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 Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:40 pm
 "Where are you?"
Twiddle had taken to sitting on the same hill within Ignis Renatus. Nobody was quite sure why, but this was almost routine now, starting with the shortening of days into winter. Each day he would do his duty right and see that the dens were clean - that was expected of him, and he met those expectations as his payment for staying in the pack. Yet when his job was completed and the day old, he would trot to that singular hill near the growing mountains where the Aves lived and stare out to the horizon line. And every night he would ask:
"Where are you? When will you come again?"
Like the sun might one day not come to brighten the land at all.
He had done this for an entire month now, and not much progress was showing. Today Twiddle decided to try a different hill: surely a different hill would give him a different view, and therefore give him a different answer. Thus how the wolf was found sitting atop a rather random hill outside of the packlands and further to the south, his muzzle tilted towards the evening sky.
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Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 12:33 pm
 Generally speaking, it would be very unusual to have Marion be the wolf who spots and not the wolf who's spotted - one of the virtues of being big and loud and intimidating is that you have little real need of being thoroughly aware of your surroundings. Occasionally, things that are unlikely do come to happen, though, and in any case Marion was often a little quieter at night. On some level it seemed to represent something else having the upper hand with her - everything goes quiet and still, and it feels like dozens of silent eyes are watching as she bumbles.
And she did bumble: the peripheral vision she relied on to guide her paws in these woodsy rambles was now treacherously dim, and given the option of slowing down and looking down or charging forward (to hell with stubbed toes, cracked nails, bruised ankles), she tended to keep crashing around. Which, as it turned out, freed up her beady little eyes to spy another wolf, looking still and sad and weird up there, all by himself. Now, what did you say in this sort of situation?
"Hello up there," she woofed, her eyes gleaming back at him in the dark; it was not her style to be so mild, sure...but it was just so hard to really get boisterous at night.
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Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 5:45 pm
Staring overlong at a dying sun might not affect one's hearing, but it did do things to one's vision. In this instance, Twiddle heard the soft woof and correctly pinpointed the direction it came from. But with one good eye already sun-drenched from a pawful of minutes observing the fiery sky and its round occupant, it was unsurprising that when he looked upon the large figure of the wolf, all he (mostly) saw was a blurred, dark outline.
It also followed his vision wherever he looked. How curious.
"I would greet you better if I had not contracted sunspots," Twiddle returned her greeting, blinking several times in hopes of allying the obstruction - to no avail. It even remained in his sights with closed lids. Hum . . . "It may be contagious; the sun is very vengeful upon those who seek to pry at his bedtime."
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Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 2:06 pm
Marion frowned; she was the kind of wolf who needed to know what was going on, and it didn't take much wordplay and fancy to begin to frustrate her. Or, more specifically, she needed to be told explicitly what the game was before she could catch on how to play. So she squinted back at him, her markings reinforcing the furrow in her brow. A vengeful sun...? Well. "I don't know how vengeful it could be," she returned, "you're not on fire, or anything." She was trying! Distrustful of the whole artful feel to the subject, but giving it a go regardless. She crashed, in her unconscious way, through some of the intervening distance between them, possibly spurred by the notion that there might be something really wrong with him, an actual disease that she could see and smell. "What are you doing?"
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Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 9:49 pm
Now that was an idea he had not considered. On fire? Hmm . . . "But then, all would be in danger of that were it a risk," Twiddle responded, although he did raise a backleg to do a ponderous scratch at his ear. Still the amorphous outline plagued his sight, shimmering wherever he deigned to look - and every time he blinked, it seemed to flash, as if taunting him.
"And revenge is not always a tangible thing," he added upon blinking a few times. "Or not in my experience. But I have never had someone seek vengeance upon me, so I suppose I have no experience of which to speak. That is my opinion on my lack of true opinion on an event that has not occurred beyond the hypothetical."
Beat.
"What do you do here?"
It was as if the other wolf's question had not registered after that nice word salad had been tossed.
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Posted: Tue May 10, 2011 6:24 pm
Marion's chin pulled inwards in disapproval; this wolf was batty, wasn't he? And the way he moved his words around was wrong. Made her feel tripped up. Her lips pursed. "I'm a spy," she answered, feeling curmudgeonly, "I'm on my way to an assignment." She cocked her head, scowling curiously at his strange countenance. His nose was the exact same color as a pillbug. "Are you blind in that eye?"
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Posted: Tue May 10, 2011 6:41 pm
"I am," he replied, though he appeared distracted, as if it took him time longer than a normal wolf to consider her words. "A spy for whom, and a spy for what, if you do not mind a probe? Do you spy on me, even?"
Not the sort of questions one would ask, but it was probably becoming quick that Twiddle was not bound by such conventions.
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Posted: Tue May 10, 2011 6:50 pm
"I spy on everybody," she admitted with a wolfish grin, all the while trying not to flash that blind eye some rude gesture. "You have anything good to report?"
Okay, so maybe Marion could play games; at least ones of her own invention. And who knew? Maybe this spy line could get some mileage someday.
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Posted: Tue May 10, 2011 10:32 pm
Twiddle blinked. "You spy on everyone? You have a high bar to fulfill then, considering the number of non-wolf species. If you include them in your list, that is. If not, the number of targets must still be quite high for just one wolf."
Beat.
"What constitutes spying? If spying includes asking others questions, then I too am a spy." What a revelation if so! "I am not aware of how spies operate, being just now aware of my true status, so forgive me for the bombardment of questions. How do two spies converse with one another if they are spying for different wolves? Not that I would know who I am spying for, but they must have been quite clever to keep it hidden from me."
Again Twiddle went to backstratching his bent ear. "For that matter, who do you spy for? Or are you as clueless as I am?"
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Posted: Fri May 13, 2011 5:05 pm
Her nose wrinkled in a faint snarl. The more this wolf spoke, the more intensely that feeling of distrust pushed at her, made it difficult not to flip around into combat mode, though she was fairly sure he must be harmless. Though he had immediately ruined the spying game. Experiencing a rush of anger (oh, it was just like being a puppy again!), she turned her gaze pointedly away from him, her ears pinned back along her skull. Wouldn't it be something if he just burst into flame? "Do you get told a lot that you don't talk correctly?"
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Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 4:02 pm
What was it that spies did again? Ask questions and investigate? Ah, but he did so already, so no wonder he was a spy! Though perhaps a dull one if he did not realize it sooner.
Dull enough to not see much danger in the angry wrinkle of the she-wolf's lips. Perhaps she was exhibiting signs of discomfort because he was beginning to pick up a thread of information she was hiding?
"Have you been told that you are wearing the wrong skin?" Twiddle parried, seeming to have forgotten her question. He had only just noticed the scrap of brown fur that was not native to the she-wolf's patterning. "Is there a story behind it?"
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 6:25 pm
She looked back to him, fiercely, her lips tightened; there was a story, and the story was that her mother had found her so unsightly as a newborn pup that she had required a bearskin to shield her eyes. In the intervening years, of course, she had reworked the slight in her mind to embody something of which she could be very proud, but somehow Twiddle's question didn't make her feel like a bear. It made her feel like a little girl whose mother winces away at the sight of her. Her little eyes stared hard at the other wolf. "Yes."
Talking had gotten her nowhere good at all. Possibly a long, silent stare would produce better results.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 7:12 pm
This time, he was aware of that stare. Quite aware of it.
Granted, Twiddle was never any good with catching social cues, and it often took concentrated efforts like this one to make him react to it at all. This didn't always include him understanding the meaning behind it. What with the multiple meanings that could lie behind a single movement, it was never good to assume, he thought.
In this, case, however, it was obvious even to Twiddle that the scrap of fur was particularly personal to the she-wolf. The question now was how to respond.
He re-assesed her very quickly. Burly, strong-willed, confident even - not one to instigate a fight with.
But he wanted to know about the fur. He needed to now. Why, he didn't even understand, only that it was a compulsion of his ever since he could recall first sentience - that being a month before finding Ignis. Time to recall the better options he had tried to keep his body intact against more aggressive wolves.
First, Twiddle slowly blinked once. Then he softened his features, relaxed his muscles save for those needed to keep him sitting upright. He noted that the sunspots had vanished from his vision, which was nice - he was able to actually see just how orange the other wolf was.
Then he slowly blinked once again, just in case.
"If you do not mind, I would enjoy hearing the tale," he finally said, his body posture lightly hunched.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 7:34 pm
Marion's volatility was both a strong and a weak point of character. Depending on the shift and the recipient, really, it could be argued either way.
Twiddle's new tactic was likely going to be effective, for no reason other than that it made him look so strange that Marion started to get curious again instead of angry. Her glare changed to an unintentionally scowly squint, and she held her silence past his question just to make sure he was going to keep on moving as if he had never had a body before. When she spoke, her voice was cool and level and a little strange, like his. "I'll need to know your name first," she instructed, "and the name of your pack."
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 9:27 pm
And he nodded in return. Information for information. Fair enough, he thought. Honor among thieves, it seemed - or rather, among spies, for they were not truly the same in his opinion.
Well, he would trust her. Best to trust stronger wolves, yes.
"Twiddle," he introduced himself with a slight incline of his head, the tufts of hair close to covering his blinded eye. "Or that is all I remember when I think of the very word 'name'. My pack is Ignis Renatus, though as of late it does not feel very much like a community: more like the discardings of fall in the river. Together for now, but easily and soon enough pulled away from each other once more."
He paused for a moment, looking thoughtfully at his feet. "It was a good run. A test trial of a pack, but unfortunately short-lived. I will miss cleaning each den, and the faithful branch that accompanied me . . ." He almost seemed . . . wistful about it, if an emotional adjective could be used in this instance.
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