heirloom
It seemed like an agonizingly long journey, though in reality it had been maybe thirty minutes, before Maverick and Silvanus finally arrived at the location where the former’s pack was encamped. Though he missed his family… he didn’t exactly want to seek them out right away. They were only going to swarm him and his partner, and, frankly, he wasn’t quite ready to foist that onto the vampire as of yet.
Still acutely aware of Silvanus’ hands interwoven with the fur between his shoulder blades, Maverick skirted the invisible border in silence until he was sure they wouldn’t be noticed by anyone. Thankfully, his personal den was just on the edge, by his own choice. His parents always emphasized the importance of privacy, especially their own, and being surrounded by their rowdy family wouldn’t do.
“Where are we?” Silvanus asked, his grip loosening. Maverick almost instantly missed the cool touch, which could be felt even with all of his fur.
“Figured I’d show you where I live before subjecting you to the others,” Maverick then snorted, the only audible indication of his communication, as he turned his head to gaze at the other. In spite of his lighter tone, Maverick was pretty nervous. His den wasn’t much, but… only a handful of others were allowed inside. It was easier for him to show his affection rather than tell, and, thankfully for him, Silvanus usually picked up on that for him. Thank the stars.
Silvanus only laughed as he slid off of Maverick’s back, a warm sound like birdsong that mixed perfectly with the chirping of crickets that surrounded them. His hand once again met Maverick’s fur in a quick scratch behind the ears. He was there, and he’d follow him.
Without another word, Maverick padded forward, ducking his head as he sank into the small cave that made up his home. There was nothing much inside, really; the walls were grey, the monochrome broken up only by some kind of foliage that managed to make itself home within the stone’s cracks. A tiny pool of rainwater was collected in one corner, and the other, a messy pile of bracken and other various plant life that made up the nest he hardly used, these days.
But that wasn’t really what Maverick wanted to show him.
He went straight to the pile, nosing his way through it until he found what he was looking for. His lips peeled back as he gently grabbed the small thing in his mouth, a round leather brace roughly the size of the doves that flocked in the treetops. Sharp teeth sank all too easily in the perfectly shaped holes that didn’t seem to be original to the object, as he pulled it out. Silvanus approached him, glancing at the thing with intent curiosity.
The rich brown leather was smattered with stains, some a foresty green like the juices of plants, others… a much warmer color, their implications far less innocent. But Maverick wasn’t fazed by them, hadn’t been in decades, and he let Silvanus take the brace gently in his hands. A bolt of fear shot through Maverick’s heart anyway, as his eyes were very much focused on the thing. Though a handful of his family members were allowed in his den, no living soul knew he still possessed this.
“It was my father’s,” Maverick said eventually, the mind-connection, long since familiarized to him, opening as easily as his chest expanded with breath. “A gift from his father, and his father before him.” Silvanus was silent, though the melancholy that crept into his expression did not go unnoticed. Maverick elected to ignore it, for now. “He always said it was the most important thing he owned. I believe it. He never went anywhere without it.” Eventually, Maverick was able to rip his gaze away from it, and looked up to Silvanus, who appeared to already be studying him closely. The question in his eyes was plain.
“It’s the most important thing I own, too.” Maverick then looked away. “I like holding it, watching it, thinking about the good times. When the bad haunted my every day and night, I could come here, and sit with it at my paws, and remember my mother teaching me to hunt, my father tugging me close and telling me the stories of my ancestors. I remember every single one of them by heart now. Having this makes it feel like they’re still here, and it helps.” He gazed back up to Silvanus, who then reached out to rest a hand on his cheek.
“I appreciate you sharing this with me,” Silvanus spoke, his voice lower than that of a murmur. “I … know this represents a dark part of your past. I wish I could have saved—”
“Don’t,” Maverick butted at his partner’s hand gently, cutting him off. “There wasn’t anything anyone could have done; it was all the wrong place, the wrong time.” Maverick elected not to mention his feelings on his parents’ killers. They were unimportant. A lie that he convinced himself was truth. “I miss them a lot, yeah, but the good things outweigh the bad. When I look at it, I remember their love for me, not… their. Ends. It’s alright.”