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Werewolves (RP18) "How the Mountain Greets the Moon"

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The expression Jackie offered in turn was that of an injured creature. She held her hand close to her chest, crouched downwards, and looked upwards to Sabrina as though she would lash out. Yet at the last moment she looked away and offered Sabrina her arm. The wound was small but ran deep to the bone. It had, however missed the major vessels. Yet it no doubt hurt deeply, and certainly the snapping turtle had not received a equivalent wound in turn.

"You don't need to mock me," she retorted, "I know you, or even Logan could have made quick work of that thing..."

"Logan, perhaps," Sabrina said casually, looking the wound over with a critical eye. "My prey of choice is usually softer-bodied. Armour complicates things."

She reached into her satchel and drew out some vials and powders. Unlike the enemy she had treated earlier, her first salve was a numbing agent to dull the pain. Then she cleansed it and medicated it so that it would not take infection.

"You do not give yourself enough credit. You're a fighter, and that is an admirable trait. Not always wise, but... admirable. I would have fled the turtle."

She glanced up at Jackie to meet her eye, almost a touch of humor in her own, before she looked down again and focused on her work. The wound needed a few stitches, so she got started on that next.

It wouldn't take Bianca long to start the grill and lecture Logan on how not to kill Saber (a lecture they had collectively heard probably a few dozen times; as if they notes on the fridge and the cupboards weren't enough). There was also a precautionary note about not letting Jackie use the grill (Jackie was strictly forbidden from anything in the kitchen, but especially sharp objects and everything with a flame).

Without another word, she walked out of the clearing, down the road where Ulric and Levi had just come up.

Earlier that day...

As Toby and Samantha were chatting in the hallway in the second cabin, Dakota soon emerged from his own room and had joined them. As the conversation shortly lulled, Dakota looked towards Toby.

" Toby, could I speak with you for a moment?" He asked.

Jackie watched Sabrina work on the wound. There was something disconcerting in watching something that should obviously cause pain, but didn't. Pain hidden beneath the guise of comfort.

"I don't blame the turtle for being a turtle," she met Sabrina's humor with something far harder, "It was caught in a net and a hand was coming where it shouldn't. I'd have done the same thing".

"I should be stronger. But I'm not. I won't be. I can't catch enough fish for everyone, no matter how long I stand in that stream. I'll catch the odd-deer if I'm lucky, mostly. And I'd need to start farming rabbits if I wanted to get anywhere with them..."

As she spoke, her arm reflexively spoke - making difficulty in Sabrina's work.

"Why do you do any of this?" she looked for the healers eyes, but they were of course steady on the work at hand, "Why do you patch together a bunch of second-rate nobodies? I'm sure you have better places to be".

Sabrina tolerated Jackie's hand-talking for a few moments, as she went on about fish and rabbits and feelings of inadequacy. Her eyes narrowed subtly--not to convey, but merely a reflexive expression of, her annoyance. Then she grabbed Jackie's wrist and firmly stopped her from moving the wounded arm, giving her a look just a few degrees short of murderous to keep still.

She looked down again and tried to quickly finish, before the hand inevitably started talking again.

Why do you do any of this?

"You are my Pack," she said without looking up. "And you, Jackie, seem to have an especially difficult time realizing you are not second-rate anything. You have aptly recognized that I would not waste my time if you were."

Toby looked at Dekota as the young lad addressed him. Since his conversation with Samantha had lapsed into silence, he figured it wouldn't be rude of him to give Dekota his attention for a moment. "Sure." He said.

Samantha looked between Toby and Dakota before she saw Dakota look back at her, seeming to call for some privacy. " It'll... Go see what Bianca is doing," she said quietly before slipping out the door of her bedroom towards the stairs.

She paused on the first step however, remembering the reason she had been hiding in her room in the first place-

Jackie and her possible dead rabbit could be down there. She didn't want to see a poor dead rabbit. She looked back at Dakota and Toby. Dakota caught her eyes again, nudging her on with his gaze. She didn't hear anything of Jackie downstairs, so trying for some trust, she took the next step, and then the next till she slowly got down this stairs.

---

Dakota turned back to Toby. " Is it alright if we go somewhere a little private? Samantha has incredible hearing, despite not having her wolf form yet," Dakota explained quietly.

Jackie held still for the remainder of Sabrina's work. Her nostrils flared but she didn't move or say a word. To speak too quickly would be to fall back to old habits. Say something hurtful in the moment, regret it, run away... It was familiar pattern.

But what was the other one?

As Sabrina finished, she pulled her hand away. Knowing Sabrina, there wouldn't even be a scar. And with the moon on the rise, it would probably be entirely healed by the following morning.

"Thanks..." she turned her gaze aside, then tilted her eyes upwards just so to capture the corner of Sabrina's gaze.

"What were you running away from, when you joined this... pack?"

Logan tended the grill with the same quiet, calm patience she did most things. The fish were all gutted, descaled and scored, but otherwise whole and ungarnished. She leaned against the cabin with her arms crossed and eyes cast without focus towards the retaining wall, while her thoughts went from one matter to the next.

She had tried before to force Jackie to stay. Now she realized that each person must decide for themselves if they wanted to choose to belong. Nothing she could say or do would bring it about.

Logan was capable of admiring them in their pain and feeling compassion for their worries, yet she stayed removed from dwelling in it out of necessity. There was enough hurt shared among them to swallow up the most steadfast of souls, and the more she learned of each of them, the more she had to dig roots in deeper. She would not become as the tree that failed her in the landslide. She needed to be relied upon, for both her spiritual and physical fortitude.

A bitter thought crossed her mind-she would need to see Sabrina about the injury to her back, lest she wake up again unable to be of any use to those who needed her. She became visibly uncomfortable at the thought and shook it off the next instant and moved, physically, to dismiss it.

Stepping up to the grill, she turned the fish over, and recalled that moment where at the bottom of the mountain, she lay pinned beneath the heavy roots of a tree. Between the thick mud, the rocks and the tree, all told of despair. Now she began to see the heavy burdens that presently pinned and threatened to drown her allies and friends… the weight of their burdens was just as real, although not physical. Logan knew well that she lacked tact when speaking, but there was something she could do-she could listen, if they would trust her.

Logan had turned over all of her own history to begin anew here. Fragments had been let go piece by piece-some to the wind, some to the Alpha, some to her allies. What she had not let go of was buried deep.

Who she is now, was all that remained-her way of speaking, her attitude and mannerisms. In this way, she atoned for what she said when she first came to the pack; “how can you bring me here, with these who are so unlike me?”

Though it was not forgotten, she had made peace with what was left behind, having grieved for it in her own time and own way. Now she was free in spirit to exist solely for the others here. It might seem to others a path of martyrdom, yet to Logan it was far from it; a source of strength and pride, her focus and purpose. It invigorated her.

She sat the first of the fish aside to cool and skewered the next few to be grilled.

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