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 Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2014 7:25 am
 Well this sure was a pretty pickle.
Saffron’s morning hadn’t started off with any grandiose plans for starting trouble, but somehow, she always managed to find it. Or maybe it had set out to find her first? Either way, what was supposed to be a calm, lazy day of wandering about and dreaming up new stories took a bit of a drastic turn - and all because she felt a little bit hungry. Or maybe it was because she had caught the scent of sweet, sweet honey and decided she was hungry. Again, either way.
If Saffron had a weakness, it was honey. Anything sweet would do, really, but honey was especially saught after because it was a rare treat she didn’t generally get the opportunity to enjoy. Bees liked to build their nests just out of reach, and most of those too silly not to usually had their honey stores raided by bears or other sweet-toothed animals long before Saffron even had the opportunity to catch a whiff. But today, the odds had fallen in her favour - today, she had come across a nest in a hollow not far from the ground that was just dripping with gorgeous golden joy. No one seemed to be anywhere nearby who would attest to her claim on the honey, save the bees, and she wasn’t afraid of a few stings here or there if it meant stuffing her face.
She really hadn't thought that bit out very well. A large hive generally had a large population of bees, and what she originally took for a small operation was, in fact, something closer to a full-scale production industry complete with thousands of workers she had failed to take into account. The moment she stuck her peachy little nose into the hollow, they attacked.
Never before had she seen a swarm so large that it seemed to form a thick, black cloud that rumbled with the thunder of a nation's worth of angrily buzzing bees. They were immediately in her eyes, ears, nose, fur - just about everywhere one could think, there were horrid little bees and their horrid little stingers that brought on pain she had only thus far imagined. No matter which way she twisted, leapt, or bolted, they stubbornly followed right on her tail; it would have been comedic to see, had she not been the one barreling half-blindedly through the forest with no clear battle plan.
But she did have a very generous mouthful of honeycomb that, if she survived the ordeal, could possibly make up for the trouble it had caused. She just needed to outdistance those darned bees, and fast!
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Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2014 12:34 pm
Generally speaking, it was an ordinary day with ordinary happenings. Same old ordinary trees, and ordinary rocks and perhaps not so ordinary birds. In Stavros' mind it was an extraordinary day for he could feel it, down to the very hairs between his toes, today something was going to happen! As per usual the poor wolf just assumed he had found the greatest discovery history had yet to see. His trail of snapped branches, scars that had aged over the passing winters and various weather patterns but he knew these minor details by knew, knew what they meant. Buried treasure.
There wasn't much that was memorable about this odd purple wolf, he was average in frame, though perhaps a bit vivid in color but that was nothing unusual in these lands. If there was anything unusual to note, it was perhaps the prescence of dirt littered throughout the young male's coat, as well as covering most of his snout. Actually, it almost looked as if he rolled in dirt on a daily basis for he was truly quite filthy. Stavros paid no mind to such trivialities, it was his goal in life to discover a truly great find, something buried beneath the earth that nobody had seen before.
As it stood, the strange collectables amassed inside a hollow of a large tree, rocks, larger rocks, the odd stick and a broken shell were the entirety of the exhibit. It wasn't very impressive in its own right, but Stavros was quite proud of his finds, for he'd worked very hard to find his trinkets, very hard indeed.
Today began like all others, Stavros perched his front paws against a tree as he sniffed at some invisible odor nobody could begin to understand or catch whiff of. Afterwards he'd meander off, often in no real particular direction to raise his nose to the air or dig up a small amount of soil and gaze at it intently. To the birds it was quite possible he looked strange and eccentric, and maybe, just maybe this assumption was true. At the moment they were the only witnesses to the strange scene playing out before them so beyond their opinions not much else mattered. Suddenly, intelligent grey eyes snapped to a single position between two large trees, this was it, the glorious day when he'd find his true prize!
Trotting over to the spot, Stavros began to dig and it wasn't careful or calculated as you may have thought... Instead it was a frenzy of paws and flying debris, pebbles and chunks of dirt were strewn across the forest floor with not a worry as to where they landed. The hole got deep fairly quickly with the excited digging and the fact that the earth was actually quite soft. Soon a head disappeared and all that was left to be seen was a wagging tail attached to a large purple rump sticking out of a midsized hole in the ground while pebbles and dirt continued to fly.
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Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 3:06 pm
If there was one life lesson Saffron wasn’t about to forget anytime soon, it was that bees were persistent. Very persistent. So darned persistent that, even though she had thrown herself into a small stream and rolled about in the mud very thoroughly, they still seemed dead-set on wrecking her day in the worst way possible. She was hurting all over, not just from the stings but also from the constant ricocheting from bush to tree and through briars and nettles; it was a nasty business, outrunning bees, but finally (finally!) she seemed to be winning. They were beginning to fall back a little, and not so many of them were still clinging to her fur. That wasn’t to say they weren’t still following her – they were more dogged than some hunting wolves she had known – but at the very least, the majority of the swarm was beginning to fall back.
She couldn’t have known, however, that in her flight, she was growing dangerously close to a treasure hunter’s dig site. She didn’t hear the sound of digging, nor did she catch the scent of freshly-dug earth. How could she have? Her nostrils were practically plugged with honey and bees, effectively blocking out her strongest connection to the world around her. She didn’t see or hear much of anything beyond a certain radius for the same reasons, largely trusting her paws to keep her going forward and stumbling a number of times over exposed roots and small animal dens. The fact that she was closing in on a bright purple tail that waved in the breeze like the world’s largest warning sign was lost on her until the very last second – she caught a glimpse of colour and slammed all four paws into the ground as quickly as she could, but that didn’t stop her forward momentum any.
With a small shriek and a split-second swerve, she only just avoided falling face-first into a stranger’s rump. She tripped, rolled once, and was immediately back on her paws, shaking her head violently and trying to come to grips with what she was seeing. Another wolf? Another wolf!
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Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 4:46 pm
Victory was near, Stavros could smell it, just like a large fat hare sitting there, oblivious to the ominous ending that drew nearer and nearer. The prize was his, he was going to make his mark on the world as soon as he... discovered whatever it is he was digging up. There was nothing to stop the events that were unraveling right before his eyes, he could taste the prize between his jaws, he could... he could...
Purple, dirt-plastered ears twitched as the strange male thought he heard something. He'd been so engrossed in his digging that he had blocked out the surrounding noises in the forest and unfortunately he noticed the noises behind him far too late. Someone, or something, was running... quite quickly... and before Stavros could turn around to decipher who or what was behind him he was forcefully shoved in the rump! The poor bewildered male toppled over and tumbled right over his hole, landing forcefully on the other side in a heap of fur and dirt. Dirt wasn't anything new to Stavros, so the dirt didn't bother him but being shoved away when he was so close to his discovery! Well, that was another story.
As Stavros quickly unraveled himself a thought popped into his mind, oh no, somebody else had discovered his treasure! Not being the brightest wolf in the world, the dirty wolf pounced over and sat his large purple rump down over-top of his hole. The fact that dirt was littered all over the clearing didn't even occur to Stavros for his only thought was hide the evidence! He was now too busy thinking up ways to shoo this thief away, because he'd done all the work and gotten there first so the treasure was indubitably his.
Being so engrossed in his own mind, Stavros didn't even think to look over at the thief to be. Perhaps if he had taken a sneak peak at the stranger he may have had different thoughts on his mind. For her dirty, distressed appearance didn't scream much of a thief, and if she was a thief she had very strange pre-thieving rituals to be sure.
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Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2014 5:14 pm
One could only communicate to a certain degree with their mouth full of honeycomb. Saffron very much wanted to warn the royal purple wolf to the oncoming dangers – wanted nothing more than to holler beees! and take off running for the hills again – but all she could manage was a muffled, “Mmmrph!”
Obviously, that wouldn’t work. She stomped her paws and whimpered as enthusiastically as she could manage, but she just wasn’t getting a clear message out to this wolf – who seemed to be much more interested in his hole in the ground, and didn’t seem to care much for her intrusion. Of course, she had rolled right into him... and he did seem rather determined to keep that hole to himself. Heck, he was nearly as dirty as she was – sans the sticky honey, of course.
The curiosity began to bubble in her chest (What was he digging up? Why was it so important to him?), but now just not the time to be nosy. In any other situation she would have a thousand questions to ask, but right now she really needed to figure out a way to warn him that his hole wasn’t a safe place to sit. She gestured wildly with one of her paws toward the hill she had unceremoniously rolled from, hoping perhaps he would hear the ominous hum that was quickly drawing closer, and tilted her head in the opposite direction anxiously, but unfortunately for the both of them, she was not a master of charades.
The swarm had finally caught up, and if anything, they looked even angrier than before.
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Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2014 7:08 pm
As Stavros' mind continued on a frantic mission to rid the world (or rather the area) of the thief, he began to realize his rump didn't quite fit over the hole. It was sinking down in it and if he was going to be truthful, it was rather uncomfortable. If he wasn't careful, he was going to get stuck... Being preoccupied with his own dilemma Stavros was completely ignoring the thief and her strange mumbling ways.
Stavros jumped up before he could get caught in such an awkward position, prepared to scream fire or something equally witty at the thief. Fire wasn't quite the word that escaped his lips.
First of all, Stavros stared at the thief, in that moment he realized she was most certainly a thief but not of his treasure. He probably made quite the picture, legs spread, brows furrowed, staring at the brave femme with a wide open mouth and a coat full of dirt. She carried a honey comb in her jaws, and though Stavros wasn't filled to the brim with common sense, he did know bees in fact made honey combs, and not wolves. He processed this all rather quickly but, it wasn't quite quickly enough for the buzzing had edged closer. It didn't quite sound like buzzing anymore, no, it was more like a thunder, loud, ominous and headed straight for them. His dig site was suddenly forgotten.
Stavros may have meant to yell something but it certainly wasn't, "Run!!" in his rough Telkish accent. Alas, nobody ever expects to have a swarm of bees headed straight for them. That is unless you're the one that angered the bees in the first place...
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