Territory #7:
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OMG first post o.o scary
He'd had nothing but bad luck lately. He'd only left his parents' pack a few days ago, in search of a place where he wouldn't be labelled as the offspring of his parents and expected to live up to their name. And then there'd been the fire. There'd been fire and smoke everywhere, and Umbra had run for his life, heading westward like so many others. He'd had little time to spare worrying about his family; if he survived, he could worry then. By the time he'd reached the top of the mountain range, he'd been exhausted, but at least it had seemed as though the fire wasn't going to reach that far. So he'd decided to rest until he could continue.
And now? Now he was slowly making his way downhill, on the other side of the mountains. New territory, even if his mother had told him some story about her ancestors coming from this side long ago. So in a way, maybe he was returning home? Home. It didn't feel like home. Turning his head, he looked back to the crest behind him. Back there was home, but he'd seen what it looked like now. Everything was ruined, and there'd be neither food nor shelter for a long time. Had his family survived? His parents, his siblings... Especially little Silvius, just seven months old -- compared to the other two cubs of that litter, Silvius was tiny. Were they alright? Had they escaped the flames? He hoped they had, even if he hadn't seen them at all.
Shaking himself, he continued on his trek down the mountain. Somewhere here, he'd find a family of his own. Somewhere, he'd find a place to call home. But for now, shelter and food. He was starving. And so he headed for the forest, being more used to hunting in that type of environment.
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Hello! Sorry Laruku is so withdrawn. xD I hope this won't be too boring of a thread!
They had been there for several days already, but still he had not wandered very far from the base of the mountain. Even though they were nothing more than ashes by now, he was chained to the memories and everything he had been carried away from. There was a finality to the fire that he had never experienced before and it would have been such a fitting end had he been allowed to go through with it. Captains went down with their ships, but he had always considered himself a lackluster leader at best. Maybe it just wasn't his ship to go down with. He wasn't important enough for that. But this place, wherever it was, these forests and streams -- they were strange and foreign and he couldn't find any will or desire to explore them, to inhabit them, to allow them to progress into something familiar. Laruku didn't want to be there at all.
As the days had passed, he had heard the murmurs of others as they made their way down the rocky slopes and into the forest. He had seen their distant silhouettes and wondered who they were, what pack they had come from, and what they planned to do now. Now and again, he would hear howls ringing off deeper in the forest or even further west. Conri had made it, others of his pack, Fatin, neighbors he didn't know. They would populate this desolate place and make it their own like they had the other side of the mountain. He didn't want to be a part of their renewal; he was no phoenix.
There was a stranger moving in the trees before him now and the hybrid could pick up no recognizable pack from him. The tattered male watched quietly but did not readily approach. What was the point anyway? He had nothing to say and nothing to share. Here, he had no formalities to entertain and no obligations to keep. He was alpha no longer of an aged and cursed pack; he was just a tired face in a lonely forest with no words to speak of.
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Bah ^.^ Interaction is interaction, even if it's tentative and I-don't-know-you-go-away-ish.
Umbra paused when the scent of another wolf reached him through his still smoke-infested nose, and he automatically shrank back a little, tail and head going down. After all, most of the wolves he'd ran into after leaving his pack had been those belonging to another pack -- or at least it felt that way -- so he reacted by instinct before realizing that first of all, he'd scented no territory markings, and secondly the other wolf was as alone as he was.
A little more confidently, he stepped forward, but stopped at a respectful distance nonetheless to study his unexpected company. The other wo... Was it a wolf? He looked more like a coyote to Umbra with his narrow nose and brown tones. Especially the nose. And he was covered with scars, which made Umbra wonder if this person had won or lost the fights he must have been in.
"I'm Umbra," he said, not showing his hesitation. Appearance was key, that was what he'd learned from his mother. "You wouldn't happen to know if there are any claimed territories nearby, would you? If it was at all possible, Umbra wanted to avoid those. He wanted food right now, not politics and trouble.
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Red eyes followed the silhouette as it came closer. He felt indifferent and neither wanted to approach the other as he came nor disappear back into the trees around him. It shouldn't have been, but Laruku found it strange to hear someone else's voice after a week of only being around Ahren and Jasper. It wasn't any different from how it had been before when he would spend days without speaking to anyone, but... every realization he made about everything now seemed to strike him deeper and leave him ringing even more hollow than before. The hybrid stared a moment, almost as if stupid and not understanding, before shrugging his scarred shoulders and looking off into the distance.
Not yet, he said dully, quietly, It probably won't take them long though... They're regrouping fast, westward. You could probably find them if you wanted. He failed to specify who they were, of course, and to a stranger, a newcomer, someone who didn't really carry a residual scent of their previous valley, how could they know that so many have lost their homes so quickly and that he found himself now in a grand rebirth? What are you looking for? He didn't know why was asking and it didn't occur to him that he hadn't given his own name yet. It felt like something he had left behind on the other side of the mountain. He'd been named for a pack that no longer existed now, after all.
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To the west? Hm. That was all good and well, except he wasn't looking to find other wolves. But it was good to know this area was unclaimed. It meant he wouldn't have to be as careful of where he hunted. But... On the other hand, looking ahead to the near future he was sort of looking for a pack to join. And now that pretty much all packs had to start from scratch, what better time?
"Thank you," Umbra replied, "but right now, I'm not interested in other wolves. I'm interested in finding something to hunt." He looked at the other for a moment or two, considering. Then he made a somewhat tentative offer. "If you would like to, we could join efforts and hunt together." It would make things both easier and more difficult. More difficult because they weren't used to hunting together, and would probably have a high risk of failing altogether. Easier, because it meant they might be able to take down something larger than a rabbit, which was what Umbra had survived on the past month or so. He was quite good at catching the little buggers, but he was getting tired of the taste.
He wasn't sure if the wolf-or-coyote would accept the offer; he could have eaten recently, after all, or have his own ideas about hunting. But there was a chance the other's lack of interest came from being hungry, and if so he ought to welcome the help or company. At least in Umbra's eyes. Or maybe he'd lost someone dear to him in the fire. If so, he had probably not bothered to hunt. Well, Umbra wasn't going to press the other into doing something he didn't want to, and if what he wanted was to be alone, well... Then Umbra would respect that, and leave him alone.
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Hunting. It was something he had always done mechanically. Since the summer of the drought so long ago, finding food had just been a matter of routine -- a practiced path that he would repeat over and over again until something landed between his jaws. They were patterns he could lose himself in and events he would quickly forget about afterwards. With so many more relevant things disappearing so quickly from his short-term memory, something as physically essential and emotionally unimportant as eating fell away easily from his mind. They hunted when his body told him to and that was it. Their ancestors had utilized the numbers in packs to take down larger prey, but he doubted that Clouded Tears had ever done so successfully or even attempted that many times.
Maybe it shouldn't have been, but it was strange to be invited to hunt.
Okay, he found himself answering. Back home (there was no home anymore), his diet had been almost exclusively rabbit. They were easy prey and very plentiful -- why try harder than you had to? But a rabbit obviously was not enough to share and he assumed that Umbra must have something else in mind if he wanted help. I've seen small groups of deer pass by in the last few days, Laruku informed the other, pulling information out of a space in his head he hadn't remembered existed. He spoke like a human's computer almost, emotionless and mechanical. There're also rabbits and small streams with fish.
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XD I love the "until something landed between his jaws" comment! *totally gets the image of fluffy bunny hopping along and throwing itself into Laruku's mouth* And sorry for the late (and crappy) reply. CSS killed my brain T_T
Umbra wasn't sure exactly what he'd been expecting, but when the answer was positive, he smiled. Maybe he'd finally get to eat something other than rabbit. Had it been summer or autumn, he could have simply added berries to his diet to get a taste of something different, but this close after winter? Not too likely.
"That's great," he said, as much to the fact that he got company as to the information given. He wasn't fond of fish -- he sucked at catching them, and whenever he managed, there were all those bones that insisted on piercing his tongue and getting stuck between his teeth -- but the deer sounded positively droolworthy.
"Perhaps you'd like to lead the way to where you saw them?" he added politely, not knowing which way to head, and he doubted that the other wolf -- or whatever he was; Umbra would stick to thinking of him as wolf, to make things easier on his poor brain -- had been lying here for the 'last few days', especially as he couldn't catch any remaining deer scent in the area. If it had been here... Well, then Umbra would have to admit to himself that maybe his nose had been more affected by all the fire and smoke than he'd previously thought.
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xD S'all good~.
Deer. He could not remember how long it had been since he had even tried to go after one, much less eaten one. Pack hunts had been traditionally infrequent at home (it was a pile of ashes now) and the statistics humans had figured in their books about them had put their chances at one in ten anyway. But their wolven ancestors could not be compared to what they had become now, especially since he knew of a growing population amongst them who favored human weapons such as spears, knives, and arrows to hunt and kill. Sometimes, he still wondered how they would all turn out in the end. He had wanted to see the apocalypse and in a way, he had, but it would seem as if they were living on. Well, the humans were too, somewhere.
Laruku nodded and turned, making his way carefully through the trees. Yesterday's conversations were already fading into the locked closet of memories, but operating on instinct was easy enough. His nose knew how to find food and his feet knew how to follow his nose, scarred as they both were. And though he continued to think of the forest as a strange and foreign place in his head, it was difficult to deny the familiarity that had already developed in the few days he had spent there. Well, it may as well be home now -- it was a small radius and he wasn't interested in exploring further. Maybe it was just a retirement home.
The hybrid stopped rather abruptly at a set of deer tracks. These are kind of fresh, he mumbled, mostly to himself. He eyed them a moment, then continued in the direction they were headed. Shortly afterwards, a small group of animals could be spotted in a lush meadow. There were two males, four females, and two fawns, all with heads to the ground and rather oblivious seeming. There.
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Umbra's nose wasn't slow to pick up the trace of deer either, but he followed the other -- after all, Tawny there seemed to have a firm idea of where to go already, so why confuse the issue by arguing about who'd go first? And then they reached actual tracks.
"These are kind of fresh," Tawny mumbled, as if to himself, and Umbra couldn't help but agree. And just as the other wolf announced the presence of the deer, he spotted them as well, nodding in response. Now, they just had to figure out how to avoid the bucks and preferably catch one of the fawns. However, he doubted they'd be able to do that. He knew that no wolf would leave pups completely unattended, and he doubted the deer would be any different in that. So they'd have to hope that one of the deer moved away from the others. Before the wind turned. Pressing himself close to the ground, Umbra watched them. He was reluctant to speak out loud, since that would alert their prey to their presence, but fortunately body language served well enough.
It seemed to take forever, but gradually one of the grazing deer strayed farther and farther away from the center of the group, and Umbra's attention was drawn to it.
"That one," he portrayed with body language alone, indicating the female. Now they'd need to get on two sides of it, so one of them could hopefully drive it towards the other.
It was times such as these that Umbra really missed being part of a pack. He knew the theory, even if he hadn't had that much practice, and he knew that while it would be easier with two instead of one, the odds were less than favourable.
I have no idea how to do this XD or how it's done at this RPG. So to make things fair, I even rolled dice as to whether one of the deer would be stupid enough to stray. Then again, maybe they're not used to having that many predators here? =D
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lol, we pretty much just freestyle these sorts of situations by guesstimating the realism based on each of characters or else just plot them in whatever direction we want. For Laruku, since he's not very weighty, I don't think he would have a very good chance of bringing down a doe, even with help. So a lot depends on Umbra, or luck. But basically, whatever you want to happen, can happen! We're more about plot and and interesting story than rigid numbers and real chance. ^^ I'm cool with whatever, so yeah!
If they waited long enough, chances that a fawn would stray just a little two far would increase. Personally, Laruku could have waited all day by himself, but he wasn't about impose the patience onto the other, and besides, personally, he would have just gone after a rabbit. No point in trying too hard when the results were all the same in the end, but that didn't mean he wouldn't try here and now. Someone else was depending on him and somewhere in his deranged head, he still carried that dying sense of responsibility and duty that said he had to be dependable. At this point, by the same token, it would be rather pointless to slack off and get injured for being stupid.
He nodded simply and started slinking off to the left. Most strategies were the same. With two, what could they do but approach from two different directions and hope that they could cut the animal off? His tawny coat blended well with the trees and dirt and the slight breeze calmed to dead air -- still in their favor. It was an average sized doe, not too big and not too small. What were the chances?
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Ok, either they were on the same track, or Tawny just read his mind. Because Umbra had just been about to suggest that Tawny go to the left. And then the air stilled. Thank Luna for that, he thought, starting to crawl a little ways in the opposite direction. No wind would simplify things a little. And then they just had to hope that the deer didn't run the wrong way when they went for it.
Slowly, slowly, he crept closer, keeping within the bushes and keeping track of where Tawny was -- it wasn't that easy, but knowing that the wolf was there helped a lot. Finally he had no obstacles between him and the deer, and he tensed up, preparing himself to attack.
Go for the throat, he told himself, using the same tone his mother had when instructing him so many months ago. Locate the windpipe, and bite hard. It's the easiest way to hunt when you lack a large hunting party. And most of all, avoid being kicked.
Having thus reminded himself -- he found that he worked best when doing that -- he burst out of the bushes, making the deer scatter. Fortunately, their target didn't scatter in the same direction as the rest. Umbra thought it was heading for Tawny, but he couldn't be quite sure from this angle.
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Their kind danced a strange line between their feral ancestry and their present-day selves. They had evolved too quickly and gained too much knowledge, too much intelligence. They had become linguists, philosophers, scientists -- how out of place was this to be stalking in the grass like age-old beasts and flashing their teeth at the throats of lesser creatures? They were all Dr. Jekylls in that sense, he supposed, trying so hard to change the world while Mr. Hyde killed their food for them. Then again, humans had been the same in their hypocritical growth and domination; they were just following footsteps in time. Everything came full circle in the end.
It was easy for Laruku to get go of his mind. Thousands of years of instinct was all he needed to hunt; maybe some cunning higher intelligence made its way in there too with top notch strategy, but he didn't notice. His partner moved. The deer moved. And he moved. He was a lanky coyote of a not-too-horribly impressive size and he had looked weary and tired, but he was fast. Their target did not go direction towards him, but in her uncertain panic, he managed to slip in front of her anyway, leaping upwards at her face. She reared though, while simultaneously trying to change direction, and he was thrown back a little, though not hard enough to stop him from moving again immediately.
The doe was halfway turned from him now. The hybrid was not keeping track of where Umbra was anymore. The adrenaline was pumping too fast and he launched himself at the deer's flank as he began to shift to a halfway form, hoping the extra weight would help slow the animal down.
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Umbra wasn't thinking much at this point. Like his temporary hunting partner, he went mostly on instincts, and when the doe turned away from its direction, it didn't take many heartbeats to turn to be able to intercept it. It did, however, come as a slight shock when Tawny suddenly grew, and he faltered and almost stumbled on his own paws. It was after all the first luperci he'd met other than at a distance. Then he connected what his mother had told him to the strange scent that had been around Tawny, and he mentally shook himself. This was no time to get distracted.
Like Tawny, he leaped at the deer, though instead of the flank he went for the deer's throat. The deer tried to rear up and kick him, but thanks to Tawny it didn't get high enough to get rid of Umbra, who locked his jaws around where he assumed the deer's windpipe was. And he hung on like a leech. The sudden taste of blood only served to increase his hunger and adrenaline level, and he found himself growling and shaking his head slightly, as if telling the deer to "drop dead, dammit!"
He had no idea how long he'd been there, but finally, finally the deer started to wobble, stagger and then fall to the ground. But just to be sure, Umbra didn't let go until the deer was completely still and the rapid pulse against his mouth slowed down and then ceased. Only then did he relax and step back, looking at Tawny with an almost inebriated expression. They'd actually managed to, with only two of them, bring down a deer. Of course, the deer hadn't been that old, so its experience had been less than survival-friendly, but still...
"Speech."
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The adrenaline took much longer to die down than it did to come forth. After the doe fell, the hybrid immediately shifted back to a normal, quadrupedal form. Growing up in a mixed community, he had never really been confronted with anyone who was not a Luperci or who had any negative views of them; he equally at ease in his two forms and generally divided his time equally between them, but when others were present, it was simply easiest to conform to whatever shape they were taking. Laruku could have no idea that Umbra did not have his abilities and didn't think anything of his own form. It was, among other things, just something he did.
When his breath evened out and thoughts returned to his head, he spared the other a minuscule smile. Honestly, he had not expected them to succeed (he had grown up a pessimist, after all), but now there was a veritable feast before them. It was more than enough to feed an entire pack, much less two lonely wolves. The hybrid didn't know where Ahren and Jasper were at the moment, but certainly there would be enough for them as well and for a few days thereafter. Be my guest, he found himself saying, nodding forward at the carcass. You were the one that was hungry. You brought her down, too. And Laruku sat, licking his chops reflexively, but making no move for the meat. It was an instinctive ritual in most ways: there was enough meat for both of them to be eating at once, but for one reason or another, the scarred up coyotewolf did not want to take the first bite.
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O.O homg, I think there might be a bit of racism in Umbra. When did that happen? O.o Ok, maybe scratch that asking to come with him thing.
Umbra blinked at the other wolf -- now in a size or shape that made Umbra more comfortable -- but didn't have to be prompted twice before stepping in and starting to tear the deer's belly open. If the other offered him the first cut, it would be rude to refuse, right? Not to mention Umbra was the real wolf of the two of them. Not that he had anything against those Luperci creatures; they just weren't real wolves. Or coyotes. His mother had never mentioned anything other than Luperci wolves, but coyotes were close enough, he figured.
Moving aside a little as he ate, he made room for Tawny to join in as well. After all, he didn't want the creature to think Umbra didn't like him. And for a while, nothing much was spoken.
When he'd eaten his fill, he stepped back and sat down, yawning a little. It was the first time in a long while that he'd been this full, and it was making him a little sleepy. But no, he couldn't relax too much. Not while he was in strange lands -- which he'd always be until he found himself a home -- and while he was alone or with strangers.
"Thank you," he said gravely, having been taught that, no matter what you believed, it was important to be polite. "Without your help, I wouldn't have been able to pull this off."
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*slow as hell* I'll be using your table for new threads since I'm OCD and like keeping the same table within a thread. x3 Thanks again!
Evolution was a funny thing, especially when prompted by such artificial means. In another day and age (a thousand lifetimes ago), Laruku might have enjoyed long conversations about such matters of science and sociology with other intelligent thinkers. In fact, he still might be able to have such conversations with Ahren, but these days, he forgot a lot of things soon after their occurance and it was highly possible that such a topic had come up for discussion before and he simply couldn't recall it. They weren't really important in the long run; talking about it didn't change anything, but occasionally he did wonder how life might have been different if the humans hadn't caused their own apocalypse and changed the canines' future while they were at it. Undoubtedly, they would have remained simpler creatures, not the overambitious, would-be humans they had become.
The hybrid tore into the doe given the cue. It was more deep-rooted instinct, more of his simpler-minded ancestral habits. He didn't need to think to be a wolf. The tattered male nodded at Umbra's words of thanks, pulling back from his meal. Don' worry about it, he replied in a similarly obligatory way. He licked the blood from one side of his muzzle, This will probably last a few days. Are you staying in the area?
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Dunworry about it. From what I understand, you has lots to do ^^;
Stay in the area? Umbra's initial instinct was to immediately and vehemently deny such a thing, but prudence and some kind of lenity had him pause and think about it. Would he stay? Correction; would he stay if Tawny wasn't staying in the area? He shook his head a little.
"No, I don't think so," he said. Then he glanced at what was left of the doe. It would be a shame to walk away from the chance to get another helping of that. "Not any longer than maybe a night to rest up. After that, I think I'll head westward after all. If wolves are gathering thereabouts, there's a greater chance for me to find like-minded to join."
There was also the chance that he'd be able to find out about his old pack. He wasn't sure he wanted to meet his family, and he certainly didn't want to go back to them, but it would be nice to know if they were safe.
"What about you?" he then asked, though for what reason, he didn't know. Maybe he wanted confirmation that Tawny was going to stay? If Tawny suggested going with Umbra, he wouldn't know how to respond.
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Laruku simply nodded at the other's response. It would seem that Umbra would be come another on his long list of strangers that he'd met once and never again. Chance encounters, like ships passing in the night, to be filed away and gradually forgotten. Or in the hybrid's case, the memory would probably be gone sooner than he would expect it to, but he wouldn't be able to wonder about it once it was gone. I see, was his reply, Good luck with that then.
I'm not going anywhere, the coyotewolf said of himself, unknowingly vanquishing the other's fears.There was no where to go and no reason to. Here is as good a place as any for me. There were other things keep him there, of course, or more specifically, other things keeping him from where everyone else was gathering, but he did not much think that Umbra cared to hear about it. He probably couldn't explain himself very well anyway.
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iSuck at small talk >.<
Umbra kept himself from breathing a sigh of relief when Tawny said he'd stay here. Instead he nodded understandingly. "It is a good place," he said noncommittally.
It was a good thing that Tawny/Laruku didn't see fit to speak of his reasons to stay away from others, because if he had, Umbra would most probably have had to feign brief interest and mild sympathy. No, Umbra wasn't the kind of person to care much about those he'd been raised to view as freaks. He'd been a good hunting partner, and Umbra could see how suddenly gaining a lot of weight could be practical at times, but he'd never see it as a natural thing. That Tawny looked like a coyote was actually a good thing in Umbra's eyes, because that meant Umbra had never expected him to be entirely wolf.
He looked to the remains of the deer. He did want to leave right away, to be honest, but it would be such a shame to leave it. Who knew how plentiful prey would be where he was headed? Yet... It wasn't as though he'd be able to carry anything with him, and he wasn't too keen on spending more time than necessary together with Tawny.
He yawned. "It's a long time since I ate this much," he said, looking towards the inviting umbrage at the edge of the clearing. "Perhaps it would be a good idea to rest now, and head out closer to nightfall..."
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I'd call this done then. 
Yeah, the hybrid agreed simply. There're lots of trees to sleep under here, at least. He missed his gigantic oak tree though, as stupid as it was. And he missed the misty vapors that drifted from the lake, the fog, the plaguing white cloud that used to follow him. He missed knowing where all the best clearings were to look at the stars, the moon, the emptiness of the sky. He missed know exactly which hill the sun would rise over and behind which it would fall. He missed know exactly where he was going, even when he wasn't paying attention. Vaguely, he wondered about what Umbra might be missing, but he knew he would never ask.
Shrugging lightly, Laruku started to turn away. Whether he could sense the other's unease or was just tired of his own struggles with conversation was up to debate, but he didn't really feel like being there anymore. See you, then, he dismissed easily, nodding once more before drifting away quietly into the forest. Maybe he would go rest and sleep some more himself. And when he woke up the next day, maybe he would forget the other completely, just like so many others. And maybe the other would forget him too.
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