Mountain of Dire Friends in Holy Spaces

Borlla gave the boy a funny look. Character? What was he talking about? Pain and hardship? The girl sputtered with laughter, rolling onto her back, legs kicking at the air. But as he concluded, she rolled back, looking up at him. That did actually sound sort of exciting. Like a game. Borlla liked games. Except...

"Well...What if you find a monster? My brothers warn me all the time that I might find a monster if I wander away all the time." She looked Spooks up and down. "You don't look so big. A monster could gobble you up." Flashing her white milk teeth, she jumped at him, and tried to bite down on his leg. "Roar!" Before any damage could be dealt her way, she leaped out of his way, closing her mouth. If a monster could gobble him up, it could certainly gobble up her too...But she still couldn't quite wrap her mind around the fear yet.

Lurking until the end of July - Please PM/tag me to get my attention

(Wishfully) Spooks had expected Borlla to deferentially acknowledge his clearly superior wisdom that had been bestowed onto her as a gesture of benevolent goodwill and overflowing kindness. What he did not anticipate was the little fit of amusement she threw in response. For a moment he stared at her, nonplussed, before his mind kicked in. The yearling scowled indignantly at her laughing. "Well seeing as you're still so small and tiny I wouldn't expect you to understand!" he huffed, but his mild irritation was quickly tempered by Borlla's claims of monsters.

Spooks was pretty sure that monsters didn't exist - they were just tales told by adults to scare small puppies. And besides he was perfectly capable on taking on any such creatures any day! "Monsters aren't real! They're just something made up to scare you!" he exclaimed, pondering the foolishness of older wolves. They seriously needed to come up with better threats. Borlla's next words only vexed him once more, for he always had a bit of a size complex. "I'm plenty big!" he growled at her, then jerked back in surprise when she chomped down on his leg and bounced away. It didn't hurt, but Spooks wasn't about to let this little imp get away with it! He darted at her as a counterattack, intending to snatch her up by the scruff of her neck just to show her who was boss.

"What are you talking about?" She asked him with a slight tilt of her head. Monsters were real...Sure, maybe monsters was a very general sort of word, it was a lot easier than listing every single creature that posed a threat to the three-month-old. "Monsters are real. Bears and lynxes and stuff. Big teeth and claws. Grr." She growled again, clawing at the grass.

A sharp yelp broke the air as she was hoisted suddenly off of the ground. "What are you doing? Put me down you big furry...Rar!" Borlla dangled uselessly in the air, laughing through her words and kicking her paws about as best as she could. Okay, so he was bigger, and she had just learned that attacking things that were bigger than you had consequences. After a moment, she gave up kicking and went limp, growling dully. "Okay, so you're bigger than me. I still got your leg." She tried twisting around to look up at him, grinning quite wolfishly.

Lurking until the end of July - Please PM/tag me to get my attention

For a moment, Spooks blinked at Borlla. Ohhh. So that's what she meant by monsters. Well, thinking about it, he supposed that they could qualify as such. "I guess that counts," he said, "Those guys are pretty dangerous after all, but we have teeth and claws too!" Spooks had never encountered any wildcats before, although he had seen bears. Despite their large size, their lumbering movements made him laugh, but he wasn't foolish enough to go up and mess with one.

Grinning despite his mouth full of Borlla's fur, Spooks let her dangle a bit in the air for his own amusement. Besides, she deserved it for trying to challenge him! He waited until Borlla ceased her struggles and conceded defeat before he placed her back on the ground, a triumphant expression of self-satisfaction plastered onto his face. "You're going to have to wait till you grow a little bigger in order to try and beat me!" he asserted, chuckling a bit. "But you're shaping up well." Judging from her size, Spooks guessed her age to be somewhere under 5 months and wondered if she had started to learn to hunt yet. "Do you even know how to hunt yet?" he asked, curious of her abilities.

There was no way that her small array of tooth and claw would have any chance against a monster. Sure, she'd never seen a bear or a big cat, but they were monsters, and as such, they had to be large. Large packages came with even larger equipment. Her milk teeth were something to be feared, sharp little needles that could very easily break skin, but they wouldn't be there for much longer. Her current defenses against such foul beasts were in limited supply.

Once she'd been placed back on the ground, she swiftly turned on Spooks, displeasure smeared all over her. Her fur was all out of sorts, and she looked simply furious, despite the fact that it had been rather fun. Kind of like flying, except not really. Borlla sputtered in disbelief, "You were lucky that I didn't get my teeth in your leg! I would have won then!" She stuck out her tongue, and sat solidly on the ground. "Of course I can hunt! I caught a woodchuck with my brother the other day!"

Lurking until the end of July - Please PM/tag me to get my attention

Borlla didn't look very happy even though he had let her down as she demanded, Spooks thought wryly, holding back a small chuckle of amusement at the current frazzled state of her fur. "You may be able to bite my leg, but I can chew off all of yours!" he retorted smugly, an insufferable grin on his face. Granted, the task would take some time, but it was obvious that Borlla lacked adult canines that she would later get as she grew older.

Spooks raised an eyebrow at her claims of catching a mere woodchuck, but supposed that the accomplishment wasn't too shabby. "Oh?" he mused, "Not bad. Have you tried to catch a bird? I think you might find them a bit trickier." Although birds offered lean pickings, they were useful in that they were plentiful and rather fun to practice with. One had to be quick and stealthy to catch one of those feathered creatures. Not to mention that their small size made them relatively easy targets if you were fast enough. </blockquote>

Her eyes widened temporarily at his words. She lifted her front paws up off the ground, as if she could already feel him chewing them away, and sat there, balanced on her back legs for a moment, before plopping them back down. While that idea was piquant, Borlla preferred her legs attached to her body. She gave a shamed smirk in return, and stuck out her tongue again.

Birds? She'd never considered birds before. Greedily, she took in the small praise she'd been given, before playing with the idea of hunting birds. The woodchuck had been hard enough. Birds could fly! "Maybe you could teach me?" She grinned, jaw slightly dropped, tail making a muted brushing noise against the stone. She could hunt things on the ground, and soon, she'd be able to catch things out of the air too! Glancing out beyond their little cave, she noticed that it had stopped raining...Great. Borlla visibly drooped. "I need to go home now." It would probably be better to run back to Swift River before someone came running for her.

Lurking until the end of July - Please PM/tag me to get my attention

His "threatening" words seemed to silence Borlla, Spooks thought with a small surge of satisfaction. But he had to admit that her witty comebacks were fun to listen to. Not to mention she was much less acerbic and bad-tempered than his sister ever was. Teach her? To catch birds? He felt rather pleased at being asked; nobody had ever asked him to teach them anything, but then again he was still relatively young with much to learn. Still, he knew about the basic skills required to survive in the wild."Sure, why not?" he replied, pleased.

As Borlla mentioned going home, Spooks turned to look out at the horizon and found, just as she had said, that it had indeed ceased raining. The rocky terrain of the mountain base was dark with dampness and the sharp, crisp scent that accompanied rainfall hung in the air. "Oh, okay then," he said, a bit disappointed that he would soon be left alone once again. "I guess we'll leave bird hunting for another day?" he suggested. Even though he regularly broke the rules and wandered off as a child he was also often scolded for doing so, and he didn't want Borlla to be subject to the same treatment because it wasn't any fun at all.

"Really?" Borlla bounced, excited to learn this strange new skill. She'd be able to go home, and show Indru and Ruiko, and wouldn't they be surprised! Her tail smacked against the ground, then slowly stopped when she remembered that she did have to go home. Both parties didn't seem pleased by the turn.

She was trying to weigh the pros and the cons, but the cons usually outweighed them. They'd probably be all worried that she'd been caught in the rain, and would catch cold...And if they found her, she didn't want to subject her new friend to their angry questions. That usually seemed to be what happened when she got caught having fun. Someone else got in trouble. "Maybe," Borlla lit up suddenly. "when you sneak into Swift River you could teach me then, right?" While she had little faith that he could really survive a whole twenty-four hours at least he'd be there. "Okay?" With a smile, she turned around, and wandered into the open, heading towards the woods. "Don't forget!"

Lurking until the end of July - Please PM/tag me to get my attention

After some consideration, Borlla seemed to agree with Spooks' suggestion. He nodded in turn to her, "Sure thing!" In the meantime, he would do some more exploring to get a better feel of the surrounding areas of Relic Lore as well as the borders of Swift River territory so he more easily sneak in and try to avoid a ruction of any sort. "Bye!" he called in farewell to the retreating small figure in the direction of the woods.

As for himself . . he eyed the landscape of the mountain's base with a sharp eye where earth gave way to rocky surfaces that posed a challenge in climbing, especially with everything damp with rainwater. But the monochrome yearling was always up for challenges. With a gleam in his eyes, he headed closer to the mountain's edges opposite of Borlla's direction, intending to do some recreational rock climbing just to stave off impending boredom.