Wee… the Radar/Kenzie reunion thread! …with a twist. *grins*

The gentle thrum of paws sinking beneath the moss covered banks soil resonated into large, black tipped ears as the doll blinked her eyes closed. She could feel the cool squish of mud slipping through the soft, moist carpet to work its way into her pads. With each step, the brown coated her creamy booties just a bit thicker until air pocket drew thin and small smacks where made when she withdrew as all possible crevices sucked in air. The sensation made her squirm in place, fidgeting between a few steps forward and then shift to turn and pad back along the section of turf she just passed over, again and again and again. The summer heat bore down onto her naturally scarlet back with threats to singe every hair on her body, but a chilling breeze from the north soothed her flesh just enough to make it bearable. It wasn’t long before a long tongue lulled own of her ebony-lipped maw and hearty pants ensued, but this could be expected. She heaved in deep breaths of wind that offered some comfort from the radiating globe where the trees’ shadows never touched ground. It wasn’t like the youth was dodging the shade; really, it was just that the majority of the trees were just out of reach some hundred feet before her.

The sharp sound of rushing water still filled her ears, even as the breeze attempted to overpower it. The sweet melody was too soft and gentle to match the raw power and destructive all the moving liquid could create. It was as if the entire mass pulsed as one in a wild, just loosely controlled fashion, splashing along the bordering rocks at the wide, slow curves as soft as a lover’s caress, while at the sharp outer twists it pounded against the muddy banks with a vengeance. Kenzoku was captivated by the river’s frozen counterpart once. She remembered staring out along its smooth surface frequently, when the moonlight trickled down upon it and the stars made the entire expanse meld with the nightly sky above. She was taken by the icy, tingling feel it gave at first and then the numbing warmth to her winter pelt after the initial shock was gone. She remembered how it was so shiny and amazingly frictionless in the day time. Her breath could induce a wet layer to form beneath her paw pads and she would slip and slide away the afternoon jubilantly, content with her puppyish innocence. After some time, it became fun to jump up and down along the thick ice to form sharp and purely unique lines in nature’s mirror, though she was never heavy enough to form more then cracks in the middle of winter.

She closed her maw and breathed out a sigh after a moment at the thought. Now the Cascades had become something foreign. They were capable of giving such beauty to the world and granting life with the quenching power of the water, yet at the same time the waters were able to take and destroy. She had witnessed the destructive power of the river several months ago when it stretched like a wall of pulsating, angry fluid across her old home and nearly took her with it. That day was the last she had seen of the poor, battered forest and of many other things she loved. Among them was Radar. His absence stung the most, probably because he was the closest wolf too her. It was no big secret, the connection that the pair of little cinnamon wolves had. The once Jester had taken her in on her first night in the Valley, offering her warmth and protection from the snow storm in his personal den. Since that night, the pair had been stuck together like glue. She found she didn’t really know how to live without him. Since that horrible flood that plagued the entire pack, Kenz had to learn to live again, a different way. She found herself lost in a sea of despair with few smiling, caring facing to keep her holding on.

One kind male made it a little easier to cope though. He saved her from the dreadful water that threatened to swallow her whole and offered her place in his den every night, even though no one asked him to. The little red felt alone as it was that even that small kindness was enough to make her new life feel a little less strange. Sharing a den with an adult male was all she ever new, really, and it comforted her to still have something familiar when everything got dark. She was better now than she was a few months prior, but a piece of her still clung to the past. She wasn’t ready to move on, ready to accept Radar was gone. Maybe a part of her would never accept it, for she just couldn’t believe that her mentor would abandon her without a word or any kind of goodbye. It was to the point now that it bothered the eleven month old, knowing no one ever bothered to look for the lost members of their tattered pack. It was picking up in numbers now and chock full of faces that she’s never seen before in her life. She felt like her family was broken, even though there were so many around, most were too new. Only a paw full she recognized from the pack meeting right after the flood.

All these feelings drove the youth to wake up one morning and just take off across the fields for as far as her legs would take her. Sometimes, the pup would just give herself in to the thrill of the run, but this time she seemed to have a motive. She vaguely recalled crossing over the grassy meadow and the place where she met Kratina for the second time. It all just sort of blurred together and before she knew it, she was at the banks of Morning Glory Cascades, facing the battered remains of the Forest that once was her home. It pained her to see it with at least a third of the trees standing as tall and brittle as statues with hollow trunks and no decorative gowns upon their branches. The water had drowned their roots and killed them, forever frozen to the spot until some fierce wind knocks them over. Most of the foliage was gone and a lot of the game had vanished from the scene, but life still went on as the remaining plants fought to hang on. Her heart pounded deeply in her chest as she glanced across and bravery slowly sapped into her veins.

If no one was going to look for Radar, then she would do it herself. She had to know whether or not he was coming back, so she wouldn’t spent the rest of the summer waiting for someone that would never show and get her heart wrenched out all over again. With a quick gaze, the near adult glanced back and rapids and frown nervously. For the past two months or so, Kenzoku made a point of deliberately avoiding large water masses. Ponds and streams didn’t bother her much because they had gentle currents and she could always see the bottom, nonetheless touch it. When the rains came and washed out Gold Moon Forest, it set a small fear in her for the river. When the wave crashed over her head and she couldn’t breathe for seconds to upwards of a minute or two on end, it terrified her. Now she knew why her primary guardian was so hydrophobic. Glancing at the fluid now, craving its way through the earth, the pup breathed in deeply then set her sights on her ex-forest home. Sometimes one has to swallow their fears for what they believe in most. And with this, the fourty-nine pound red took a leap of faith into the brownish-blue depths and began to paddle for all she was worth to cross to the other side.

lol, sorry for the minor powerplay in this one. I didn't think Radar would jump out to rescue her and drown himself (that would compeltely bug her out), so I said he was still on the banks^^.

A gasp came forth from the adolescent’s maw as the memory of that fateful afternoon raced through her head on replay once more. The water was colder then and was filled with an unprecedented, primal rage. Kenzoku could still recall just how it felt as the waves blasted at her aching sides and squeezed her already throbbing lungs. Unseen objects thrust against her at random intervals and she was forced to leap, climb or swim past them as they berated her petite form, fighting to either keep afloat as well or to bring her under. Every breath was like murder. Her throat already burned from the icy gulps that surged through her panting maw and slipped down the wrong hole and her lungs pained from more air. It was hard to move as the frigid snow melt surrounded her, threatening to shut her muscles down from the sheer cold. The youth’s teeth were chattering at the memory alone and her ears pressed back firmly against her skull in nervous fear. No objects assaulted her this time and she found the temperature of the river still cold, but, dare she say it, pleasantly so. Even the current and level of the water was better then before.

Nevertheless, that didn’t keep the cinnamon one was shoving her paws in front of her, cupping her toes and then sending the limbs backwards in an alternating motion to give her a forward thrust with a renewed vigor. She wanted to cross the damn river as fast and as painless as possible, almost as if something would come out and bite her completely unexpectedly. Or worse, something would snag her paw and pull her under and try as she might, it would never let her go. She would be first to struggle her last moments beneath the tide, fighting her breathe until her vision blurred and everything went blank. A second later, she shook her head strongly to rid herself of those horrible thoughts. This was just an ordinary, everyday river. The Cascades were not out to get her and nothing would prevent her safe passage to the other side. The water mass was like this all the time in the summer and rarely got vicious like the flood that wiped out her home. It would not hurt her. It wasn’t angry with her. She sided a little, repeating similar thoughts over and over again. She had to find Radar, or at least figure out what had happened to him. A part of her would not rest until she knew. It ate away at her heart since the moment she parted from him, the questions of what if and why constantly berating her thoughts.

There was no denying that Kenz was a little frightened by the water still, but she knew she had to get over her fears. The last thing she wanted was to be crippled by her hidden traumas and be so afraid of them, that the sheer image of them terrifies her. Of course, she loved Radar with her heart and soul, but it pulled at her heart to see him so upset the one time he revealed just how nervous any kind of water made him. She was very young then and wanted to show him the frozen river of her dreams before the sun peaked out over the horizon and marked the rise of a new day. He reacted with nothing less then a spasm the instant he realized it was ice. Naturally, the pup followed his wished then and when on to learn about deer later that day and the pair went on with their lives in harmony. Kenzoku understood that she could cross the river as long as she was with someone other than Radar. He would not keep her from it; he just could not cross himself. She understood and respected that, but now she saw it from a completely different point of view. She truly grasped his trauma, but did not want to end up like him. She didn’t want anything in life to keep her back, so she pressed on. Plus, finding her guardian was more important then being weary of the cascades.

Or was it? Just then, an extremely familiar yelp pierced her ears. The sound though panicked and only saying her name, held a ring to it that Kenz knew by heart. Every single syllable was like the first sweet measure of music that a deaf person could ever heart. It comforted her before she even processed it and her body twisted around in mid-stride to glance back at the caller automatically. It was so customary of her to answer his every beck and call that it actually took her a few minutes to even register what was happening. The she-wolf yipped back a reply to show she heard him instantly, but then her eyes went wide and she wrenched herself completely around to rest those malachite oculars on the petite, struggling frame of the hybrid wolf she so adored. Again he called for her in a desperate attempt to stop her from crossing the river, but the youth was already gone by that time. She was completely thunderstruck by seeing his face and hearing his voice resonating in her sensitive ears. Everything about the encounter was surreal and she was having trouble processing the situation. The little one just couldn’t believe her eyes.

Was he real? In her shock, the pup forgot to keep swimming and felt her body slipping out beneath her just before her world spun around and everything swirled before her eyes. She gasped a fraction of a second before the ceiling caved in and the water burned at her eyes. Her entire form felt heavy as it sank down below the water, the pressure on her chest immense. It would quickly become hard to breathe as the bubbles danced before her, rising to the surface and vanishing into the hot summer air. There was a blurry wave and things rippled around her, making it hard to stay in place and she struggled to keep her body from twisting upside-down. For one long moment, the pup just let herself slip into oblivion with the cold liquid drenching her fur and crushing every air pocket in her entire body. Then, like a bolt of lightning, everything changed and she shifted into the panic of being beneath the water. Her lungs started to burn and the pressure on her ears made her want to scream, just to make it stop. It felt like a brick was being slammed onto her head over and over again and she could do nothing to stop it. Muscles tensed and relaxed in a glorious display to get her legs moving and she kicked in every which direction to get herself back to life.

For several seconds, there was the horrible realization that she was stuck in the middle of the river and wasn’t able to reach the surface only a foot above her twitching maw. A moment later, her hind paw gripped something solid and she allowed herself to fall a bit further before projecting herself upwards with all the force in her entire body. Everything went racing past her in a blur of motion and before she knew it, her torso burst into the air like an elegant swan after forging for a meal and she took a deep, serene breath in from the cool breeze that chilled her wet fur. In the unusual state, fear never gripped her but an odd sort of tranquility after the initial panic. A long, thin smile stretched across her face as she gasped once more to fill her lungs with the oxygen they demanded. With a grace a pup could never know, but that of a lady, the female started to kick her paws vigorously beneath the surface to tread water, so she didn’t go under once more. Her eyes searched the river banks to see the orangey male in an all out state of distress, to which she frowned with a worried expression and yipped affectionately. Life was filled with irony, for just was she went looking for him, he came and found her. Kenzoku smiled wider at the thought and began to swim back towards the Sterling Water shores. Shh, Radar! I’m coming! Her sweet tones called, a little strained from her recent plunge.

Sorry for the minor wait, dearie. This may be a little awkward as I get into the groove of the new-sick Kenzie^^.

For a brief instant, the alpha pup was forced to hang on the terrible edge of drawing ever nearer to her destination, yet never actually making it there. In that fleeting second, it was like she could get impossibly close to him without ever truly touching her guardian's form. There was a full weight upon her like he was a spectre: a mere vision of her battered mind conjured up to soothe her damaged, heartbroken soul. Time drastically slowed down to the point where each nanosecond felt like ages, yet also felt like everything sped up and whizzed by her faster than her hurling paws could muster. Perhaps it was due to pounds of fluid still clinging to her body, only to have minute portions burst out of the fire like colorless ash with each flex of her muscles. All her hopes and dreams hung like weights on those saturated wrists, making it harder to move for every single bound, but the juvenile no longer cared about anything else. It only provoked her to wish twice as hard that this was not some figment of her overactive imagination nor a cruel trick of the gods sent to plague her for a while longer.

Then, all too fast, everything vanished as warm blanketed her petite body in waves of movement and flashes of fur. Any prospect she may have had for this to be an illusion was quickly thrust from her mind when reality set in to reveal the true, corporal form of Radar. She knew it was him and not a some mirage, for the dear became highly aware of her wet, chilly mass sliding gingerly along the soft, delicate tendrils of matching burnt sienna. A moment later, she was enveloped by his frame. His paws were dancing in every which direction to circle her over and over again, while his plume flailed to and fro and every bearing in between. There was a flurry of puppy kisses along her sleek maw and down around her ivory cheeks, to which she responded with a lifetime's worth of smiles. He drew his inviting, nurturing tongue up between her ears shortly after, then proceeded to travel along one of them in a cleaning fashion, or at least it might have been a grooming session if it wasn't for the playful nips in-between that were definitely not part of the normal ritual. He was like a bird, fluttering around her eagerly as if he was in just as much disbelief as she had been only a second or two prior. She figured he simply couldn't get enough nuzzles in, and she was right there with him.

From the moment their bodies met, Kenzoku was the embodiment of daughterly affection. If it were any other situation, the youngster would have laughed and poked fun at his enthusiasm, but right now it seemed like each and every touch was justified. Instead, a string of giggles sprang from her throat in pure joy and try as she might, the sound could not be suppressed. Her voice rang out in high pitched yodels that might have been eerily like a coyote's if it wasn't for the melody. Nevertheless, the pitch was the same. At the same instant, lithe paws skittered around the lanky male's own, and her larger, near-adult body pressed back heavily against the now, seemingly smaller hybrid's. With each twist, the Strawberry fought to keep the air from infiltrating the minute spaces between them, her pelt sufficiently covering them both in a hurricane of flying liquid that soaked down to the flesh and bone. Thankfully, it was a warm day, so neither of them were in danger of getting hypothermia, though somehow they would probably manage even if there were three feet of snow on the ground. At some point, Kenzie became vaguely aware that she could see eye to eye with her primary caregiver now, rather then the three-quarter height she was at the last time she saw him. The realization showed just how long they had been apart and successfully pinched a nerve in the girl's brain. Once more, she went at him with increased vigor.

While he munched her well endowed head gear, the lady took to showering her counterpart in an array of light nips and long, drawing licks across his entire body. Her tongue flashed out of her mouth frantically to roll across what ever part of his flesh she could touch, from his cheeks, throat and chest to his sides, forehead and ears: almost nothing was left untainted and untouched with either Kenzie's saliva or the river water. Equally as feline, the younger one started to rub herself in full side blows against Radar's side after a few minutes, knowing he wouldn't topple over from the pressure even as he felt its weight, however little it was. A smile plastered itself to her cheeks so hard, one might call it permanent, th0ugh the red wolf seemed completely oblivious to anything else, including her massive smiles and silly, puppyish mannerisms at the time being. Gingerly, the babe curled her cranium around to bury her nose in his neck and shoulder blades, snorting on occasion when the air was sucked in too fast through his fur. This action did not stop her from covering him in loving kisses, for her pink appendage continued to spill in and out at a constant rhythm, partly from all the penned up emotion she couldn't express and party to soothe her aching spirit. At Kenzie's rear, that tail swung itself from hip to hip at such an alarming rate and with such force that the smack rang out through the meadow to drown itself with the trees. A few more of those and one might think she'd develop bruises.

Awe... I love this post for some reason!

Perhaps just this once, the skies opened up and the heavens smiled down at her, granting her a gift for all the things she was put through the past couple months. It seemed like all the trauma, the pain and the agonizing guilt she was forced through since the flood plagued her entire life was a mere shadow in the past now and Radar was her savior. A few days ago, the young female would have been lounging among the grasses with a distant, lost expression on her face and horrible thoughts berating her mind. She would have drown herself in her inner demons, fighting between what her heart wanted and what her brain knew without ever coming to a conclusion. Her life had taken a complete one eighty that day that the water raged across her homeland. It took the sweet, loveable pup that she was and turned her into a sullen, introverted wanderer with the rest of her childhood snatched from her with a second's breath.

Now the fates shined down her again, switching her cards and changing the tables until her entire world shifted into a three sixty. Sadness was a far cry from reality, along with the physical, emotional and mental agony of ever single thing she lived and breathed each and every day for eight weeks. In fact, one could go as far as to say any negative emotion that may have attacked her before completely vanished from her thoughts. The concepts were erased from her memory and completely eradicated from her vocabulary. Loss? What was that? I see no abandonment here. Heh, that bug bite on my ear, it doesn't hurt... it numbs the soul and tells me I'm living! Maybe it was just the sheer sight of her caretaker that provoked all these wonderfully splendid emotions to grow back inside of her, but even before the flood she experienced minor inconveniences, right?

Regardless of if their was an additional reason or not, the only thing the pup could find herself thinking about at that moment was that she was with Radar and he was alive and everything was glorious. Her ladylike mannerisms that she sought so desperately to acquire since she was an infant went out the window and was replaced by the puppyish enthusiasm and adorable, innocent wonder sparked but a happiness that could not be matched or countered in any way. Her paws were still mingling around his, following his step only a fraction of a second after her rotated this way or that and keeping in time with his affectionate licks along her entire form. She felt the warmth of his tongue travel down her pleasantly cool body to remove most of the moisture from her fur, making the previously dripping female damp and warm, subject to the sun's nearly violent rays. None of that mattered though, for feeling the sun's brilliant light greeting her joyously on this wonderful afternoon was nothing shy of fabulous.

I missed you so much. Radar said while he used his slight weight to knock her over onto the mossy banks of the river. She responded with a playful growl to match his, her paws stretching up to bat at his massive ears and her teeth nipping along his throat to show his pouncing tactic had a "flaw." I missed you too, silly. Her tones called while mirth bubbled up in those deep blue rimmed eyes. A second later, she felt the mahogany one pull away from her, letting the chill of the breeze gently funnel around her form. Without thinking about it, the darling found a whine slipping past her maw and she was left with a soft, questioning look on her face as if unable to comprehend why he would put distance between them. It all became clear in a second as the smell of his discharge started to linger towards her nostrils and she dry heaved once before she could stop herself. The smell or sight of vomit never settled well with her.

Of course, she hardly had time to mull of it and work herself up about the hybrid's general health, because an instant later he was back at her side and placing nuzzles all over her. Kenzoku started walking along side of him with his gentle urging without any objections, not recalling when she even flipped back over from laying amongst the grasses with all four paws writhing in the air playfully. You're tellin' me? She thought a fraction of a second after he voiced how much he worried about her, though she opted not to respond. He would have known how concerned she was for his well being but the look in her azure mixed green eyes and the way she partially leaned on him when they trotted back to the Fields at an excited pace. Her tongue flicked out again as she drew it along his ears and down to his neck lovingly, her demeanor softening in a matter of seconds. From excited to playful, Kenzoku converted once again to sincere and sweet, a darling smile stretching across her feminine features. I love you too, Radar. Forever and always.

*licks* I loves you, Radar.

Jade eyes examined the small, russet body beside her for several moments with love filling ever nook and cranny of her mind. Actually, everything about her spouted just how deeply she cared for him, from her deep, undivided attention and her sincere phrases to the way she carried herself that just radiated with pure, unadulterated affection. He was a vision in orange to her previously sore eyes, but that was long forgotten now. The sweet smile quickly shifted to a devious grin as the male started to nip at her heels and long her sensitive toes like a pup just egging her into clobbering him. It took all she had not to pounce him right there and tug on his ears roughly until he begged for mercy, the play growls and mock-glare a definite. Of course, she had no desire to hurt him, but play couldn't hurt right? A part of her dared her to tackle him like he was pretending to be a deer again. This time she knew she could take him. She knew she was skillful enough to stalk the victim silently and then take them from behind before they even knew what hit them. She could do it. He would see.

The other side of her was the part holding her back, however. It simply wanted to be near him and nuzzle up against him. Never mind that the first thought was entirely uncalled for and came completely out of thin air. To the pup, it suddenly sounded like a perfectly rational idea with beneficial outcomes. After all, a student would did not surpass the master, failed the master. Kenzoku could show Radar that she would not fail. While she thought, cream limbs swatted at his muzzle gently the whole time he went after her paws and forced her to high step to keep her hind legs out of his jaws. Almost as if she felt his exhaustion, the dreamer started to feel a little woozy. Suddenly, her body started to shake a little and she placed all four of her paws firmly on the ground as rapidly as possible. It felt like everything randomly began to spiral around her and her head was slowly sinking to the grass, even while she should it was floating off to the clouds. For a long moment, the child even leaned off to the side against Radar, partly to stop him from dancing around her and partly because her own weight instantly became too much to bare for several seconds.

Then as quickly as it came, it past and the girl was left to shake her head softly to clear the stars from her eyes. I don't either. Her voice answered, though it felt distant from her body. It took a little until her spirit eased back into her body and everything became clear again. The sickening silence that took her over quickly faded by the natural noise of running water, chirping birds, hunting predators, squeaking mice, croaking frogs and other various things that usually blasted her eardrums. She smiled sweetly, turning to the side to lick Radar's chin before a giggle spilled from her lips. Heh, heat gettin' to me for a minute. She answered, the laughter still enveloping every word. From the twinkle in her eye, it looked truthful, like the dear believed her random spell was due to the heat herself. It was extremely hot and the wind had died down over the past few hours. It was reasonable, right? In an instant, everything was back to the cheerful celebration that it had been before. Her paws batted at his ankles lightheartedly, while her teeth clamped down carefully on a massive ear and gave it a hardy tug. Don't wowwy. Kenzie started, a soft growl rumbling from her throat before she continued speaking riley around her grip on his ear. Yourrr 'errre now. Eh lufff yeww, toooo.