The cold was brutal. Pip had grown used to having her burly mate around to cuddle against and Aegir curled on her legs and Kyrios  wrapped with them. Feeling the lap of waves against her hind legs and midsection was disarming. The sea?

Weakly, the little mute lifted her head. It took far more effort than she wanted to admit. She'd never felt so weak in her life. But she was shivering. That was good. Pip knew with how cold it was and she felt, if she wasn't shivering, then she was in even bigger trouble. Though it took nearly all that she had, the agouti female dragged herself from the water. A river, she realized now. Not the sea. The waves were muted and scarcely present. Just a result of the wind making water lap against her thighs.

Where...?

A storm. The tree barreling towards her. Waterfalls. Rapids and tumbling under again and again.

Pip shook her head which turned into shaking out her entire sopping wet coat. Her limbs shuddered beneath her and she stumbled to maintain balance. She panted with the exertion, but refused to fall back onto the riverbank. The bite of frost was far too clear on her paws. She needed shelter and food.

Her belly gave a vicious grumble.

Not in that order, she amended.

Exhausted as she was, the little mute didn't think to take full stock of her surroundings. Pip simply began walking away from the water. As much as she normally loved the element, it was the last place she wanted to be near. She had no way of knowing how far she'd been carried. There was no immediate recognition of these particular woods. The farther she walked, the stranger the trees became. The branches were wispy and thin and covered in ice. It was eerily beautiful.

The frosting of snow made it easy to find the upturned earth and scent the carrion beneath the soil. Easy, too, to scent pack-wolf markers. But her weakness and the greedy growl of her stomach reminded her she didn't have the liberty to choose morality over survival. With a quick apology to whoever had buried the cache and the sea gods for resorting to stealing, Pip's claws scrambled at the dirt to get to the covered deer haunch below. It was barely uncovered before the little female began gnawing hungrily at it.

Dirt intermixed with the taste of dried out, half-frozen muscle and sinew. Pip couldn't find it in herself to be picky or care. As far as she was concerned, it was a seasoning. Another day, it would matter and she'd dig it free better. Not today. Today, she would have eaten carrion-flavored dirt. She was lucky to have dirt-flavored carrion instead.

Not that the little mute had time to savor it. While she'd had several minutes to herself with her stolen meal, all too quickly came the sound of a snarl. Russet-tinged ears pricked and her head yanked up only to see a furious silver male racing for her. A true loner would have cut their losses and run. But clearly, Pip was ill suited for loner life. Too used to living with a pack and playing by their rules, instead of running, her silly brain thought only to submit.

Immediately, Pip tucked her tail and dropped to the ground, rolling on her back to expose her belly in the hope for mercy. She licked her lips as if to hide the evidence on her face, serving only to spread dirt across them. It was ingrained, this reaction. Her birth-packmates had trained her hard when it came to meal times despite her siblings' efforts to keep her out of trouble. Some never had come to terms with her handicap and felt she deserved less than everyone else regardless of how many fish she provided for the pack. If she submitted early on, her wanting to eat could usually be forgiven. So she submitted with the same hope that her childhood prepared her to feel; giving in sooner rather than later would allow forgiveness to happen just as swiftly.

There was truly no excuse, however, and she knew that. She could scent the pack-markers around the cache, but she'd been so hungry and she'd ignored it and she would not be doing that ever again... Lesson learned. But the mute had a feeling this lesson was just beginning.

It would never be long enough, Pip imagined, that she would forget how to behave in a situation like this. In her youth, this had been part of her daily life, though never in front of others. Her aunt had been a cruel packmate who made no secret of her wish for Pip to just disappear. She felt she was a distraction to her parents and the rest of the pack. So when the silver male grabbed her by the throat, she knew to lay still and accept it. Trying to squirm away always ended up hurting more.

There was an art to knowing when one meant to kill versus when one meant to punish. Pip had only run from her aunt once; this male didn't wear the same expression she had that day. He was furious, but not murderous.

The mute was held so stiffly that her entire body was dragged along when the brute shook her by the throat. His hold was painful and uncomfortable, but not piercing. Carefully, she swallowed past his hold while her tongue continued to flick in and out across her nose. Despite the dire situation, her belly gave an angry, rumbling growl that reminded the pair of them what she'd done. As uncomfortable as she was, she knew this was deserved. She had been stealing from - yes, a quick sniff confirmed it - his cache.