Solo What Happens

[Kyo]

70th of Fall, 515 AV

It was snowing again.

Kyo stared out of the grand, green-and-cream Plainseer pavilion. He was holding the entrance flap open, had been ever since he had first noticed the snow. His eyes, usually bright with awareness, stared blankly as he watched the icy flakes flutter down.

Winter had always been his favorite of the seasons, despite the cold. This was because it brought back welcome memories of home, of the ice-city. They were old memories, and fragile as a snowflake so he had to be careful not to forget them, but they were happy. Usually those memories were enough to warm him through the cold season, both in body and heart.

But now he felt... off. It was a bad feeling. And the snow was not reminiscent, but bitter, ugly, and cold.

"Oi coyote, no leave open tent! Brr! Hurry!" That was Ramsay, calling out from the other room. Listless, Kyo let the flap swing closed, cutting off the sight of the winter scene outside.

Cut.

The bad feeling inside him clenched until it was a knot in his gut. Now he recognized it, the feeling of standing too close to a high edge. He didn't want to, but he reached out with a trembling hand, opened the flap to see the snow once more, and let it swing closed again.

Then he did it again.

For a moment he sat there unmoving.

Then quietly he stood up and left the pavilion. He broke into a cold sweat, followed an instant later by a sprint. He put his head down and ran for the edge of the city.

[Kyo]

There wasn't a time he could think of that he didn't want to be around people. Now he needed to be alone.

Where was the boy? his mind asked. This was followed closely by the sound --feeling?-- of cut and another question: Did she even see him?

Nowhere.
The nothing.
No no no.

He had made it out to the grass. The brittle, ice-chilled plants whipped against the front of his legs and belly like lashes. He was running much faster than he normally could in human-form, maybe faster than he could as a coyote. That was, until he tripped. His foot hit something, maybe a rock, and he went down hard. Once he was down he stayed down.

His fingers dug into the grass, pulling it up in twin clumps. He tossed them aside, pressing his face to the earth, breathing hard. His body twisted of its own accord, writhing and shuddering. His heart thumped wildly in his chest.

Something about the sight of the snow, of the falling flap blocking it so he couldn't see.. something about that had made him think. Made him remember.

Oh no. Morwen, no. His eyes widened, overflowing with tears. Another spasm racked his body.
He remembered it all.

[Kyo]

in the past

It was their second time to go with father and the others in the caravan. The first time nothing had gone wrong and they had gotten home early, and so there had been a big feast. This time a great tree had fallen, right across the path, and father said it would take a full day to clear it away.

They were helping with the snow. It was piled high on either side of the rugged path. The men were shoveling it into humongous drifts taller than even great-uncle. They needed to move a lot of it to create a flat area for the horses to pull the tree aside.

Kyo and Ulric didn't have shovels, there weren't enough for everybody, but Kyo had turned coyote and was pushing the snow around with his paws, softening it into smaller clumps. Ulric used his arms, gathering up a load to carry away. Soon enough one of the men noticed them working and gave them a bucket, and then the coyote dug and the boy scooped with that.

The pale sun moved slowly behind the heavy clouds. Time passed. Now they had grown tired and were slacking off, shaping the collected snow into a fort to crawl into.

The quiet forest began to rustle.

Everywhere the men stopped to listen. An eerie, waiting stillness fell. The coyote looked over at his boy, and Ulric's eyes were edged in alert silver. Something shared between them, a dread feeling. The coyote pup's heart skipped.

Then there was an echoing shout, and a dog nearby let out a baying scream. The coyote spun to look. Blood gushed steaming into the snow. It was Zyph, father's prize sledder. An arrow stuck out of his face. He was dead.

Just as fast there was another scream, but this time it came from a man's throat.

---

Everyone was moving, everyone except for the coyote. He stood in a stupor, he didn't know for how long.

Noises and images assaulted him from all sides, things he didn't understand. Fighting, wood axes and shovels against bows, arrows, spears. Burning wagons. Burning horses. Choking smoke and people coughing blood and black flecks. One of the younger sisters wailing. He turned to look at Ulric for help, as if in the middle of everything his boy might explain, might make him feel better. But Ulric had gone. There was only the bucket, abandoned in the snow.

The coyote's heart seized and his mouth went dry and sour with fear. Ulric. Where had he gone? He had to find him! But there were too many footprints to follow, too many feet to avoid. Wounded people calling out for help, canceling out his own yelping cries. Too many smells to follow the one he was searching for.

It was a while before he saw a person he knew and he raced towards the staggering figure. Father! But then the man fell, and the coyote shrieked at the sight of the bloody face, the missing eye. The other eye was yellow and terrible with fear. Still clutching a bloodied ax, father tried to get up, to walk on. His one eye stared towards a larger group of struggling figures.

The group was being roped together. Others that were captured were being tied in. Spears jabbed at them, sometimes scoring. An uncle had fallen to the ground and was being beaten.

When a small figure bent forward to help, they hit him too. A flash of phantom pain went through the bond. The coyote let out a startled, woofing growl, loud enough to carry.

Ulric looked up. His red, bleeding mouth opened in an O of astonishment and sudden, flaring hope. Grey eyes flickered golden white.

"Run!" he cried out, "Run, run!" And then, louder, "Kyo!"

A spear hurtled towards the coyote. He leapt and its blade missed, stuck in the snow, quivering. A man kicked out at him, catching him in the side. He staggered, Ulric yelled for him to run once more, and this time he did.

There was a feeling blossoming through the bond, one of unity, almost pride, and the coyote knew because of it that his boy had broken free of the others and was running after him. Following. He would catch up, and they would be together. They would always be together.

So the coyote ran and ran and ran. Up the slippery slope of snow, sliding down the other side. Into the quiet, claustrophobic dark of the forest. To safety. He ran.

[Kyo]

His boy didn't follow. Ulric didn't come. The coyote waited and waited, but there was no sound of movement, no familiar smell.

He had made a mistake. Something bad had happened and Ulric could not get to him. The coyote knew he had to go back. But he was scared. He didn't want to go alone.

He was with a group of the family dogs that had also run. Now he asked them, in his canine way, for help, to go and fight. But no matter what he tried the dogs would not listen, would not help him, not even when he turned boy-form and told them in human voice.

He was torn up inside. He didn't know what to do. He only knew that he had to go back. He couldn't be apart. He couldn't leave his boy. He should not have even run. That had been bad.

In the lonely dark and cold he tried to go back but the dogs had ranged far and he was lost. He tried to feel where his boy had been taken, but there was something wrong. He could feel that Ulric didn't want him to come back.

It was a bad place, wherever his boy was. With bad people. He would not let his coyote find him.

Whimpering, crying, Kyo stayed with the dogs.

[Kyo]

They shared a life through the bond. They were never truly alone. They still had one another.

The coyote grew, found a girl coyote, found some dog-pups to raise. He stayed to the forests and the edges of plains, never going to the cities because his mate warned him that people were not safe. His animal-mind agreed to that in some ways. But his human-mind --and his heart-- were not so certain.

He spent his time running, looking for the one he had lost. Ulric was somewhere, and all the coyote had to do was find him and everything would be okay again. Eventually he learned he could sense a general direction through the bond, even if Ulric didn't want him to. But that direction was always changing, and the coyote, no matter how fast he ran, could not keep up. He wore his paws to blood trying to match the pace. It was awful to keep running, always keep running, and to end up feeling like he had gone nowhere.

Sometimes there was pain from the bond that crippled him, and his knew that his boy was being badly hurt. Sometimes he sent his own pain without meaning to, and he knew Ulric felt his heartbreak, his separation sickness, and shared that longing.

Other times he felt his Ulric's happiness. It made him think that whatever the bad place was, it was not always so bad.

In that way they lived together. They gave one another their frustrations, their love, and each and every feeling they had, though neither had any more than a vague idea what was happening in the other's life.

And it was like that for a long time. Just knowing his boy was out there made the coyote's life bearable, even though they were always apart.

[Kyo]

It happened. What the coyote came to think of as the cut.

He was running with only his dogs now because his coyote-girl had died. This morning he had felt the orientation shift, felt the speed increase through the bond, and knew that his boy was once again going in a new direction. Sometimes when this happened he got the idea --he didn't know from where-- that he could feel wind against his face, though there was rarely wind here in the deep of the forest.

He was feeling this not-wind when solid fear hit him like a blow to the stomach. The coyote gagged and staggered to a halt.

Something had touched the outside of his throat, the cut, and without thinking he had shifted human to grip his hands there, his back folding him forward.

And just like that it was over. No feeling of anything at his throat. No other sensations. Nothing.

The bond had gone. It was gone from within him and his mind was reeling, trying to tell him what his pain felt like so he could make sense of it. Like being small and stuck, no. Like a hit to the face, no. Like a broken bone, like seeing father's yellow eye, like realizing his boy had been left behind, no much worse, worse. A pain, a horror, a confusion, a lonesomeness so large he could do nothing but buckle down beneath it.

The young man, now alone, well and truly alone --his dogs in this moment did not even count-- started to scream. The force of it tore his throat, and he did not know if the blood he tasted was his own or the memory of another's.

Dead. Ulric was dead.

Kyo was dead. He couldn't be without his bonded.
The sickness took him.

[Kyo]

now

His boy was dead.

Kyo turned to the side and was violently sick. The nausea would not let up. He heaved until his stomach hurt not from illness but from working so hard. It was hard to breathe and he thought he might suffocate.

Eventually it passed. He rolled to his back, panting.

The sky stared down at him and he thought that the whole of that expanse might be too small to fit inside the hole that his boy had left in his life.

It was not really a life without him.

He had been raised by his boy and his boy's family-- what had become Kyo's family. They had bonded as early as father had let them, when he said Kyo was old enough. Even before the bond they had always been together. They had been heart-brothers, mind-brothers.

When they were separated the bond had held them together. The bond had held Kyo together. And then there had been the cut, and Kyo had let it cut him up, and he was no longer in one piece. He had not been himself again --or at least functioning-- until he had learned to pretend that the cut had not happened. To pretend that his boy was still out there waiting for him.

Now he didn't have the bond and he didn't have the denial either. All there was was to lay in agony in the Grass.

To lay in agony in the snow.

He didn't know how long he had been out here. Long enough for snow to gather upon the ground, and it was still coming down. His human skin burned in the icy air. His whole body shivered. With an effort of will he shifted to fur, and that helped some with the cold.

But being coyote was not good now. As a coyote his legs told him mindlessly to run, run like his boy had told him, and run from the pain of this loss. His coyote-mind was the mind of survival. Survival said to bury the memories. It said to ignore the emptiness where the bond should have been. It said to go and keep searching for a person who was dead. Because to keep searching meant to keep being alive.

He wouldn't do it. Not this time. It had saved his life back in the forest, but he wouldn't forget again. Not again. With a moan he shifted back to human skin and curled up. His frail, unprotected body was exposed to the wind and the snow and the cold. But it was better than being coyote right now. He closed his streaming eyes and waited to die.

---

He didn't. Somehow he didn't.

He was not aware of much. He drifted and let his mind feel its pain. At some points he thought his dogs were there, and maybe they were warm and had food, and maybe he was able to choke down some, and take in the melting snow for water. Mostly he slept or did nothing.

Then came the lightning. Even in this state he could not ignore it. So he became coyote, dreadful surviving coyote, and as a coyote he ran from the storm much as he had run from the knowledge of his bonded one's death.

After that he moved from place to place in the grass --in the city?-- but he was never sure what he was doing. His body had woken because it needed food and light and movement. His mind, most of the time, stayed asleep.

[Tribal]

G R A D E S

Kyo

Experience

• Observation: 1
• Running: 2
• Endurance: 1
• Wilderness Survival, Plains: 1

Lore

• Winter: Kyo's favourite season
• Endrykas Winters are cold
• Wilderness Survival: Keeping hot air in a tent during snow
• Kyo: Remembering Ulric
• Ulric: Loved Kyo
• Ulric: A bond Kyo will never forget
• Kyo: The cut
• Ulric: Is dead

Notes

Beautiful story Kyo. I'm sorry I couldn't award you more as most of it was Kyo's memories. Looking forward to reading more of your words soon! Enjoy the rewards; let me know if there was a certain lore you wanted that I've missed.