMarcus's head had gone to mountain lions and black bears, maybe even hunters, but when Douglas had pointed to a stream bending along the cliffs, he had been confused. His father had patiently pointed out the foul smell and the danger that lurked in the water, which could not be defeated with a fist or sharp teeth. He had then explained that they would negotiate with the men who had brought pollution to the mountain pass, and although he had followed his father's lead without complaint, it had seemed contradictory then, because surely they could have simply forced them to clean up their messes, but Marcus had understood later that brute force would only have served to bring those men's hatred down on the pack. Negotiation was a valuable tool for any leader.
indentindentindentAs the view widened into a meadow, the trees began to scatter away from the path, which faded into not much more than vegetation trampled beneath the falls of scarce boots. The grass lay in large tangled mats, as if finding itself defeated in the face of the nightly frosts that left a hoary rime all across the fields before the sunrise would burn it away. The last of the trucks' acrid smell fell away here, dissipating in the brisk air and giving way to not only a verdant landscape bent into the slightly sweet smell of autumn's will but the scents of many wolves, undoubtedly those who had left behind the trails of bowed grass and disturbed earth.
indentindentindentWith the scents came the passive knowledge that the bodies here were more numerous than Marcus had assessed from the few they had encountered at the place they had been left, and the much more threatening understanding that these were strangers, whose thoughts and actions could not be entirely predicted. There were many sorts of minds that he had encountered during his days of learning from his father and watching him negotiate with other leaders, and as much as most wished to solve matters through peaceful means, there were always the few to whom chaos was a tranquil state and war an undisturbed dream. It was almost as if Marcus's train of thought had split onto two parallel tracks, one of them insistent on seeking safety in numbers and the other warning him of each possible danger this could bring ─ and there seemed to be many, with the threat of claws and teeth potentially among the least of them.
indentindentindentIf there was anything he had learned from his father, then this was the time to negotiate and learn what the intentions of the other packs in the partition were. What he knew to be an apparent issue, the one glaring him in the face from atop all the other small problems, was that a single territory split among many packs had historically been a terrible idea, not to mention multiple packs in a shared living space, and in this, the government had been rather short-sighted. When hierarchies began to chafe, it did not matter much how good and benevolent intentions might have once been. Marcus needed to find out what the others wanted, because the immediate solution to several packs in a single area was their merging, and he could not allow his father's legacy to dissolve into a group that could end up splintering due to infighting regardless.
indentindentindentAt the very edge of the meadow, atop a slight rise in the ground, loomed a cabin with its balcony hanging above the field of grass. A different man, someone less steady and attached to his sense of protectiveness, might have found himself feeling sheepish, but Marcus did not hesitate as he gestured for his pack to take the stairs up to the cabin. The clear scent of wet wood rose from each step that creaked underfoot until the complaints of the planks turned into the sound of gravel beneath the soles of his boots. The door resisted as he went to open it, the jambs clinging on tightly, but it budged with a groan as he forced it. Dust had settled onto every surface inside as a fine grey layer, and the entryway was void of the smells of living ─ in fact, the cabin smelled cold and desolate, but he hoped a way to remediate that would soon reveal itself.
indentindentindentMarcus turned to Ambrose, and although his initial plan had been to hand the bags over to him, he reconsidered and set them on the floor beside him in case his carsickness had proven more stubborn than usual. He gave a reassuring pat to his upper arm, even when it left half-dried mud on his fingers ─ which he ignored for the time being to spare his brother any more suffering over his fall.
indentindent"Go clean up and see if you can find a place for us to unpack. I'll take a look around and see what we are working with," he proposed. Having something to do would be good for all of them, to keep uncertain minds from conjuring up worst-case scenarios and idle hands from creating them. Then he turned to Billie, still huddled in his jacket. He wanted to keep an eye on her, not because he didn't believe her capable, but because the possibility of some late reaction to the sedative was something that, frankly, terrified him. Although it comforted him to know that their medic was with the bulk of the pack and would take good care of them in his absence, it also meant that they were left without one, and there were terribly few things that Marcus knew about first aid.
indentindent"Come look around with me?" he suggested, already gesturing for her to step further into the cabin.
indentindentindentA solution to the chill radiating from the timber walls presented itself in the form of a fireplace set into the far wall of what Marcus presumed to be the living room based on the furniture placed around it. The stack of logs nearby was low, and he added finding a way to make more to his itinerary of tasks, but he found a matchbook wedged between two pieces of firewood, and that was all he would need for now. Slivers of dried bark shed onto the floorboards as he set a few logs into the opening, struck a match, and patiently waited for the wood to take the flame before tossing the match in. He dusted himself off as heat began rising from the fireplace and a warm glow stretched to limn the cushions of the threadbare couch.
indentindentindentAdjacent to the living room was a kitchen, and on the counter separating the two rooms, there sat a sizeable cardboard box labeled as supplies. But what was of more immediate interest was that peeking from underneath one of the corners was a piece of paper, and Marcus shifted the package aside, but what he read left a crease between his brows. It was a requisition form for a few items at a time ─ very few items. Many people needed many different things, undoubtedly more than it would allow. Keeping it to himself was not an option, but he was certain that choosing what they would request would inevitably become a point of contest. He would have to find the correct people to negotiate with, sooner than later.