Scree cursed softly as he flew, railing once against the follies of wolves and twice at himself for becoming mixed up with them. At the time, when costs were high but the promises still greater, the laws laid down seemed fair enough. Now, as he scanned the ground for some likely meal countless miles from the trees of his birth, the stately raven was no longer sure. Yet despite his doubts, here he was. Flown south then north again, with only hurried courtesies to spare him from feeling very much a glorified messenger pigeon. His pride, his intelligence, his upbringing, they all mocked him; loyalty binding drove the wind beneath his wings. Besides, heaven forbid, he wouldn't want to get bored now, would he?


Below on the hard-packed snow, the blazon white was rudely interrupted by a brutal smear of red. Not far off, the frozen crimson ended in a mess of spilled blood, half-eaten carcass, and a handful of his lesser kin all clothed in black. A bear's work, he thought disdainfully. A bear never killed cleanly. Tilting a hawk-wide wing, he circled down to join the feast. He turned a deaf ear to the protests and curses thrown at him by the current diners. Scree was unconcerned. He was large for a raven, and they were but mere crows. Let them squawk, for all the good it would do them.


Some time later he took to the sky again, belly full to bursting. Not far now, not long now. Still, the hour grew late and his business, having waited a good deal already, could hold off until the 'morrow. The light began to slowly leech from the sky when Scree perched himself on a likely conifer. He began to preen his glossy black feathers, an old habit that he used while drawing thoughts, and wits, about him. It was likely to be a dark night, indeed.

Kiiiim~! Bandit is the ghost crow Tayui 'befriended' so feel free to NPC him later in the thread.

Tayui had not expected to wind up here. With the winter months wrecking such havoc upon the lands, as they often did in so many ways, she had not had much time to leave her own pack. Between ensuring that snow did not block the entrance to the pack den and ensuring that the pack always had enough to eat, she had found herself quite busy. And, of course, she still tried to find time to read and work on her low-speech, pitiful as it was. She had met with Pilot only once before the snow arrived, and had since then attempted to begin conversations with Bandit. The ghost crow was always so very snarky that she found it rather difficult. Nonetheless, she was determined to learn the language, even if it was only a small amount.

She had followed the crow out to the water's edge, and finding it half-frozen, had turned back to head home. He had said something about following him, but could not comprehend why. And now, she had lost him. She huffed, slightly annoyed with herself. She should have known, especially since now he blended in so very easily with the snow. She paused, scanning the trees. It was growing more difficult with the sun slowly setting to see anything, but she was certain that she had seen a flash of movement off in the distance. She trotted closer, attempting to see if was in fact Bandit sitting on the branch of a douglas-fir. "Bandit?" She called out hesitantly. Of all the low-speech words she knew, Bandit was the one she could remember the best. She also knew a wide array of curses from the crow. "Is... that you?" Her words were slow and gravelly, not quite achieving the correct sounds of the language. She was unsure if she said it correctly, or if the order in which she spoke was wrong, but she hoped the other might understand her intentions.

Ahaha, I was going to pester you for a thread after this one; but no time like the present! Also, Scree was an NPC in a few of Mor's threads a while back... hence the history.



A rough, gravelly voice broke the bird's reverie. The words were so thickly accented that he could hardly understand the meaning. "No, I'm not." He said clearly in the language that the wolves usually used. Blessed once by corvidae gift for bending words, twice by an excellent teacher and thrice by the mistress of experience, Scree's words should be easy enough to understand (although his accent wasn't quite as good as he thought it to be). The raven was displeased at being drawn from his thoughts at this late hour, but a driving curiosity overruled his ill-temper. Wolves taking trouble to learn the lesser languages was not a common thing, and he was more curious than the proverbial dead cat. "My name's Scree."



He shifted sideways along the branch, exposing himself to what was left of the day's half-light. Scree was in every way your average raven in appearance, save for a greater height than was common among his kin. There was evidence of hard living beneath well-glossed feathers, but those old scars had been long hidden away. Beady eyes turned to the cream she-wolf below, and studied her for a long moment. Wolves still all looked much the same to him, but this was one he remembered. Scree had lived with Fiacha and her mother long enough to tell the principal members of Jaded Shadows apart, though he had never taken any interest in learning anything more about them.



This one though, she had been one of the duo to take the old alpha's place, the one who Scree had 'looked after' while her daughter was visiting the growing family to the south. Both bird and wolf had thought the arrangement rather ridiculous -- a raven playing nursemaid to a canine twice his age? -- but both had also submitted (more-or-less) quietly out of love for the daughter. What Mordulin had thought of him he never really cared to know, but as long as she offered him part of her meal, the bird had thought her best of her breed. Scree had shadowed the like-colored wolf for some months, but had never involved himself in pack affairs - so he had no idea if the new alpha below would know him or not. Maybe tonight wouldn't be as boring as he'd thought. "You're Tayui."

Indeed!

To say that she was taken aback when the crow replied would have been an understatement. The mere fact that he understood high-speech, let alone was able to speak it, well... it was not something she would expect. Furthermore, the crow seemed to be intelligent enough to formulate a reply, rather than shout out curses and screech simple words at her. She would have to record this meeting when she returned to Jaded Shadows. Tayui frowned as the creature spoke once more, finding his words though distinguishable, were spoken with a strange lilt to them. Indeed, the pronunciations reminded her greatly of low-speech in the way he made the sounds. Of course, it could not be expected that a mammal with a beak could pronounce their words the way wolves might, either.

She nodded in reply, delayed as it was. She watched as the crow shifted, moving into the light. Now that she took the time to examine him, he was extremely large for a crow, almost twice the size of Bandit. She did not think it were possible for the two of them to be and have been the same specie, but she did not know what death might do to one. Of course, the creatures that came to pick at the corpses of a felled animal after a hunt often varied in size, from tiny flies to birds and huge birds she believed were similar to vultures.

The bird spoke for a third time, this instance with more conviction than expected. Again, Tayui was surprised by what he said, and the very fact that he said it at all. Apparently she had another follower, or someone who knew her by name at least. "I's a pleasure to meet you, Scree. How might you know who I am?" Tayui replied in the canine tongue, choosing to use words that were more easily accessible to her than flounder with ones she was not yet entirely comfortable with. Although she was puzzled over the entire incident, perhaps the creature would prove to be kinder than Bandit was, and provide her with some answers now that she had so many questions.

Scree was competent in the high tongue, but was by no means flawlessly fluent. His grammar was less than perfect -- he was notoriously lazy about forming complicated sentences correctly, though theoretically he might know how -- and the words often came slowly, dredged back from his memory bank. After all, he didn't have cause to use the wolven speech often. "I know Fiacha and Mordulin." Feathers ruffled and smoothed again on their own accord, as avians were wont to do in the middle of conversation. Scree's mind was clearly focused elsewhere. "Lived with, for a time."



He cocked his head, as birds were also wont to do, and looked down at the wolf. Undoubtedly, she would have questions for him, and at the moment Scree's curiosity robbed him of the memory of why he'd flown north in the middle of the bloody winter, anyway. "How do you know our tongue?" He reverted back to the old words, the low words. Remembering his own days as a language-learner -- and thereby displaying an unusual politeness -- he spoke slowly and clearly, to be better understood.

Tayui backed up, moving away so she could see the other without having to crane her neck as much. She glanced behind her quickly, ensuring that she did not bump into a tree or sit down on a snow-covered thorn bush, then glanced back at Scree. She sat down, feeling her body fall sink down in the snow a few centimetres before settling. She nodded in reply as the creature spoke again, wondering why she had never seen him before. If indeed he had lived with Fiacha and Mordulin, each, would he have not lived in Jaded Shadows for a time? Certainly, if he followed Mordulin, for she had been in Jaded Shadows most of her life, ever since she brought Shadowed Stars to Ashen Mountain. Of course, it did not matter when the bird had accompanied either of the wolves - she would not have recognized him either way. There were always crows and birds of death lurking about after a kill, and there was no way she would be able to pick out one from another.

Instead, she just nodded, smiling, still curious as to how it had worked. She wondered if he had seen Mordulin since she left the Shadows lands, if she was still alive, even. He spoke again, this time reverting to low-speech. It took he a minute to comprehend his words and then sort out what he was saying. She mouthed the sentence to herself, unsure of what one or two of the words were, but she was certain she understood most of what he had asked. "I learned it... from one who... lived with squirrels. He taught me," she replied in low-speech, attempting to find the appropriate words for the idea she was trying to convey. She had to resort to simple verbs and using extremely simply sentence structure, but if it meant she would be able to practise her low-speech, she did not mind in the least.

I'm sorry I took so bloody long to respond. D:

Scree had a certain disdain for squirrels. They chattered, they were messy, they were bloody annoying. (As it turned out, Scree had a certain disdain for many forest creatures great and small, but that is neither here nor there). "Squirrels?" He cawed in loud laughter. "You'll never learn to speak properly with squirrels as your mentors." He had misunderstood her, clearly - as happens when a language barrier went up between two people. He was likely not helping matters now, letting the low speech chatter quickly from his beak; in his derision forgetting to slow down. "Shouldn't you be eating squirrels, not talking to them?" Of course, the same could be said about him, but Scree in his pride and confidence in his own wit chose to forget that particular distinction in lupine and avian kin.