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 Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 5:24 pm
Majime blinks at his question, not responding to it for a moment or two. Then she perks up and gives her fluffy tail a wag. "Me? I learn as much stuff as I can. Did you know that there's a bunch of new saplings growing over there?" She says and gestures towards a particular spot at the edge of the woods with one paw. She didn't really know how else to put into words what she felt. The sheer hunger for knowledge was overwhelming sometimes. "There's all sorts of interesting things around if you just look for them."
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Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 8:23 pm
"Saplings," he echoed, trying to match her excitement and just not finding it in himself. His nose wrinkled. "...Why do you care about that stuff?" He asked, blurting out the question. Tact was not one of the things Dubhe was known for; he was only ever silent and focused when hunting. "I mean...what's the point?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 3:32 pm
Majime blinked a little at his question, taking the time to consider it. She tilted her head to the side and looked at him. That was a question she'd never really asked herself before. "Well, I want to learn everything I can. And nobody else seems to care about the world around us, so I thought I might. I mean, if you don't pay attention to your surroundings, like the scent on the breeze of tracks in the dirt, how can you hunt?" She asks, trying to put it in terms he could understand.
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:28 pm
"Well...sure," he said, wavering a little in uncertainty. He still thought this all sounded pretty weird, but he let it go. He was -- slowly, and practically -- learning some manners. He started to ask another question, stopped himself, and shook his head as if to clear it. Now that he thought on it, he suspected he didn't really want to know the answer.
He was starting to feel really restless. All this standing around and talking (grashoppers notwithstanding) was making him edgy. He cast about, a twitchy unease spreading through him, and resisted the urge -- with tremendous difficulty -- to pounce on her. "...hey. Speaking of trees. I bet there's some birds over there. You wanna try hunting birds?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:20 pm
Majime noticed his unease, but she was genuinely puzzled about it. Maybe her question had unnerved him somehow? She wasn't entirely sure what effect she'd had on him. She could be perceived as a weirdo, o someone that had opened a new perspective. She didn't really care how he viewed her, but she was curious what he was thinking. Just when she was about to open her mouth to ask, he blocked her with a question of his own. "Uhm, sure." She says and flicks an ear. She stands up and twitches her tail. "I'm sure they're more challenging than grasshoppers." She offers. "And maybe we could take some back to the pack!"
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Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 11:20 pm
"Birds are reeeeaaaallllly hard," he said, emphatically, and turned suddenly extremely vibrant eyes upon her. "Not even I can get them all the time." Dubhe was undoubtedly arrogant, but there was a certain quality to his voice that suggested there was more to it than that -- that he was, quite simply, very good at what he did. And he was aware of it.
"The trick with birds, see, is they can fly. A grasshopper can jump up to here," again, he gestured with his paw, "but a bird can take off so high up in the sky that you can't even see it anymore. And one they do that, you'll never get it."
Well, obviously. But he carried on as though he were telling her a deep secret technique. Come to find out, now that he was started, Dubhe really enjoyed teaching. Maybe it was the eager way that Majime seemed to soak up knowledge that stroked his ego. Maybe it was his firm belief that, as a girl, she needed more help in this department. Or maybe he just liked to hear himself talk. "So what you gotta do, see, is creep up on them. The ones up in the trees don't do you any good, though. You have to get the ones on the ground. The black ones are called crows, and they get kind of mean. Then the little brown ones, with the specks on their chest? those are sparrows. They're not worth eating."
His voice dropped and he fell to his belly, ears folded back to his head, eyes narrowed. He didn't exactly blend in, but his attentions were all focused on a set of bushes under one of the young trees. "...The good ones are big, fat grey ones called doves. They sleep on the ground sometimes under bushes, and they're kind of slow. Really dumb, I think. And fat, so they're good eating. Maybe there'll be one in this bush."
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Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 6:10 pm
Majime was very interested. She didn't mind the rambling one bit and was in fact a very good listener. The young pup was usually fairly quiet anyway, since she preferred to observe rather than speak. So as he started to divulge his 'secrets' to her, she listened with something like rapt fascination. Any new information was great information. Well, that's how she saw it anyway.
She wondered what it was like to fly so high in the air. The thought excited her and she gave her tail a wag. She was starting to daydream before she'd noticed he'd dropped into a crouch. She followed suite, pressing her belly to the ground and twitching her tail some. "Okay. You can go first so I see how you do it." She whispers just loud enough for him to hear.
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Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 10:32 pm
He fell silent, ears folded to his skull, brow furrowed. He crept forward, belly brushing the ground, tail out behind him. His eyes narrowed, nose twitching. When Dubhe hunted, he was a different wolf than he was at other times. The nervous, twitching energy disappeared and was replaced by a stillness, a reservoir of calm. For a pup, he was unusually focused.
Bizarre, really, how a generally rowdy, over-enthusiastic pup could become so singularly focused on anything -- but he was.
His nose caught the scent of a bird -- not on the ground, but nesting in the bush itself. A tricky catch. Truth be told, he wasn't sure he could do it...but he wasn't about to back down, not in front of an audience. The idea of being laughed at by a girl was pretty much unbearable.
So he crept forward, as slowly as he dared, and then, moving more like a cat than a wolf, he coiled his haunches and sprang forward, in a long leap, for the bush.
He miscalculated the leap by a hair.
Were Dubhe a larger, stronger wolf than he were -- if he, perhaps, matched the image he had of himself in his mind -- he would have made it. As it were, it was a very near miss, and rather than catch hold of the bird, he crashed rather violently into the bush itself, face-first. The branches cracked under his weight and he let out a startled yelp; the bird took wing, flapping loudly and hurriedly, and rose up to roost -- insultingly -- on an unreachably high branch of the tree beside it.
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Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2011 6:09 am
Majime watched him with interest. The intensity of his focus seemed to coil off him in waves of cold. It made her shiver and crouch lower, but, at the same time, lean forward to get a better look. This was fascinating. She had no idea this is what she was like when she was focused on something, but some inner part of her recognized it in this other pup. Her tail twitched in a slight wag, but the rest of her body was perfectly still.
She held her breath when he leaped, but she could already tell he was going to miss. When he crashed into the bush she flinched and ran forward, tugging at the branches and tearing them away. Her little hard beat as fast as a jackrabbit's and she hoped he was okay. "Are you all right?!" She asks in a yelping voice. She kept thinking a twig had stabbed him in the eye and popped the delicate globe. The image made her shudder.
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Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2011 12:12 pm
"Dammit!" He swore, loudly, thrashing against the bush as he clambored to his feet. He was pissed. He was embarrassed, and that made everything else worse. Snarling, he swiped a paw hard against the bush, breaking branches off in his paws, snapping and growling.
One day, Dubhe would learn to be a better loser. But, for now, his ego was far too delicate to handle such a brutal assault.
"I'm fine!" He snapped at Majime, drawing away from her, not wanting to look at her. In truth, he did have a few cuts and scrapes, shallow ragged bloody trails along one side of his face and shoulders, but he didn't care about them at all. "Don't touch me."
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Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2011 8:09 pm
She was very concerned about him, her heart fluttering more. But from the swearing he seemed to be all right, which was good. He wasn't dead then, and he would be screaming louder if he was seriously hurt. She smiled and wagged her tail, helping to break the branches off and pull him out. She was about to say something, when she was pulled up short by his last remark. She blinked in confusion, not understanding for a moment why it had stung her so much. "A-all right..." She mumbles, backing off. Her tail and head lowered and she didn't look at him. She wondered if she'd added to his pain somehow.
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Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2011 10:16 pm
He snarled again in his frustration, clawing one last time at the bush. He was breathing hard and his eyes gleamed with rage.
Ignoring her for a moment, he turned his attentions on the foe at hand: the bird, who perched on the low branches of the tree, feet above his head, and mocked him. Not that the bird was saying anything...but its presence was like a resounding vicious laugh in his mind and he snarled in frustration at it.
This was completely unacceptable.
He padded off a few yards back, stared at the tree, and with slitted eyes ran full-force for it. A few feet from the trunk he jumped, scrabbling at the trunk for footing, trying to use his momentum to launch himself up into the branch with the bird, snapping at it.
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Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2011 6:10 pm
Majime watched him silently, looking a little gloomy. She was trying to figure out why the comment had stung. It shouldn't matter, he'd been hurt and he'd lashed out in pain, but still...
She gave herself a shake and plopped down on her rump. She figured if she'd ask if he wanted her to help him he'd get mad. So instead she kept quiet and waited for him to calm down.
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Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 3:09 pm
He was unsuccessful -- unsurprisingly -- and he fell back with a cold glare in his eyes. The impact of his landing shocked up through his limbs but he ignored the pain. His eyes gleamed dangerously, and he was breathing hard, his fur on end, but he didn't lash out any more. He seemed fairly exhausted.
He cast a glance over his shoulder, finally, and blinked in near surprise at the fact that the other pup was still there. He'd completely forgotten about her. "Gonna laugh at me, now?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 3:16 pm
She winces when he hits the ground that hard. That must have hurt. She didn't get up to help him though, since she could see how angry he was. Her ears were flattened and her tail was wrapped securely around her rear. She wasn't scared of him or anything like that, but she felt bad that he felt bad.
"No." She says quietly. She doesn't say anything else. She was waiting to see if he'd insult her again or attack her.
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