A little backdated rp.
Silvery slivers of sunlight cracked through a deep, blanketing clouds and onto the beach giving the sky, land and water a dappled effect - almost as if the whole world was one big forest. A cold forest, at that. Although the temperature on the coast was mediated by the heaving mass of the sea, it was still beginning to freeze at nights - leaving behind a drenching dew in the mornings.
Yjeva had woken up that morning cold and sodden because of this precursor to winter. The young wolf had never been subject, yet, to a winter and thus wasn't exactly sure how it'd go. She'd sorta heard a bit about it - but only what she could pick up when passing other groups of wolves. She was getting good at sneaking, to be honest.
The reason for her being out on her own, having to learn on her own and for her wandering down the beach moodily was one and the same - half her relatives were mad and the other half had disappeared. The few she'd actually gotten on ok with were gone, except her father, and she wasn't exactly sure what to do about it. Had her mad sister or mother driven them off? Hurt them? Should she flee for her life or search for runaways? Either way, she was avoiding home at the moment, until she figured that out.
Home, really, had become a transitive thing for her. It was where she rested for the night, truly, or where her special hoard was. That one place, more than others, was one she was entirely happy to keep going back to. The thought of her many little trinkets and precious items there made her happy and calmed her as she travelled. She had learned young the wolf's long-strided pace and had seen a surprising amount of the western coastline simply by heading up the beach each day a little more - skirting onto land where the tide was high and into forest when rocks made it impassible. She liked the sea and felt uncomfortable with the close spaces of the forest - always coming back to the shifting, soft sand as soon as she could.
Yjeva could fish well enough and knew which of the multi-coloured tendrilled things were edible and which would sting. She had learned how to crack thin shells and break hard ones for the salty morsels inside and knew to stick to the fresh-water streamlets rather than try and drink briny ocean water.
She was, in fact, growing up.
Panic was grinning from ear to ear. He had spied the white wolf coming down the beach and was laying in wait, his body pressed down into the dunes, black and pink coat dirty with the sand he'd rolled in to disguise it. He'd been working on this one all morning - youthful enthusiasm fuelling the dirty and tiring work of digging a hole. He'd dug one his size, though, not a fully grown wolf's size - would the wolf fit into it? Either way it'd be funny - imagine if they got their arse-end stuck in the hole hahahah!
The hole, covered in debris and seaweed, was his latest jape. Panic loved to play practical jokes on people, loved tricking them, and now that he was getting older his projects were getting more ambitious. He couldn't wait to see the look on the wolf's face when they dropped into his hole!
Not for a split second did he worry that he'd anger the wolf, that if they were from another pack that anger might be taken out on his own, he didn't really think of anything beyond how funny something would be.
They were almost there! One paw on the driftwood, two... wasn't it going to break? Crap, he'd thought the old thing was so wormy it'd snap right off whilst supporting the lighter seaweed as disguise. Oh, no, there it went! YES. The following yelp had him rolling almost in tears with laughter. Oh man, they'd walked right on it - his disguising skills were ace.
Yjeva had been scanning the ground for any particularly nice shells - once she'd found a mussel on the beach which had a bright purple shell but it was half-crumbled and broken and didn't look quite good enough for her collection. She wanted a whole one!
Suddenly, there was a lurch underfoot and the world disappeared at speed. Her paws scrabbled at air but when she finally found the ground it was at an awkward angle and she felt a stomach churning snap inside. Damn it, what the hell? She found herself wedged into a little hole - water filling the bottom of it and her shoulders wedged across the top of it. How the hell did this get here? She cursed loudly as she wriggled, setting off the first stab of pain she'd felt in her leg since that awkward landing. She was wedged, the way she'd fallen, and she could only use one leg to try and push herself up.
Pretty much stuck. s**t. She whined keeningly, like a puppy, as she tried to calm herself down and figure out how she was going to get her a** out of this shitty little cold, damp hole.
Panic had learned early to not be around too long at the scene of the crime, as it were. If he was far enough away he could claim he totally couldn't have done it. True, that didn't work often, these days, usually just gaining him whithering, disbelieving glares, but that wolf was a stranger so it wasn't like they could find him. Hah.
Then he heard the whimper. It was a sad little sound that, despite not being that loud, seemed to have carried on the wind right to his ears. Despite liking to make fun, Panic wasn't naturally cruel and his heart skipped as he began to imagine he might have hurt the wolf with his 'joke'. Crap. He really never wanted to harm anyone, he was just drastically useless at thinking these things through...
With a mental groan he turned around and made his way back - he didn't have to tell them it was his hole, right?
Oh thank god, there was someone nearby. She could have spotted the black and pink pelt a mile away against the sand as soon as he came over the dunes. "Heeey, hey you! Help" she cried and then followed it with a yelp of pain as her exertions caused her to shift her leg painfully.
"Yes! He'd seen her! She was damned lucky, to be honest, this beach didn't often have others around. Well, yeah, 'lucky'. If she'd really been licky she wouldn't be tail-down, shoulder deep in a random hole in the ground. How in the hell did a beach get a deep hole like that anyway?
The wolf, 'he' she now saw, was closer now. "Hey, can you help " whimper "I'm stuck..." she tried to look pitiful, she felt it, and damsel-in-distress like. She'd heard that often worked on guys, but she hadn't had the chance to really have much of a practice at it.
She was pretty hot was his first thought as he got closer. So different to his siblings, his parents - pretty exotic, really, with all that white fur, those subtle markings. Her whimpers for help let him imagine helping her out of here and having her decide he was a dashing white knight who she'd fall head over heels for... if she didn't find out he'd dug the hole. Dammit. Play it cool, Panic, play it cool.
"Oh, man, you look really stuck there, what happened?" he said, with barely a gulp in his voice to betray his lack of innocence. He'd been rubbish at hiding his guilt when he was younger but he'd learned that being able to do so sometimes left enough doubt in a situation that he didn't get punished for some of his more subtle or basic tricks.
Oh good, he was falling for this damsel stuff, Yjeva thought. She'd never been around many wolves who were naturally helpful... caring. Her family had loved her, of course, but they had always been odd, standoffish, weird. She'd never have expected someone to just help her and so was more relying on stories about how this sort of thing should go than on truly relying on his better instincts making him help.
"I don't know what happened" she said, her voice soft, the pain creeping into her voice not feigned "I was just walking along one minute and the next..." she looked around herself as if to indicate 'then this'. "C.. could you help me out? You long big and strong, I bet you could dig a bit here at the side so I could wriggle out sideways".
Panic was being swayed, totally, by her act - imagining her some poor, young girl, lost, alone, trapped in this deadly trap. He felt terrible and had to try hard to smooth his guilty face into a sympathetic one. "Sure, of course I'll help. Here, try and lean your face away and I'll start digging".
He began, quickly ripping up clods of sand much as he had when he had made the hole. In fact, because the sand had been loosened it was pretty easy to quickly make it so the hole was sloping rather than steep. "What's your name" he asked, trying to get her talking whilst he worked.
"Yjeva" she said, wriggling and spitting flying sand from her mouth, squinting so it didn't get into her eyes. "Yours?"
"Panic" he said, a little wheezily.
"That's an odd na...nggh name. Watch your claws!" she tried to make the tone light and 'sweet' but she was so damned sore and his paws were coming close to the level of her legs now.
"Sorry, sorry!" he tried to pull back a bit, but he was up to his own chest in sand now and it was hard going. "It's not that weird, is it? I've never heard a name like yours before".
"Well, it's a word, not a name, right? My name is just... a name" she grimaced. The chatting was helping keep her mind off things but she was sure the cold was starting to seep right into her leg - and not in a nice, numbing way but in a sharp, needling way.
"True, I suppose. Never thought of it like that, to be honest". As he came to a halt, he watched her wriggle sideways, collapsing the last bit of sand around her as she scrabbled with her front legs, the gentle slope a lot easier to grip, and come up onto the flat of the beach. That was when he felt his stomach somersault and almost empty. One of her back legs was totally not facing the right way. It looked horrific. "Woah, uhm, has your leg always looked like that?" he asked, faintly.
"Don't be stupid" she said, pain finally getting the best of her. She sat, licked at the salty-wet limb and whimpered again softly. Now she was out of the hole she had no clue what to do with... with this. God it looked ugly... She didn't want to be a three-legged limpy wolf!
This was all his fault. All His Fault. Crap. "I uh, could help you back home... maybe there's someone who would know how to fix it?"
the last thing she wanted to do was head home. Hell, she had barely been able to fend off her bloody insane siblings at the best of times, there was no way she'd be able to keep Jani off her if she decided to have a go, again. "I don't have a home" she lied.
If he hadn't felt like a real p***k before he certainly overwhelmingly did now. He'd hurt someone, a pretty someone, because of a stupid prank and now he didn't know how to fix it. If he took her home they'd know it was his fault, that he'd done it, if he didn't... she didn't have anywhere to go. She might even DIE. Oh gods.
It was his fault, he needed to 'fix' it, but there was no reason he had to get in trouble for it, right? Hell, he was sure he'd heard that the pack to the north, Akiiki Chibale, had some sort of awesome healer. He could take her to one of the places he'd dug out on the edge of Agua Azul territory, set her up in a den there, get some food, then head off and see if he could find that healer wolf. She'd be all better and he'd be a total hero, right?
"You can come to my den" he said, then realised that slounded a bit dodgy, by itself "I'll go from there and get help - you can just rest up, I'll uhm sleep outside or something when I get back". He tried to make it sound like it was his own place, that he had a cool and mysterious loner-pad but even to his own ears he just sounded slightly scared.
Yjeva frowned. There wasn't much better on offer and even if he was skeezy her jaws were still working, she could take him. He didn't seem the type though - he was obviously trying to help her even if he also seemed to be keen on getting under her fur, so-to-speak. If that was why he was helping it didn't matter - so long as he would help. Everything else she could deal with later, when it came to it.
"You know someone who can help?" was all she asked. He explained about the healer and she nodded, dragging herself to her three good feet, holding the other up. "Can I lean on you a bit?" she said, softly, figuring he would jump at the chance and that she really could do with the support. She hadn't been in the hole that long but she felt really damned exhausted.
"Of of course, sure!" he gulped, as her fur came to rest against his and he tried to stand straight, strongly, to help her. After a few moments, though, he realised he'd need to relax a bit to help her - she needed help to stop wobbling too much side to side, not a wall to slam against every time she did so.
All other thoughts slipped from his mind as he gently, carefully, helped her wind her way towards his secret hideout.
