All welcome 
She'd been surprised to find a light sheen of frost on the grass outside her den that morning. It seemed that winter was takings its harsh hold on the land a bit earlier this year; at least, that's the way it felt to her. She wasn't prepared, that was for sure...since her mate's death time had seemed to fly by, leaving her far behind. It felt like she got up, hunted, returned, and went back to sleep. Life didn't have much meaning.
There was only one thing that was keeping her going right now--the eagle. She'd found it fluttering around on the ground around a mile away from her den. Usually Naniko would have taken this as a hunting opportunity, and she'd certainly needed the meat...but it'd spoken to her. She had trouble killing the ones that tried to talk to her, or the ones that had heard of her before. She used to heal animals in the woods sometimes...this one had known about it.
The eagle, who decreed himself "Errl", was perched next to her fire. He was suffering from the one injury that was really life threatening to a winged creature--a broken wing. He'd told her the story; he had been very hungry, and had gone hunting at night instead of during the day, just to see if he could catch anything, and had hit a tree.
Naniko sat down next to the raptor, tossing him a piece of the rabbit she'd caught. He shook it with his hooked beak, tearing off smaller pieces, which he swallowed. She sighed, eating a bit of the rabbit then looking back at the fire. Was this what she was going to do with her life? She was so bored all the time now. The children were off having their adventures, Soran didn't come by much, Davinci had left...and Conri was gone. What was left for her here?
[html] For the most part, he had done just as he said he would. Or implied, rather. He was staying well out of the way, and whether the alpha had his issues and it was a real threat, the large sable male saw it as no concern of his. He considered himself an outsider in the pack, and had no plans and no will to change that. Whatever the rest of the pack did was fine by him and ignoring the subtle details was number one on the game plan. If he had one. In fact ― inadvertently ― he had avoided attachment and any sort of permanent residence in Clouded Tears itself, and spent his time anywhere but there. Mostly he had kept to the coast, briefly to the mountains, and once he had vaguely chanced upon the human city, and none of this was anything new to him. When If he slept, he chose anywhere that was just comfortable enough, not to mention strategically located, wherever he happened to be. He didn't have a den in the pack territory itself because he didn't feel it was necessary. Really though, it was more to separate himself from everyone else as much as possible.
The approach of winter was thoroughly welcome. The yellow-eyed male rarely worried about from where his next meal would come, and he preferred those frigid months to the humid, sweltering months of summer. The sea would hardly change save its temperature and he would simply have to do without walking where the water rolled into the shore. Although, the sky was frequently more monotone and the storms would no longer include the rains, and sooner or later he would resent it, he would still welcome the arrival of winter. When it settled in and began to push and shove him, he would grow slightly irritable, he knew, but when it slipped away into spring, he would miss it. It had been the nature of humans too, and he supposed the nature of all beings capable of reasoning and emotion, that satisfaction only existed in a few degrees of all the world around, and the rest was wishing that things were some other way than what they were. He knew this, accepted this, and yet he was still a victim of this, as much as he had ever been, as much as he ever would be.
The fog was not enough to steal or mute his senses, and as he was intending to make his way from the lake to the boundary of the territory, he caught the scent of blood, along with the scent of another wold, somewhere in between, not far from where he stood. A tattered ear strained to detect the faintest sound, his eyes zeroed in on the direction the breeze carried the scent, his nostrils flared, every muscle subconsciously preparing for an outbreak of movement. But he knew it wasn't necessary. That scent belonged to some creature, someone's prey, obviously, and yet as he ventured nearer in his needless curiosity, he thought perhaps that he had heard a faint scraping of feathers. A wolf, a bird? and prey, or perhaps the two latter combined, but he didn't think so. [/html]
[html] Yay, thanks for joining this 
She looked up toward the entrance of the den. Someone was there. Her den was pretty well hidden...she and her mate had chosen this place in particular because of the protection it would offer Davinci while he was growing up. It'd also served well for Dhalia and Khaden; the den was very deep, and one had to climb up to get out of it. Once the pups were old enough to be able to climb out by themselves, they were old enough to be all right by themselves (for short periods).
She was a little afraid; she was in no condition to be fighting anyone, if that's what they were there for...her leg was still healing from the coyote attack. It hadn't been broken too badly, but fractured. She'd broken a bone once before, when she had been younger, and knew how to handle it. Fighting was definitely out of the question.
The young adult began the slow climb up the mouth of the den, her head poking up amongst the grasses. Whoever it was, they were very close--so close she could almost hear their footsteps. The apothecary looked worriedly about, her ears turning from side to side, listening.
"Hello?"
[html] This is going to be totally awkward, but totally fun. Are short posts good for you?
The large, black male came fully forward so that she could see him, subtly letting her know that he wasn't a threat. But then again, his appearance might have been an oxymoron to that, and so he was certain that his stance reflected just what he meant to project. Soon enough he realized that while there were unfamiliar scents lingering in the air, there was also a familiar one: Conri's. This was, in all logic, where they hybrid had been taking the buckets of Yawrah water the day he had met him. Although this detail didn't amount to much, it was a detail that he could tack onto the green-eyed male's character. He cared about things. He cared about others. Of course, it wasn't difficult to see that immediately in the other anyway.
He frowned slightly, furrowing his brow. Now he wasn't sure why he had come to investigate; it wasn't as if he had a hero-complex, or as if he really cared at all. Maybe he just felt obligated to care. "Hey," he murmured quietly as he wondered briefly how much he actually smelled like he belonged in Clouded Tears, with the amount of time that he was regularly absent. It likely seemed like he didn't belong there at all, and maybe he didn't. "I smelled blood." His antisocial antics just didn't allow for casual, mellifluous conversation. [/html]
[html]
A wolf came into view, a great black one with the yellowest eyes she'd ever seen. He looked a lot like her father, except for the eyes--if she'd seen him from a far ways away she might have confused him for Roman. Naniko had inherited her father's jade colored eyes, the only thing that he'd ever given to her.
It had been a while since anyone had come close to her den. Their pack was fairly small, and her den wasn't near any of the usual trails that the members took through the lands. She almost forgot what she should say to him--she had to reply to his greeting. It'd just been such a long time since she'd done any of this. She came farther out of the den, climbing out to stand next to him. Pieces of dirt clung to her white pelt so she shook lightly, ridding herself of them. "Sorry--I /thought/ someone was out here, but I wasn't sure. I'm Naniko"
She was an old member of the lands, comparatively; the only one that had been here longer than her was Laruku. That was kind of sad, actually, because Naniko was only a year and a half old. She'd thought that more pack members would stick around. She looked back at Castor, then nodded. "Yes--I caught a rabbit earlier. If you want, you can come down and share it with us" Or maybe he was talking about her. Did she smell like blood?
"Are you new? I don't see many other pack members, not on a regular basis...but I didn't see you at the last meeting Laruku had"
[html]
"Castor," he returned promptly. He wasn't exactly used to casual conversation, so when he noted the lack of true flow to her words, bothered was the last thing he felt. The fact that she had made an introduction at all when he had merely come across her den due to curiosity was above-and-beyond benevolence. She was the third pack member he had acquainted; therefore, two out of three thus far exhibited the same civilized compassion that she displayed. Evidently, he didn't belong here.
The male was slightly taken aback at her offer, and he knew immediately that he would not accept it. He would not eat her kill. "I appreciate the offer, but I won't eat your kill," he replied, reiterating his own thoughts. To him, it was a simple, yet imperative principle. He had the means and the independence to provide for himself, and he was certainly not about to leech off of another wolf's catch, especially a rabbit which was alright perhaps for one, but for two it was a small morsel. Not to mention that she had mentioned 'us', thus she was already sharing with someone. The yellow-eyed male was even a little uncomfortable with the offer, with such graciousness on her part. Not only had she offered to share her meal but had invited him in. It was the last thing he expected, and so it could do nothing but catch him off guard, and he might have actually preferred that she bitterly question his interruption of that meal.
"I came a little over a month ago." And he had stayed longer than he had thought he might. Perhaps his extensive time outside the territory made up for it. "Didn't expect to stay this long, really." he confessed directly without beating about the bush or refusing to admit it outright. He didn't have a reason to leave yet. He had explicitly told Conri that if he left, there would be an explanation, and as of yet he didn't have one that would be reason enough to argue a departure. Yes, it was probably a good thing, obviously, but the continuous time in one place was beginning to make him itch for something else just as it always did, time after time. There wasn't much else, if anything, but it didn't make him any more satisfied.
[/html]
[html]
Naniko had never really been one for travelling; she was more of a homebody. She enjoyed living in the Pack of White Supremacy, and didn't know where else she would go if she didn't stay there. The pack had always been her 127.0.0.1 and it would always stay that way for her; even if the pack broke apart, she would stay. This was the place that she had grown up, the lands that she had grown to love, over time. Even now that Conri was gone, she would remain.
"Oh." She didn't know what to say, now. She was the hunter of the pack, and sometimes caught extra...this was just one of her bad days. That and her foot was still bothering her a little. The coyotes had done a real number on it, and it still ached every once in a while. "It's just the eagle and me--I usually stay by myself now that Conri's gone...but he needed help"
A resounding screech echoed up from the den, right on cue. "He doesn't eat a lot...not nearly as much as I do. I'm the pack's apothecary--the healer" Would Castor be interested in an eagle, though? She didn't want to seem boring...but this was really all that she'd been doing for the past week or so.
"I've always lived here. Since I was four months old, anyway. My adopted mother brought me here...and I've stayed here ever since, even after she left." She wasn't too surprised that he had said that he wasn't sure how long he'd be staying; members seemed to come and go from the Pack of White Supremacy every day. "It'd be nice if you stayed, though-someone to talk to. Is your den near here?" She was probably overdoing it, with all the questions, but with no one else around to talk to...right now she was pretty starved for conversation.
[html] He didn't really know what to say, which was just as well, because if he was a little more apt for conversation, he might have asked about Conri. What Castor did know, however, was to not touch the subject himself. If something had happened to the hybrid, she probably didn't want to talk about it, and blindly asking about where he had gone and if he was coming back was almost a guaranteed blundering crash course on his part.
With the screech of the raptor arose interest in the black male. "What happened to him?" he asked, for lack of anything better to say. He didn't have to ask why she was taking care of him, because he already knew. She cared. He wasn't sure what he would do if he found a wounded animal, whether he'd even bother to examine it or immediately disregard it. He was proficient in field-surgery, but he had only ever aided another coyote. Never a bird.
The fact that she had treated the bird roused about as many questions as the fact that she had been here for so long. It didn't surprise him. "I've never even lived somewhere for four months." It was his way of saying, whatever she was doing, at least she had something. She had things he could scarcely imagine. Things like loyalty. He couldn't imagine remaining anywhere for as long as she had, much less remaining here. He barely stayed within the territory for more than a day, and here she had stayed since she had been four months old.
"I don't have a den. I spend most of my time on the coast...or anywhere else than here." Because of the eerie fog? No. Because of a possibly deranged Omega? No. His reasoning was thinner than even the former. It was the attachment factor that he wanted to avoid, not to mention avoidance allowed him to stay out of the way other pack members, and anything that could be considered disorder. He had done his job thus far, according to these guidelines. His life was a constant sequence of starts and stops, and he had become accustomed such that anything else was a ridiculous idea. But the Pack of White Supremacy was somehow different. This was his test, and perhaps he was being overly cautious, checking his answers five times over, completely anal. The test was a single question: Can you stand it any longer?
[/html]
|
