Skittles found himself in another stretch of woods when he realized that not only had the sun hid itself, but the air had become thick with anticipation of rain. Craning his neck, he could confirm the ominous shade of the sky, the silence of the nature around, and the humidity of the atmosphere that made his fur feel all the hotter, and sticky, the ends of his hairs curling. Unceremoniously, a droplet of water found it's way to his nose. Without hesitation, the sound of pitter-patter began, glossy liquids tearing from the sky, to the canopy, and the remnants of that dripping from above. A kind of filtration system, the highest heights got the most liquid while the earth below always seemed to catch the least. Needless to say, it would fill the creek nearby and surely wash out the markings that he'd laid the day before claiming a one hundred by one hundred plot of land all for himself.

He scrambled to a nearby tree with a thick trunk, hoping it would be large enough to shelter him from the onslaught of water which was sure to drench his already dirty pelt. He had gone through this last time he was dirty: the uncomfortable sticky feeling of glue that tied each clump of fur to the next, accompanied by a heavy feeling and immense exertion required to move. Common sense told him to hide from mother nature's events and this occasion was no differently. Catching his breath, he sat into mostly dry ground and took a few moments to marvel at the skies above.

It dawned on him that he was bored. And that he'd probably continue to be as he didn't want to get wet. Beneath his makeshift shelter for poor individuals such as himself, he began to rack his brains. What could he do to keep himself busy? A smile curled itself around his maw already prone to grins of the largest degree. Lifting tarnished gold eyes to the sky, he pointed his buttery snout towards the clouds above and began.

"Drip drip drop little leaf little shower, drip drop, drip drop. Do do do do de do. Drip drop from the sky is falling look at the little leaf do do do de do. Drip drip drop little April shower, what could your do do de do in the sun.". His voice was akin to a fence post jammed into the jugular of a horse, exploded, stuffed with eyeballs, ballistics, and vomit all to the tune of clanging pots and pans on a migraine's best efforts. Not noticing, he continued to tarnish the perfectly good silence with the most atrocious of half-brained racket.

"Drip drop drip little leaf little shower... " he continued, a crack of rumbling thunder echoing through the clouds as if in spite of his tasteless melody. "Oh!", his skin lurched off his bones at the realization that there was something in the darkness, another wolf in fact, and by the looks of things, a male? He tilted his head to check for manly appendages and concluded that he was correct. He took the time to sample the air and noted a smell quite similiar to another he'd sampled before.

"You smell like Cali.... She's very nice but she says everyone is nervous because the stork is bringing puppies. I was a puppy once, I remember, I had lots of fun but I ate more then than I do now so you can see my stomach, see? ", he tensed his muscles to stretch his fur across his ribs, showing the bones that pathetically jutted through, one of the identifying marks of any loner : starvation or something near it.

"I can't smell anything when it's raining and water gets inside my nose. So I thought I'd pass the time by singing...", he failed to elaborate that he was virtually incapable of sitting still - or quiet - for any length of time. "Want to sing with me? My mama taught me. It's about a deer called Bambi that hides on its first rain. Dad said that Bambi was a prostitute's name. What's a prostitute? Mama disagrees.", he continued on. "Ready?"

"Drip drop drip little april shower ... ", he began again, and then paused to see if the stranger had joined him.

Singing had always been a favorite past time of his and it reminded him of happy memories. When things were simple as a pup, all one's wants and needs taken care of via paws as big as one's own body and a tongue both as rough as a waterfall and as soft as mossy velvet. With food delivered right to his mouth and the resulting waste swept away by vigilant cleaning parents, every moment was opportune for sleeping or playing. The dangers and threats of the world outside ceased to exist, death and decay, hunger and want, loneliness and boredom, were all cast aside and every desire provided out of the paws of his nurturing folks as a tiny whelp. But now that the world was both smaller - because he had grown larger - and bigger - because the world consisted of everything outside the den - life was complicated.

His life seemed to echo complicated. The past, present, and future were all a bowl of multicolored cheerios, and his particular box seemed to be a cruel joke. As if a factory had a color accident dying all of his corn flakes the wrong color and taste, say vomit, and they simply pass it off as lime asparagus, leaving the consumer in the dark and excited about the supposed novel and improved healthy choices. Sometimes it felt like he had no choices besides the obvious one. Sure, he could choose which mushroom he wanted to aim at when it was time to relieve himself, but when it was time to eat, who he encountered, and what skunk would spray him today were all forced upon him.

As his mind returned to reality from the rabbit-trail of his spaghetti-arranged thoughts, he turned to the situation at hand. He had met Cali after a rather unpleasant day where he surely should have died. In fact, it seemed like most days were like that, but Cali hadn't helped. It didn't really matter that he was running for his life, and he got the feeling that if he had ventured two more feet into the territory, regardless of whether or not the bears and bees and skunks had devoured one or all of his limbs, it would have been her teeth at his throat. He could have been no more than a skeleton and a pile of blood, like the cannibal packs. She had told him that she was annoyed by him, and that others in the pack would be so annoyed by him that not only would he be an outcast there but a mangy dinner side. So much for the Swift River Pack that he didn't know the name of, nervous, anxious, and at high alert because of the pups of the alphas.

Skittles hadn't noticed that so far all of his encounters seemed to go the same : he annoyed everyone to death. But what could be so annoying about one who only wanted to be happy. And after all, wasn't it the job of a lowly omega wolf to cheer up the pack and relieve tensions by being the kicking mule of the pack? But he had realized that his sides weren't growing any plumper, and the one thing he could find reliably to eat - porcupines - were fast scaring up his face and depleting his sense of smell, and possibly his likelihood of survival at the same time. All of these things should easily have created a Skittles as tense as the Swift River Pack, but with such thick skin, the likelihood of all these realizations would probably be delayed until his near death bed. One could only wonder if something would snap. It brought on a philosophical question, as well: if it is always better to be yourself, should it be necessary for one to change just to survive? One could always answer it with the statistics of fatal accidents and that the life of a loner was too short to even consider pondering such things.

If Marsh's mind was a finely-tuned, obsessively-sharpened Katana sitting in the most pristine and ornate display case, Skittles' mind was the burned fast food french fry that had fallen under the refrigerator two years ago so disgusting that not even the insects dare eat it, and so unhealthy that it could not decay but was forcibly preserved, like Styrofoam everlasting in a landfill dump. At the man's bafflement, Skittles detected no cause for concern and had prepared another line. And of course, the only thing better than a solo was a duet, a treasured bonding time of intimacy and comradery. But Skittles had made a grave mistake : with the drops of rain coming from above, he'd closed his eyes as he began the chorus.

"Drip- ", he suddenly felt his mouth feel different in some way but he couldn't quite put his paw on it. Nonetheless, he wasn't about to let a case of what was surely dry mouth bother him. "mrf mrff mrrrrf mrrrrrf mrrrf mrf mrrrf... ", he continued. Now opening his eyes by chance, he saw the problem. Instantly, his eyes widened and he attempted to turn his entire body, doing as best of a barrel-roll as he could imagine, and thus dragging his pelt into the new mud as he did so.

He hoped that he was facing upwards now, trying his best to put his chest to the sky, his paws tucked under his chin, and his tail humbly covering .... well, the parts that no one really wants to see. "I'm not the boss I'm not the boss I'm not the boss... ", he began to chant before his voice faded into silence. To prove his point, he let loose a small piddle, enough to wet his chest. In the wolf realm, it was the most extreme submissive posture, the scent of his urine a sort of compliance to anyone who might be interested.

Rolling his eyes away to avoid eye contact, he waited. He hadn't realized how cold or wet the ground really was, but now still, the cold had begun to seep into his coat. Slowly but surely, his skin began to shrink, trying to preserve heat, and then continue on into shivers. Would this be the end of him? He closed his eyes and gulped and tried to recount his life's story into his head but came up with nothing.

In the silence, his nerves were ablaze in anxiety, his tail helplessly trapped in an emotional struggle between right and left, flopping uselessly between the two, in a mostly immodest, yet earnest, attempt to hide his most private of parts. In his vulnerable state, vital organs exposed to all to see, his mind began to wander.

What if this wolf were a deadly wolf-eating cannibal and Skittles was merely sharpening the mans knife, tying his napkin, and serving himself on a silver platter, with garnish on the side? What if this wolf were a bad wolf who would not begin to boss him around like other wolves had done? What if this wolf hurt him? He did have to submit, didn't he? He couldn't risk any sort of confrontation, even the wind would tear him to pieces, let alone the razor-sharp precision fangs of this carnivore.

As he winced, eyebrows held captive in a mix between concern and horror, he suddenly felt the teeth of the other. His wince furthered but his body still offered no resistance. When nothing else happened, relief quenched his nerves. The submission was accepted.

Slowly, he rolled himself onto his belly to lay upright, but only to gather his bearings and rise very slowly, as if he were walking on porcupine needles. Rolling his eyes away to prevent direct eye contact, he headed back towards his tree. After a moment of sniffing, he brought forwards his meal. It was quite heavy, so he ended up dragging the lower portion of it, until at last it rested near the man's feet.

"Leftovers from breakfast, you can have it.", he added after a moment of silence, and then retreated to a drier spot closer to the trunk of the tree. Before Marsh's feet lay a one-inch thick, four foot long strip of bark and underlying wood. Gnaw marks proved that it had indeed been at least a part of Skittles' meal in the past - in truth, his entire meal plan for the last two days.