Quaking Vale maximum effort

Delayed thread for @Larkspur so Cas can try and make him her friend. Yes, the title IS a Deadpool reference.

Cas felt like she was doing quite well for the pack - she'd usually work her tail off for a day, and then go find Niles and sleep through the night, and then take a day of rest. She was feeling well enough this particular day to hunt, and had gone out to catch something more sustainable than a rabbit. She'd actually ended up with a very fat marmot that she'd happened to find scavenging some unripe berries, and had taken by surprise.

It was kind of difficult for her to drag all the way back to a cache, but she managed, her teeth fastened deep into the furry brown creature's back and her shoulders quivering with the effort. Eventually, she did put the fat thing on the top of the food pile and wagged her tail in triumph, feeling as though she had just accomplished something wonderful. And without her body aching in response, essentially, she felt like she was on top of the world.

The young wolf took a rabbit from the pile and stepped back to find a fallen tree to climb on top of. She turned two circles and stretched before flopping down on the bark, the rabbit between her paws. As she took a bite of the food, she took a moment to simply look around her, at what the group of them had created. The silver-dusted girl didn't think she'd ever stop feeling guilty for leaving Wild Rye Fields, and she missed @Askan desperately, but this place already felt more like home than anywhere else she'd ever been.

Everything was good right now, aside from the fact she didn't have her favorite douchebag with her. She had Sahalie, and Alastor, and Niles. She'd begun a blossoming friendship with Draven, and then there was Kuwindwa. Larkspur was the only one she wasn't too fond of, and she was looking to change that. She just wasn't sure how.

He often saw how hard Castel worked, but regardless of it, Larkspur still didn't like the girl. He did his best to avoid her and with the few times that they did see one another, their meetings weren't much more than snarls and teeth. This was much better than pretending to play nice, which with Alastor, was turning out to be torture. Not to say that he could hold everything back, he just... had to pick his battles. There were few things that Larkspur forgot, and if he let one snide remark easily slide from Alastor's lips, then something was wrong.

As he had done most days, Larkspur made a point to keep himself busy. With a lot on his mind that he'd rather not have on his mind, doing small things like hunting, or patrolling, or marking all seemed like better things than worrying about the trip he probably did, but probably didn't, need to take.

Needless to say, when he saw one of his least favorite pack mates chowing down on something from the cache, he wasn't happy. His lips curled back to show the girl his teeth, a growl rumbling in his throat as he approached. Most days he'd turn off and find something else to do, but lately he had been a little bit discombobulated and tended to stick with his task at hand.

He peeked at the cache, seeing one particularly large and fresh marmot at the top of the pile. It smelled like Castel, and the first thought that crossed his mind was to take it and destroy it, or maybe toss it off into the misty forest for something else to feast on. He let the thoughts go, and tried to think of someone else that might have really enjoyed and appreciate the meal. Anyone would, but Larkspur would not.

Larkspur knocked it off of the top of the pile and took to inspecting the rest of the cache.

There are several fresh rabbit tracks in the mud. Hunt Opportunity

I am so sorry this took so long to get to you!

As if on queue, the pale-furred asshole arrived on the scene. Speak of the devil and he shall appear, and all that jazz, Cas presumed. The girl had no clue why the old man hated her so much, and the sight of him sparked up a bit of her temper. But she was above fighting back with someone who equaled her in rank - she wanted the pack to run smoothly, and if both seconds were snapping at each other the entire time, that was a complete impossibility.

It also helped that Cas felt a sense of superiority for being the better person of the two.

What did not help was that the grump walked right over to the cache and knocked her marmot to the forest floor. The girl's eyes narrowed momentarily, and she deliberately took a bit longer to chew her current bite so that she did not say something too rude to the man. After a few seconds of careful deliberation, she swallowed her morsel and licked her chops.

"The marmot's a bit too fatty for your delicate figure, hunh?" she teased, her tail thumping lightly on the log behind her. The comment was light and sarcastic, but she had to keep the glare from her features as she watched the elder wolf scavenge for something more suited to his tastes.

God she hated that man.