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 Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2010 6:24 am
 He must have stood out like a beacon on the cloudy day. A streak of bright yellow and orange against a gray and green landscape. Which was why everything he tried to catch was two steps ahead of him. Fierj was starving, and he had been hunting all day to no avail. Normally at least there were patches of brown for him to lie in wait for an ambush, but no such luck today. Everything was lush, it was the height of summer and it had rained recently. The fiery male growled uncharacteristically under his breath, but only in response to the rumble in his stomach. Even rolling in the dirt hadn't helped, he was just too damn brightly colored. And now he was covered in a layer of dust to boot. Still, he wouldn't give up. There was a game trail nearby after all. He went running along it, scenting the ground and the air, and finally picked up the trail of a rabbit. This, at least, he could chase to its hole and then dig up. Fierj raced along the game trail with renewed hope, tail happily up in the air. Until he slipped into a stream as he ran. Dirty, soaked, sputtering, and utterly surprised from this turn of events, Fierj scrambled to the surface of the water in what must have looked like a panic even though it was quite shallow. He heaved himself onto the bank and stayed there. Today just wasn't going to be the day. He was alone, he sucked at this, he was starving, and even if he were adept at catching his own food he would be at a disadvantage. So he lay on the bank in the dim of the afternoon cloudiness, soaked through head to toe, and covered in a layer of dirt and mud. Fierj wanted to melt into the bank. The only thing that could possibly dash him more would be if a fish suddenly jumped out of the stream and slapped him in the face. Right before getting away from his hungry jaws, of course. Fierj let out a loud huff of disappointment.
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Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2010 8:11 am
Aoede was not amused. She did not like mud at all and this area just seemed to live and breath the stuff. Blech. Trying to keep her fur out of it, she delicately picked through the squelching morass towards the river. Despite the rain, she was thirsty - it was warm, humid and she needed a good, long, cool drink. And to wash her paws, oh she needed that so badly.
Despite her intentions to be good, to love her sister, to try to curtail her feelings that others were simply not as awesome as she, the she-wolf could not leave behind her prediliction for looking good. And who in the world would like roaming through mud anyways? She wasn't being fussy, she tried to convince herself, she was simply being reasonable. Yes, reasonable, that sounded good.
Aoede turned to check on her little sister.
Venus was doing just fine. Like Aoede, she had often worried about her looks, but it was more in connection with them being unusual compared to her siblings. When she looked at her mud-caked feet she could almost imagine she wasn't the odd one out, that she was as deep brown as the rest of them and not this weak, pale, washed out cream colour. She smiled.
The younger sister, not worrying so much about where her feet fell, was the first to notice the splash of colour ahead of them. As much as she was curious as to what it might be, she did not for a minute think that a wolf was one of the possibilities. As a member of a pack where the most unusual was simply an oddly-patterned black and white male - she had never seen such a bright pelt as that which had caught her eye.
In fact, when she realised it was a wolf, she gasped audibly, and backed up a few steps. "Aoede" she hissed, pointing out the male. To the two females, oddly coloured wolves were something their mother had warned them about and Venus was young enough, and sheltered enough, to not have really formed her own opinions on things yet.
Life was about to get interesting, for her.
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Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2010 8:15 pm
Fierj pricked his ears up like a shot at the sound of the gasp nearby. The sounds of water across rock had masked the pawfalls of the other wolf's approach, but there was no mistaking that sound. His suspicions of company were affirmed at Venus' utterance of her sister's name, though Fierj couldn't catch what the word was, it was certainly recognizable as a word just the same. Blue eyes flicked open and trailed up the bank, but the miserable male didn't raise his head just yet.
His glance scanned over the area the noise had come from. Several seconds passed before he could pinpoint where his visitors were. It was the lighter one that caught his attention first, then the darker one. Fierj let his eyes focus on them for a moment before he raised his head and slowly got to his haunches in a sitting pose. A second look revealed to the male that he was in the company of two femmes. Suddenly very embarrassed at being discovered like this, filthy, wet, and flat against the mud, Fierj blushed horribly and glanced off to one side.
Just like him to be worried about how he looked here rather than the potential danger of two against one. He looked like he wanted to slink in the water and disappear. Damn it, he was normally such an intellectual, well groomed, and certainly not ever caught like this.
"Hi." It was the only soft word that managed to slip out of his mouth.
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Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 10:03 am
Aoede snorted, not even trying to hold back the slightly derisive laughter as she stared at the wolf in the mud. He sure was slathered in the stuff. Unlike her sister, Aoede was a little more world-wise. Not much, but she had met others outside their pack and she was the type to disagree with her parents points of view simply because they were her parents. She'd even had a few flirtatious trysts with some of the more brightly coloured wolves she could find nearby in rebellion but even they hadn't matched the colours that were still visible below the thick, sloppy layer of mud covering the stricken male.
"Did you uhm" she sniggered "uh fall over?" she was trying to be nice, she really was, but life threw things like this at her. It wasn't fair and she had to try her hardest not to guffaw, especially when he seemed to be embarrassed by their presence. As he should be, look at the state of him!
Venus was better natured than Aoede and she could well understand being uncomfortable with how one looked but, well, he was orange! and yellow! The younger female tended to kindness over cruelty, but she was feeling a little worried about being around the type of wolf her mother had told them, since birth, was innately bad.
Aoede's childishness goaded her into action, though. "Aww Aydee" she said, using the name she'd used for her big sister since she was too young and unable to pronounce it better "don't tease him, the poor thing he looks miserable". Her eyes flicked a look towards the male again, and she could see his discomfort. She was trying hard not to stare, but it was a bit rude not to look at someone who was actually talking to you, right?
"Uhm hello" she replied to him, shy eyes instantly going back to her sister - caught between chastising her for being mean, and being weirded out by this brightly coloured wolf. "Are you.. ok?"
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Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 3:22 pm
There were a thousand other ways this could have gone. Fierj could have had a successful hunt and offered to share a meal with two pretty femmes, he could have gone onward in spite of his failures and kept up a good face. Hell, he could have gone swimming instead of lying there like a sap. But none of that had happened, and now he was being snickered at by one wolf, and the other one looked like she was wracked with nervousness and was only being polite out of a sense of duty.
Well, best make something of the situation. At the very least Fierj had some company. "Yeah, actually," he muttered to this 'Aydee', "I was running along, slid on the bank, and ate mud for dinner instead of rabbit." Slowly he brought himself to a sitting position, and then looked disdainfully at the stream. "And I'm fine, aside from my embarrassment at being caught in such a state."
A heavy sigh and a heave later, the firey male was on his paws again. He shook in an attempt to get some of the filth out of his fur, but it was to no real avail. Following that attempt, Fierj slipped back into the stream and went about the task of removing ground in mud.
"I apologize," he muttered, proper nature returning to him slowly though the flush on his cheeks was still present. "If I don't get some of this off, I'll die of shame. Its painfully unlike me to be found like this, and worse that its by two pretty ladies like yourselves on a pleasant afternoon."
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Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 7:50 am
Aoede's guffaws receded a little as his gentlemanly manners came to the fore. It wasn't that she saw them as a sign of good character, or felt that good manners were an innately desirable thing, but that they sounded kinda nice and were romantic, right? She also didn't half mind that he had called her pretty, though she'd have preferred beautiful. Of course she was pretty - she knew she was - and he was kind to say the same to poor little Venus, with her washed-out coat - afterall, she always was so conscious of her looks. She loved her little sister and pretty might describe her, but she wasn't as stunning as Aoede thought she herself looked.
If he took care of himself, like his tone suggested he did, he might not look half-bad himself. "Well, better scrub up good" she said, watching him bathe "better than dying of shame, I mean, it'd be bad if you smelled as well as being covered in that awful mud." Sensitivity was so not her strong point, and the brown female couldn't help herself - she didn't think she was being cruel, just 'funny', but rarely did anyone else 'get' the joke.
Venus, for all she loved her sister, glared at her. Sometimes she could be so damn mean, and this male was being so nice! She was caught between her natural wariness of strangers, colourful ones at that, and sympathy - drawn to liking him because of his obvious care about how he looked to others, which she could relate to, and his seemingly natural good manners.
That he had called her pretty caused her some pause, though. Having lived alongside her sister for so long she thought of herself as plain, dowdy. Although her sister, kindly for the brown female, called her 'pretty' or 'nice looking', Venus always knew that this was just sisterly love talking and that her older sibling really didn't think that she was more than bland. Aoede had a beautiful deep pelt, with slivers of silvery highlights glowing through it - her own creamy pelt, with a slightly reddened mane made her look like half of her colouring had come off, compared to her family. She wondered, for a moment, if he was making fun, and then, with a sigh, decided to file it as him being polite.
She walked, tentatively, to the water's edge. "Can I help you with that?" she asked, wondering if he'd be able to get the flecks which had splashed up behind his neck and ears. Although she was shy, she also had a much kinder soul than her sister, and despite their differences, she didn't want to see the male suffer more of Aoede's 'humour' or just general discomfort that she imagined must come from being covered in mud.
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Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 1:42 pm
If Fierj had been being honest, he would have called Aoede pretty, and Venus beautiful, but it was downright rude to make such comparisons aloud. At least the flattery had given pause to the laughter being thrown in his direction. He kept up his scrubbing, a stream of grit coming off of him and flowing down the river to reveal more of the bright yellow and orange underneath by the second. Ears flicked back at the brown one's comments. No, he didn't get the humor, to him, everything sounded quite literal. "Yes, well, ..." Fierj stammered, shrugged, and found no acceptable response other than, "thank you, I'll be sure to be presentable, m'lady." Ugh, if only he could drop his attitude on command and not just when he was having a terrible day.
Blue eyes followed the ivory female to the water's edge. Sharp ears had picked up her sigh, what had made the ghostly beauty unhappy? And then she'd offered to help him with the dirt, and Fierj was certain that before this was over he was going to die of something or other. Orange cheeks turned a deeper shade and he glanced away from her. A bath with a strange female? It was scandalous. It was crude. There was someone watching for goodness sakes. His mother would have struck him for the thought. It was unthinkable, it was... something Fierj really did need help with, if he was honest with himself. "Please." came the hoarse reply. Oh gods, she was going to have to touch him for this, wasn't she?
He did his best to swallow his nervousness, and made himself very busy with brightening the white of his front paw.
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Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 6:41 pm
Venus may have been sheltered, but she wouldn't have understood Fierj's embarrassment, even had he explained it to her. Her only discomfort came from the fact that he was a stranger and oddly-coloured, something she had been told to avoid like the plague. The fact that he was a male wolf didn't really occur to her in that way. It didn't seem inappropriate to her to help him, especially after the way her sister had treated him.
Stepping into the cool water, she waded out a few steps and, like a mothering wolf, began to help him wash - nosing and splashing and licking. The mud didn't taste of much, just an earthyness, and she studied his deeply coloured coat as she helped clean it. It was just like her own, really, apart from the colour. There was nothing about him which screamed 'different' and his manners had been, so far, impeccable.
Beginning to question the lifelong 'knowledge' her mother had passed down to her regarding wolves 'like him', she concentrated on her work, not realising she was, at times, staring.
Aoede, still on the bank and taking a moment to clean her own legs a little, grinned lasciviously at Fierj. "Jeez, you really are a smooth talker, I've never seen my sister take an interest in a helping a male wash himself before" she said, letting her words drip with implications. She could see it made him uncomfortable to have her sister there and that her sister was oblivious to said discomfort.
Venus, being the plainer of the two, to her mind, had never been as... forthright when it came to males. She wondered if her younger sibling would ever let loose and have fun some day, and had wondered if there was something wrong with her, at times. She wasn't going to let this opportunity to tease pass, hoping it'd spur her sister into a realisation that males could be looked at as something other than brothers or relatives to be looked after.
Her comment was rewarded with a glare from Venus, and then a slow realisation dawning. She grinned, as her sister started to back off and then stubbornly continued on washing the strange, shy male, shooting glares at Aoede. Maybe she wasn't hopeless after all.
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Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2010 7:20 am
If Fierj could have paled and fainted right then without drowning, he may have. The moment Venus touched him for the first time he all out froze, full stop, emergency. A renewed stream of sediment flowed from him into the water, then started to wane again. Several long seconds passed, and he decided that she really was just being helpful, even if he was feeling terribly scandalized. He closed his eyes and got back to his own work, the temporary blindness granting him a little relief from embarrassment. Gods, please don't let her help with my belly fur.
He missed the grin from Aoede, but the words came to his ears just fine, snapping him back to attention. Fierj may have caught those dripping implications, if he had been taught how to. As it stood, he just didn't 'get' it. At least, not entirely.
"Why thank you," he responded, fully aware already of how 'smooth' he was, not that he would dare admit it, "but I didn't talk anyone into anything that I'm aware of." But the one helping him paused to shoot the one on the bank a glare, for what reason the male just couldn't guess. Whatever it was, it didn't change the situation much, because Venus kept getting the dirt out of his fur. He was nearly brightened up now, the full color of his coat showing through. On reflection, maybe he should have stayed dirty, bid the ladies adeu, and kept on hunting while he had a shot of blending in. But that would have been terribly rude.
"I'm Fierj, by the way." He couldn't believe he had neglected to introduce himself, though the situation was a little... odd for proper manners. "Thank you for helping me, m'lady," he whispered to Venus, a smile starting on the male's lips. He started from the water, the last bits of earth leaving him as he moved through the stream. "And thank you for the audience, I suppose," to Aoede. "What brings you two out this way? I would have asked earlier, but I was in a bit of a state. My apologies."
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Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2010 12:43 am
For the first time, Aoede looked a little discomfited and she stole a glance at her sister, knowing the younger female was even less comfortable than she at being adrift. She didn't want to talk nor think about their old pack. Not yet, anyway.
"We're just travelling" she said, casually "you know, out looking for life's next big adventure... like muddy wolves who need a bath". Turning the moment into her own special brand of humour brought her out of the funk she had thinking about the old home she missed.
"What about you? Do you often take mud baths?" what she really ought to ask, she figured, was whether he was part of a pack nearby and if it was safe to travel this way - but worrying about stuff like that was soooo dull.
Really! Her sister could be so rude... She did understand her reticence to talk about their old pack, though. She thought her big sister sometimes felt a little bit responsible for the accident - though it could be in no way her fault. Rumours she had heard about things which went on before her birth suggested that Aoede had been the cause of some strife which might have led to her current guilty feelings. She buried them well, though...
"I'm Venus and my sister" she nodded her head to the bank "is Aoede. And you're quite right, I was happy to help. I think you're mostly clean now" she said, giving him a critical eye - if there was one thing her sister had given her, it might be an appreciation for cleanliness and a sharp appearance.
Her own lips quirked up in a small smile at his thanks - he seemed such a gentleman - she had expected... well, she didn't know what she expected, of one of these crazy coloured wolves. He was beyond the levels of brightness and swirly patterns her mother had ever talked about but he seemed nice. Overwhelmingly so.
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