ok! wc: 875
He couldn't be completely certain that Melee knew about what had happened to her as a pup, with the mysterious dark female abandoning her and her brother, but he assumed that Range had told her. He hadn't been sure how to tell her. Range had come to him and had asked him about it outright during one of their many interactions, but he didn't see Melee quite as much. She seemed to be enjoying the freedoms that he had given the brother and sister as they had grown, simply asking that they be back home by dark. If they didn't come home by then then Gideon would go out and look for them. It would also be useful for them to come home by supper time if they wanted to eat, but he left that up to their own judgment. If they had gotten food somewhere else, with another pack member, or had hunted their own then by all means.
The conversation with the little boy had completely frightened Gideon. He hadn't known how to deal with the questions that Range'd had, and he'd answered them as best as he could, giving the male a complete and well rounded answer to each of his questions. He hadn't tried to hide anything from him and had told him every detail that his mind had been able to recall at the time. What the female had looked like, that they'd been born with another sibling that had died, that they had almost burned up in the fire. He had decided that night that he would try and find their mother if he could, even if it was just for his own peace of mind. He had to meet her. Maybe to tell her that her children were alive, maybe to tell her that she would never see them or meet them as long as he was alive and able to stop it.
She had lost her right to any opinion about the pups when she had thrown them into the fire and ran away. A would-be murderer, that was what she was. No better than a murderer. He wondered whether she was a pack wolf or if she had been a loner and what her story was, exactly. When he looked at Melee and Range now he could hardly bear the thought of not having been there for them as they grew up. The thought of them dead in some fire. That was why he had to find her. For an explanation, even though he doubted that it would make much of a difference.
He often found himself lost in thought, so lost that he found himself ignoring the things around him as he thought. Today was one of those days. His mind kept going back to that dark wolf, no matter how many times he tried to get her out of his head. "I have her stuck in my head, Melee and Range's mother." He blurted before answering her statement in turn. "And..well. I guess it's ok. It'll be a rabbit, though, for each day you're here. In exchange" He joked. "But this wolf...I might just need you around, Nayru, to help me clear my thoughts before I sleep. I've even started dreaming about her for some reason."
It was obvious that he was distracted. A nice run and the concentration of a hunt would probably do him some real good. "It's a good idea to get stocked up...I bet they'll appreciate that. I have a sling that I might want to use if you don't mind; I just got it and I need to practice with it. Unless you're thinking about going after something a little bigger. We could get something big together and then go for a few smaller beasts, too?" He wasn't sure how she wanted to go about it.
Melee and Range were both doing very well, growing and beginning to develop their own unique personalities and quirks. The girl was getting around better than Gideon could have expected with her twisted paw, and he was very proud of her in that way. Range was also maturing in his own ways; each night that they came home he took time and asked them what they had done that day, who they'd met and what they had learned from their experiences. He wanted to know what he still needed to teach them, and it was a good way to gather information on that as well.
Some day he would want to have more pups, he had decided, to add to the large Stormbringer family. Dahlia seemed like the perfect place to settle down and raise a family. Now that he was a full adult he was thinking about things like family and what his family meant to him more and more. Nayru didn't have any of her blood-related family here as far as he knew, and he wondered how she felt about it. He'd never asked. He considered Bris and Conor to be a mother and father to him, and he had his siblings as well. "Melee and Range are doing great. Range loves going hunting with you...it's all he can talk about some days. I really appreciate that you take them out"
.jamesfreetablezz b {font-weight:bold; color:#9a9fac; letter-spacing:1px; text-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.2em #fefdfa; }
.jamesfreetablezz-ooc {font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size:12px; color:#5e6062; text-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.2em #fefdfa; text-align:right;}
.jamesfreetablezz p {text-indent:0px; padding:5px 15px; margin:0px;}
.jamesfreetablezz {margin:0 auto; width:382px; background-color:#f2f5fb; background-image:url(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v121/ ... etable.png); background-position:top center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:1px solid #000000; padding: 160px 0px 10px 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size:12px; color:#5e6062; text-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.2em #fefdfa; letter-spacing:.3px; word-spacing:.8px; line-height:12px; text-align:justify;}
.jamesfreetablezz-border1 {width:384px; border:1px solid #ffffff; margin:0 auto;}
.jamesfreetablezz-line1 {width:360px; border-bottom:1px solid #dbdae0; margin:0 auto 3px auto;}
</style>
[/html]