Castle's End

Lore written by Aqualia #132012
Pits of ink littered the clearing, joining and branching off, in a swirling madness of constellation imitation as cruel of a gruelling mess as the world around. Ink as blackened and impure as the cleanest wound, still festering in its own salf-hatred and defiant strives to a greater life, already denied in silent rage by something sentient beyond the range.
The shuddering form was racked by another spasm of shearing fever through soft sponge-delicate bones. Unobtrusive amongst so many nestled trees framing him like a cruel freakshow, moonlight still soaked through the knitted felt fibres of pine needles, encasing the creature in a pitying challenge as he screamed his injustice to stars that were not there to hear.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Squealing in confirmed righteousness, amongst a pine plantation tanned under the late summer sun, Light wrestled with his own puppyish adrenaline as a dreadful giddiness propelled his stub-like legs barrelling into his mother.
His mother carried no semblance but the lack of a name alongide the overpowering smell of carrionflower and milk. Much like all puppies, Light did not at this point hold her with any acknowledgement- being beyond, or rather below, the concept of anything other than his own satisfaction and fulfillment even existing. All virtues he held to himself were, at this point, a desire to experience the extremem with no comprehension of what this "extreme" of life truly was. In simpler terms, he craved every new experience- an epitaph Light would carry to his grave.

"I knew I'd see other wolves! See? They're there! THERE! Mother! I sniffed them out first-t-- mu-"
His mother sneered in frustration, glinting her fangs at Light, and shoved him aside with a cold nose that sent him -unintentionally- sprawling beneath a metallic taste of blood from bitten lips and dirt.
Taking no notice of her indignantly wronged offspring, who ki-yid quitetly, Light's mother pranced joyously in a cruel juxtaposition of Light's emotion out from around the pine tree. upon a few soft bounds that drew to a slinking pad as she approached her estranged packmates, she craned her neck slowly to a stretching play bow, tail low, gaze averted.
"Sisters, brothers," she allowed herself to graze their eyes with hers. "Forgive me for my absence. Upon my scouting ventures I was drawn beyond our confines. I found myself with a single puppy-" a single sweep of her tail, "and so I had to retreat to give birth. To ensure the safety of us both, I could not return until we were both stong enough."
She rose now, and crouched on the ground, eyes still averted, but upwards now, as if studying some great cenotaph present in the middle-distance of her own mind.
"I bid myself to return. I can only apologise for my disappearance for so long."

One chubby, shorter she-wolf, who to Light it had been obvious was most charmed by his mother's courtesy, and perhaps an older friendship that reached behind Light's understanding as an event that had occured before his own existence, now slunk forward too. In a dance of endearance in which both she-wolves crawled towards each others, smiling, splayed paws and eccentric tails, the whole forest held its breath.
Evidently, not all of this patrol was so delighted in Light's mother's return. A taller wolf, with a shallow chest yet long, well-muscled legs equipped to sprint and strength, reared his head and plunged past the artificial friendship-smoke that had engulfed the assembly of wolves. Unceremoniously, he clamped his tight jaws around the plump she-wolf's scruff and pulled her backwards spawning a yip of indignance that melted to a whine of apology for the dominant patrol-leader. A natural silence again resumed in the forest. Light's mother didn't move.
"Show us your brood, deserter."
Light's mother pressd her chin into the soil, as low as she could now, and murmured a noise that solely a pup can recognise as a mother's beckoning.
"I have named him Light of the End. A fitting chord to the melodic legacy of our ancestor's names before us."

Light scrambled forward, having licked out the dirt from under his chest-fur, and tried to mirror his mother's body language to a cruelly comical effect. The other wolves were not as amused as his fond mother. A strangled growl immediately seized the throat of the dominant wolf, even the comforting presence of his mother's chubby old friend turning sour now at her dismayed yowl. The two remaining members of the patrol, skinny and skeletal, eyes bulging in malnourished submission to their imposing leader, dipped heir heads simultaneously and listened only for the alpha's cold command to thaw them out of their immobility.

His mother glanced at him apologetically.

An action lasting no more than a second in physicality, yet one that burned itself into Castle's End's mind for eons, as a last bestowing of attention upon him before eternal castaway.

Alpha turned away breifly, festering in offense, fighiting against composure, as he lashed out upon hurtling forward within an inch of Light's mother. She flinched, breifly, once, enoguh to let loose a howl of expletive agony from Alpha.
"A chord to our melody! Behold, a great composition!" he screeched in feigned formality. His remaining patrol, the chubby female now fled, encircled Light's mother, seemingly pained by even the prospect of looking at Light himself. Light, desperate to protect his mother now btu seized at the throat and paws by a new adrenaline he had not in fact experienced before, was possessed but a freezing heat of an instinctive fear.
"Desertion for such a beast! You are no sister to us, but as disgrace, if you truly think this mongrel has a right to stay with the supreme pack of the land. You fool yourself. You- you are no fool, yet you forget yourself and trick your mind into a lulled false sense of security. The Ancestry would never allow such a thing."
Light's mother let out a strained bellow that was recognisable to all but her half-wild pup, who had no experience of pack life, as the bereaved sound of a mother who knew now of losing her pup. And in fact, Light was lost to her here. Keeling over, she gasped for breath in the mud.
The Alpha snarled and ensnared her in a lock on her muzzle with his own, and dragged with an upwards motion. Light's mother, too disgraced to care, let herself fling like a ragdoll into the dirt once more. Light died out.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The adolescent wolf was too encapulated his his grievances to notice the approaching of a figure of bronze.

His mother... he had thought she had betrayed him for her own
position in her pack, a sacrifice, but he knew nothing now. Did his fond, sweet mother
finally find what she had strived for? An acceptance? A fulfilment
so full of a reassuring salvation that he had been worthily discarded by her?
He prayed to the stars she had found what she had wanted.

Had she given him a name? An identity? He did not want to recall.

The metallic being approached with an amused certainty not unlike a diety. He didn't seem to truly grasp the extent of the pup's agony, under the initial impression that a product of the world this little and young could not have such a stained innocence.
The wolf himself was a stocky one, with a deep chest and disproportionaltely-long limbs that seemed to taper at points of small, flat paws. His coat was not unlike thta of a human's sled dog, although the puppy couldn't make this connection, having never seen one; but he was clearly of noble northern descent, with a coat of several layers each refracting the moonlight pooling on his back at different angles. Yet he was very much solid and real despite this surprising demenour; with small rounded ears, darker points, and a large flat tail too.
Thrashing his paws through his inky lifeblood like a story that pressed uncomfortsbly to his sides he could not deny, the puppy shrieked now, much like a fox, a tortured yowl that shredded the back of his thoat from the depths of his small lungs. This copper representative of his species was just that; he had long since lost any mental recall or resemblance of a link to the rest of his own kind, firmly pushing those memories away.
The bronze wolf stopped short, unfazed; mrerly tilting his head to ponder. Eventually he decided on creeping forward to bring his paws into his chest, laying down, rolled over slightly in an attempt to demonstrate his friendship through willingness to vulnerability.
This triggered a frivalous fight between the adolescent's capricious scorn of all that lives, and the unmistakeable wolfy yearn for a packmate he didn't realised he missed. It is charismatically instinctive, rather than a learned and forgotten behaviour, to evaluate willingness to vulnerability.
The pup paused now, frustrated in his own giddy sense of ruthless exploration from all those moons ago and ceased his cry.
"Young one." The coppery wolf greeted him by matching his height and shuffling forwards to allow his scent to acclimatise with the puppy. "I have carried the name Bronze Howler as I have journeyed, and I have lived as I have journeyed too. You seem to be distraught," he paused now, shifting his tone to conversational. "I guess that you have no pack to return to, yes?"
The pup stiffened, and adrenaline coursed through him one more as he was prompted to speak. Unaware of his place, his kind's etiquette, and his voice unpromptedly raw from not speaking in wolfspeak for so long, he merely choked out; "I have walked alone for many moons. I don't know what you want of me, traveller."
Something of his decorum amused Bronze Howler further. Allowing his tail to beat once, he replied incredulously with a twitch of his ear, "You seem awfully small for such great talk."
This greatly offended the pup, who began to shift away with a contemptuous sneer.
"Do not pretend to be too great for me, little one," Bronze Howler drew himself to his full height once the puppy was far away enough to not take it as a threat. some stars were beginning to show now, as if summoned belatedly by the pup's lamentable woes. "I can see you've had a rough path, but don't think you can live like this much longer. It is not the way of a wolf; we flourish under vaster numbers."
The pup seemed no more trustful but less disconcerted, at least. Resuming his spectacle of unease, he burrowed his claws into the podzol beneath and allowed his fur to bush up- sparse enough from underfeeding that it did little to add to his size. Bronze Howler adapted to a different take.
"Well- I have gathered an assembly of wolves-" he started, masking his uncertainty with further sweeps of his tail, "and we have grow enough to grow much in the fashion of a pack. You would be a valuable asset."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I name you Castle's End; a name of true royal discourse, a fulfilling symphony to the notes of your life. I believe with this name, you will realise you have reached the end of a winding path, and are content to find a new beginning you can decide for yourself."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Castle's End was a name devised from stolen scraps of memory from the shell of the pup that Castle had previously been, combined with a fitting end to his turmoil. Castle chose the suffix "-End" as he beileved it had come from his puphood name- although he couldn't recover enough to ensure correct memory. Never fully forgiving his nature of self-importance, he continued to frustrate many of his packmates, but equally gleaned bonds he was not aware were part of his nature.
Early on, Bronze Howler entrusted Castle's End with many of the packs most immitent duty; and so the pup adapted to an almost fatherly bond with him, growing to his closest advisor, then successor.
The appearance of Bronze Howler, both physically and characteristically, proved to him that there is a light to conclude the darkest of discourse- quite often, through shared experiences and assistance to help better understanding of one another. These are all virtues that Castle's End would fight to promote to his last breath.