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 Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 9:09 pm
 Things were not going at all the way Kai had hoped they would. For one, he had been treated rather rudely by that lone wolf he'd run into. For another, the life of romance he had envisioned for himself was, so far, seeming a little less adventurous than he would have liked.
And, he still had yet to steal anything from anyone.
Some prince of thieves he was! No, that was it. He wasn't going back to the others until he had something worthwhile to show for it. Even if he had to spend a week out here, wandering around. Even if he had to stay out in the rain.
...He really hoped it didn't rain.
He passed a night out in the wild (wondering, only once, whether Mon was missing him, and then immediately changing the mental subject as it was too complicated to think about) and, once morning had come, gave himself a nice long stretch and decided to try things again.
He was some distance from home, now, though not so far away that he couldn't easily make it back. He'd had the sense at least to wander away from the Reign of Terror packlands, rather than toward them, and found himself instead coming upon something new. Something...very peculiar.
He paused, brow furrowed, paw upraised mid-step. What was that smell?
He had smelled it once before. On Shagufta, when they first met. What was it called? Some kind of food, she'd said. Some kind of...human food.
Well what better opportunity! A chance to steal something and get breakfast, all at once!
Kai wasn't overly certain what humans were, but he figured they couldn't be too much of a problem. So, trotting rather boldly forward, he followed his nose to the scent...and came into view of the oddest sort of encampment, some kind of cluster of strange above-ground dens. Some of them were smoking and all of them smelled funny, a creature-smell he'd never encountered before. How exceptionally odd.
Thinking little of it, the (altogether too conspicuous) blue wolf trotted forward, sniffing about for the precise location of whatever that lovely thing was he was searching for.
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Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 9:33 pm
Aleu's "collar" was among the casualties. A devastating loss second only to the two-legger's acceptance of "normal" wolves as visitors. Wren hadn't taken that; someone else had long ago. Still, she hadn't exactly helped the efforts of proving they could be lived with, not just tolerated, if only both sides would allow it.
There were other clusters of two-leggers that still upheld an acceptance or indifference, of course. Aleu knew they were out there and it would have just been so easy to sedate her need for company there. "There" was not "here", which was enough of a reason not to. She had been raised here and only here. Her path would wander, wander far, but she would never forget what she owed them.
If it meant scaring off a wolf on their behalf... so be it.
She'd been dozing outside one of the huts when the scent drifted to her. Without thinking, she barked. A lot. To them it was just a means of sounding the alarm, but to Kai...
"You better run fast!"
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Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 9:52 pm
Wait! Who was talking?
He whipped around, catching sight of another wolf -- another female, but this one looking perhaps not so scraggly -- and he blinked at her in confusion. Run? Why should he run? Was he in danger somehow?
Feeling a bit foggy (and not quite grasping that she was chasing him away) he tilted his head and smiled good-naturedly. "...Oh. Are you here to take food, too?"
The concept that a wolf could actually live with a human was still entirely alien to him. He was having a hard enough time figuring out what a human was to begin with.
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Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 11:20 pm
Aleu's loyalties were divided among man and wolf of a certain variety. Only "certain" wolves and "certain" humans left her conflicted. Against a human she didn't know with a wolf she did, she would fight for the wolf. Against a wolf she didn't know with a familiar man by her side - you guessed it. The man that sought her out, curious about the noise, was indeed familiar; so, Aleu would fight for him - if she had to. Violence was a last resort, not a Plan A. She wished she could speak to her two-legged friends and tell them this.
She couldn't.
What she could do, all she could do, was watch when one of them grabbed a hold of their weapons and beckoned for the others using a call she could never understand. She recognized it and knew it was for - it meant "hunt". They spent hours twiddling away with those sticks and usually struck down deer with them. Full grown bucks sometimes.
She frowned, jerked her head back and warned again, "You better run!" unsure if they'd kill him or just frighten him away. In the case of the later, she would feel bad, but not bad enough to stop them.
If only he'd known her first.
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Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 11:38 pm
Kai's ears flicked. He wasn't entirely sure what all this was about, but he caught sight of an odd-looking creature that filled him with a sense of uneasiness. He didn't know what he was doing with that odd stick, but he thought maybe he shouldn't hang around to see, and instead -- finally -- followed the other wolf's advice.
Shagufta had said something about this, once. Now he understood a little.
Turning tail, Kai started running for cover, aiming to weave through underbrush and trees if he could. It had helped well enough against a wolf that had attacked him, maybe it would help here....
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Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 11:57 pm
 
Never much for conversation, they walked in silence at a respectable distance away. (Wouldn't want the trees to think they had something going on or anything.) Their thoughts were kept to themselves and their eyes were kept forward, wrenched from their (unspoken) assigned positions by the noise of... what was that?
Dakolin didn't recognize it, but Wren did, and peddled to the side of the hill to take a look down. Below them, the flash of familiar teal and an equally familiar pack of the two-leg beasts - she had just robbed them. One did not so easily forget their victims. She wasn't... positive it was Kai, not at first, but just-so-happened to get one clear sight of him, darting from one set of shrubbery to the next, from her look out point. She hadn't noticed while she watched him, Dakolin watched her.
"That idiot," she spat, turning toward the nearest slope.
"You're going to help him?" Dakolin asked. He sounded neither worried nor criticizing, simply curious.
Wren stopped and turned to him, looking as surprised as he was to see her look that way. Not too obvious, but obvious enough. He shook his head and had to laugh.
"I'm not getting involved. When you did you get conscious?"
Wren rolled her eyes and hurried to make up for lost time. That question she'd save for later - she didn't know the "why" or the "when" yet. Asking herself would slow her down, something she couldn't afford or he'd - what? Get killed? So?
Bah.
Wren had made it down in record-breaking time (what she lacked in muscle she made up for in speed), catching up and eventually passing them. Off to the right, where she wouldn't be seen yet, she got just far enough ahead she could move directly into Kai's path. "Idiot!" she recited a second time, albeit a first where he could hear her. "This way! Come on! Come on!"
Wren added the second, emphasized echo of her demand before he had the chance to do anything, as if she'd already predicted he would think her a sock puppet for some trap. She turned after that, turned and ran to the East with some words of, um, encouragement.
"Hurry up!"
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Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2010 1:07 am
"What -- " he did precisely what he shouldn't do, which was skid to a stop to stare up at her in pure bafflement. How did she get here? And why was she yelling at him?
Oh, right!
Shaking himself, he started running again. The reality of the threat had yet to kick in. Being chased by Savhir had been an obvious threat, an in-your-face terror. This was...confusing, and didn't seem like nearly as big of a deal as these strangers were making it all out to be.
"What's going on?" He asked, running in an easy lope, quite satisfied that those ridiculous creatures on their two legs were nowhere near fast enough to catch up with him.
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Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2010 1:20 am
"What's going on?"
Aside from Wren hating herself at that very moment? "One of these times I'm just going to let your sorry a** die," she snapped, shoving him from the side. It would have been easier to just tell him they needed to change the direction of their gait, but it also would have been more polite - Wren had no intention of coming off as agreeable to this wolf. None. "That way," she demanded, just in case. Kai had already proven to be all sorts of special; she wouldn't be surprised if he stopped to complain she'd bumped into him, so no one would blame her for being a little more thorough. (Except that they would because somehow, someway, everything was always her fault. Her sisters had made sure of that.)
"In here."
The log was on solid ground - no, scratch that, it only looked it. Wren dug out the leaves and the dirt that lined the bottom and shoved her face beneath it. With some uncomfortable twisting and turning she managed to take complete cover under the fallen timber. She didn't look to see if Kai had followed. Not yet. First, she dared a peek out to watch for any particularly dedicated two-legger still pursuing them. There was always one with more stamina than the others.
"Are you an idiot?" She felt like she'd asked this before, and if she had, she felt like she'd known the answer the first time, too.
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Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2010 11:35 am
One of these times? he thought. What an odd way to phrase things! As though they had some sort of history together, as though she meant they would be having these sorts of run-ins together in the future. A little presumptuous, wasn't it?
"Ow," he said, but obediently followed her lead, still feeling a bit baffled. He glanced over his shoulder a few times, checking to see if they were being followed, but he followed her into the log without question.
He crawled in behind her, now completely baffled as to what was going on.
Was he an idiot? Well, maybe. "I...don't think so?" he asked, more than a little stymied. "Some other wolf just yelled at me, and then there were these weird animals on two legs, and then you yelled at me." Was he sulking a little? Well, maybe.
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Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 11:56 pm
Wren, the very same wolf who had asked him the question to begin with, smacked his nose and ordered, "Shut up. They'll hear you."
The hit had been more of a tap than anything, a touch so harmless and featherlight it could have been mistaken as playful in alternate circumstances with a different wolf since Wren didn't strike one as someone who had been jovial at any point in her life. Dakolin said once he could practically picture her as a scrawny little ankle-bitter bitching at anyone for anything, fur on end and posture tense. Maybe he was wrong and maybe he wasn't. She looked that way now regardless. To her credit, her temper relaxed when her muscles did, once she was positive they would not be abruptly ambushed from somewhere in the shadows of the forest. (By two-leggers, at least. Her sisters tended to spring out of nowhere no matter how prepared you were. Tch.)
Pieces of the bark scratched against her back when she clawed her way out but Wren ignored them. You didn't get your a** handed to you time after time without developing some kind of pain tolerance. Smarts came later -- the street variety. She'd gone a while without any real injuries and the ache against her back was a testament to it. The little pricks reminded her how long it had been since she'd gone through suffrage beyond being nipped by a rabbit.
Life was good, Wren decided.
--And then there was Kai.
Some idiot waltzed in and there she was, under a damn log running from damn two-leggers because he was just such an idiot.
Such.
An.
Idiot.
Took one to know one, didn't it?
Like a child looking both ways before crossing the street (and Heaven knew their threat was just as deadly as being hit by a car in modern society), she turned her nose to the East and then to the West. "You're lucky," she concluded, "as the stupid ones usually are. Maybe I should have given your little orange princess the correct directions. If she doesn't kill you, you'll kill yourself on your own."
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Posted: Sun Dec 26, 2010 12:18 am
He shut up abruptly at her touch. Kailani was good at following orders. An ironic fact, considering he had previously generally been in a position to give them instead, but he had never been as good at that. Perhaps the smartest thing he had done was renounce his birthright, although he hadn't done it for that reason.
At any rate, he obediently crouched in the cramped log, entirely baffled as to what the big deal was but prepared to politely wait for an explanation.
He followed behind her, wincing also as the bark scraped at his scarred hindquarters. The wounds had healed, but the flesh was still tender, and it took some self-control to hold back a whimper.
He was learning!
"I still don't quite understand -- " he started, then paused, blinking, temporarily dumbfounded. His ears fell back to his skull and his honey-gold eyes narrowed. "....orange princess?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 26, 2010 1:09 am
Wren shot him a look that was disdainful, impatient -- anything negative, more or less, she crammed in that single glance. This wolf, blamed for much more than she should have been, had in turn become accustomed to blaming others. For everything. Big or small. In "these moods" (given label by word of Dakolin), the smallest wrongdoing was scrutinized as some ghastly awful crime against her.
"Yes, that's what I said. If you think I'm going to have a dramatic moment of realization with you..." Cue originality in three, two-- "You're an idiot," she huffed. The bits of wood still clinging to her fur were shaken off and with them went any reserve she'd had about keeping things to herself. "She came by demanding to know where you were. I steered her off course a little, but she was skeptical so I don't know how well it worked. Either way, that makes twice now that you owe me."
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Posted: Sun Dec 26, 2010 1:19 am
Orange...princess?
Did Kai know any orange wolves? None came immediately to mind. Well, Naiad, but she was hardly orange. Kind of a sunny gold, really. And Mon had a bit of an orange glow about her, but she was definitely cream-colored. And neither of them were princesses, really, or quick to be conflated with them.
And in any case, what would some orange female wolf be doing looking for....
"....Oh sweet ocean breezes," he said, then, and the puzzle piece fell into place in his mind with a nearly-audible click.
He did know an orange wolf!
A pair of them, in fact. Commoners, servants, from a past that seemed like a lifetime ago. The mother, a weird little thing, hardly ever spoke, refugee from that pack that had been dissolved in that raid....and the daughter. The hunter, the scout. The spunky thing with those smoldering blue eyes.
But surely she didn't mean that orange wolf.
Suddenly, the mystery of the apparently-dangerous two-leggers was no longer fascinating, and he zoned in entirely on this new piece of information. "She said she was looking for me? Whatever for?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 26, 2010 1:29 am
"She said she was looking for me? Whatever for?"
Disbelief. Wren's face executed an alignment that could only be defined as disbelief. The shock and awe came and went; there one second, gone the next. Her eyes were not too round for too long. Her voice was not speechless beyond a heartbeat or two.
"Well gosh, I have no idea," she replied sarcastically. "I tied her up and tried to leak information out of her, Your Majesty, but it was no good!" Wren snorted, reminding him, "You already owe me. Why should I give you anything else? Just what kind of thief are you?"
Other than a bad one.
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Posted: Sun Dec 26, 2010 1:37 am
A bad one, he thought, but didn't say it as he was fairly certain her question was rhetorical. He was quite glad that his current packmates were nowhere to be seen.
Still, it didn't make much sense. He could understand certain packmembers looking for him. His father. The pack's beta. The advisors. The lead guards. Any of them would have been a viable choice for his rescue committee. But the knowledge that, of all the wolves at their disposal, they had sent the half-sized angry scout? He wasn't sure quite what to make of that. He had a dozen other questions -- was she alone? did she say what she wanted? did she bring news from the pack? -- but he thought it best not to press the issue. Wren looked pretty mad.
"I'm sorry," he said, and looked genuinely apologetic. "I should not abuse your kindness. I do thank you, for saving me, as I'm sure I don't know what sort of danger I'm really in." He offered her a winning smile. He doubted it would have much effect, but it was genuine, and that was the best he could give. "I owe you, as you say. What would you like?"
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