Auld Lang Syne

ALL WELCOME!
RE: The rivers and creeks have all frozen"
Ghastly Woods

MERCY get your things, we're leaving when the morning birds are singing, we're sailing. Since the move, Mercy found himself more drawn out and tired than ever, and though he couldn't see himself well, he'd noticed, when he turned his head enough, he could see that a thinness had moved in behind his ribs, making them more prominent even below his thick winter coat. He was thinner than he'd been in the Fall, and he didn't like this much; would his growth be stunted by this winter? He knew he'd put on weight in the Spring, but would the harshness of the winter keep him from reaching his full potential? He didn't like the idea of that. He wanted to be big and powerful- so he'd have to make sure he took good care of himself, even in the toughest months. He moved through the snowy woodlands, ice-laden trees dropping down under the weight and creaking as the gentle wind caused them to rub up against one another. He wasn't terribly distracted by this as he moved through the woods along the borders, more focused on tracking something for a hunt opportunity. Any frozen creature would be good- he didn't care of it was mostly rotten. He wasn't finding much in the way of fresh tracks, so he supposed he might have to scavenge- he could even kill a crow or turkey vulture, if one had stopped to eat something on the ground- feathers and all. He didn't particularly care what was next on his plate for dinner, just as long as there was something. He stopped when he came to a stream- or what had once been a stream. For now, it was a ribbon of ice which threaded its way through the woodlands, frozen all the way through to the bottom. Mercy stopped and scratched at it a bit- he could see fish, frozen in time, inches below the surface...But they too were frozen, and he couldn't possibly scratch through the ice, nor did he have the weight to break through the frozen water. Upset at the lost meal opportunity, he continued to rove along the stream's side, hoping to find something else. <b style="font-family:georgia; color:#fefefe;">

table by mimi

"It's solid all the way down, you'll not be getting to those fish any time soon." Crowe approached Mercy from the opposite bank and stood directly center of the Ice. Mostly because he still had a huge head and enjoyed acting impressive, but partially because he had been looking for a weak spot and found none. Crowe decided it would at least make a good bridge until it thawed out. So he made way across to Mercy and greeted him with a nod and a nudge atop his head, "Any fishing would be useless, I'm sure you must be hungry." From the look of Mercy he had to be starving. He was hungry and looked almost misshapen for his hunger and empty belly but he knew that Mercy, a growing pup could eat just as much as he.

Hunger was a way of life in the winter though, the harsh cold was enough this year to take town a malnourished wolf not seasoned to the cold. Crowe's sheer initial size and mass lent him plenty of warmth but he could still feel a chill, It was persistent and never seemed to change unless he was curled in the den. Truth be told the huge wolf hated the ever present chill he felt just because his face would be very cold while the rest of him was just chilly and he couldn't ever change it while he wasn't in the den. "It is a cold winter Mercy, but you are strong, you will survive it.."

Mercy looked up when he heard a familiar voice, and with little surprise, he nodded solemnly. There was Crowe, and just as he'd expected, the large male's weight was hardly enough to make the ice so much as creak. Mercy wasn't best pleased to hear this news, but he'd already figured out as much- fishing wouldn't be an option until the spring thaw came, and while it felt as though the winter had already stretched on forever, it didn't feel as though it was going to end anytime soon, either.

He groaned softly when Crowe mentioned hunger. After the journey, they'd all been low on calories, and even the hunt, which had fed them and restored some of their strength, had not stopped the continuously empty feeling Mercy felt. "I feel hollow," He said, though he knew complaining was useless- everyone felt the same way. None of them were fit and fat, so it was a burden they all shared. Still, it made Mercy feel better to complain, even if it was useless.

Crowe reassured him about survival, something which made Mercy feel a little unsettled. He didn't like having to be told that he'd live- he liked to think it was simply assumed by all that he and the other pups would survive the winter. "Starving's not an option." He said with a grim sort of stubbornness, before he cracked half of a grin. "There's lots of meat on your bones. Worse come to worse, I'll just eat you." It was just a friendly tease, after which he padded calmly toward his friend and bumped his nose to Crowe's shoulder.

Don't freak out yet Jess, I MIGHT be killing Crowe off so if that happens, I want it to be foreshadowed, otherwise he'll just be afraid of thick snow and ice XD

Crowe grew solemn as he listened to the boy, even with Mercy's joke, Crowe couldn't shake the feeling creeping up his spine, that the worst was yet to come. Of course he would not voice this to the boy, but he shifted himself on the ice and cracked a wry grin back at the youth, "Have we not once before seen that you cannot directly take me down? I think it would be I eating you Mercy, unless of course you caught me while I was napping, then of course I would curse you with picking my hairs out of your teeth for eternity." He joked with the boy a snapped his teeth lightly in the direction of the nudge he had gotten from the young male.

For a moment his yellow gaze softened before dimming. It was so cold here and Crowe silently knew that the chance for him to be caught out in the snows was greater than that of the others in his pack. Normally size was his advantage, but not in this kind of weather. Not with snow this thick, the winter was hard on them all, but so much snow and ice, but a single prick of fear in the male, fear that his size would trap him... freeze him, and kill him. "Mercy some day I will not be here, so when that day comes, I ask that you be the biggest baddest guardian any pack has ever seen." The white male did not usually speak in such a way, but the fear grew a little each day.

WHATWHATWHATWHATWHATTTTTT!!?!?!?!?!

Though he was hungry and upset by the fact that there was no food, he still felt playful when he was around Crowe. The winter had not yet taken the light out of his spirit and rather than become too morose and glum, he felt himself lose a bit of his winter woes when he tagged along with Crowe, following along his trail like a love-struck pup. He grinned and waved his tail from side to side when Crowe mentioned becoming a curse to him, should he ever become a meal, and out of instinct he bared his teeth and flicked his tongue over them, somewhat disgusted by the idea of having hair stuck in his teeth forever. "Yeah, well if you eat me, I'll be a never-ending bellyache!" He retorted with a laugh, neatly sidestepping to avoid Crowe's snap and clicked his teeth in the air in retaliation.

Mercy was completely ready to continue with teasing and a bit of scuffling, but as soon as he made the decision to try and grapple Crowe to the ground despite his past failures, he noticed the change in Crowe's demeanour. The trickster's grin disappeared from Mercy's face and was replaced with an empty one, one that turned into a look of disgust and disbelief. Why was Crowe talking about these things? "Of course I will be," He said, in disbelief. Why did Crowe even need to tell him that? Oddly it didn't even occur to him that he'd been training more as a hunter than a guardian- as soon as Crowe mentioned him being a guardian, he accepted it. "But that'll be like...Years from now when you're all old and frail and...Well, at least you won't go grey!" He said. He couldn't take Crowe's warning serious- he didn't want to, and he was too young to know how unpredictable life could be. He laughed, and nosed the ground, still trying to find something to eat.

Having muse issues, and have to make sure there are players for some pups when spring comes, so it won't be for a few months till I find out for sure what's gonna happen to him

"You already give me a bellyache squirt." Crowe said, but he pressed on anyways the boy looked up to him, and that meant but one thing to Crowe now, he needed to be sure that this boy did not brood and let things fester the way he had, and that meant educating him on the harsh ways of life. How cruel it could be. "I can hope Mercy, I can hope I'm old, but in my life I have seen hat things do not always work as we hope they do." It should be enough, the boy should understand that eventually Crowe would no longer be around, and it could be at any time. "Life is unpredictable son." The words rolled off of his tongue at first unnoticed by himself.

Then suddenly he realized what he had said, and smiled. Just before spinning to face the youth. He leapt at him in an attempt to play spar whilst forgetting entirely that he was on ice. His mass found no purchase on the slick surface, and he found himself sliding at a fair rate of speed directly at the boy. "Very unpredictable!." He barked as he hurtled with no way to stop towards Mercy. Crowe's face had now twisted into a true smile, while he slid he had to admit it was funny and this would certainly lighten the mood of the day, even if unintentional, it was one of the few blessings that would keep Crowe pulled to the right path.

(This post was last modified: Feb 09, 2014, 08:12 PM by Crowe.)

Some day in the future, Mercy would look back and realize that he'd been too young and foolish to take Crowe's words seriously. But in the present moment, he wanted nothing to do with seriousness about topics such as death- he'd never experienced it before, first-hand, and thus could not expect how he would react, or fully grasp the concept. He could see that Karpos had felt loss in a way he never had, but it didn't make it any easier for the boy to understand it. Death was something he kept at a distance, something he ignored and taunted. He would not imagine Crowe dying young, not now, not ever. If and when he died, he would die of natural causes, as a very old man when Mercy was fully prepared to let him go.

Mercy didn't register the last word Crowe said as anything unusual. The boy was used to having no biological parents, though Sagacity was every bit his mother as any other wolf would have been. But as for a father- he'd never known what to expect. He saw Mapplethorpe as a father to Aponi and Nova, but if he was what a father was supposed to be like, then Crowe was a very different sort of father. He took the word naturally and accepted it as a gesture of familiarity. If he could have chosen anyone to be his father, it would have been Crowe, without a doubt- but it didn't mean that Mercy was prepared to call anyone 'father'. He'd never used the word before.

He smiled and skipped aside when Crowe growled and made a move toward him, side-stepping out of the way but using his smaller size and speed to help him snap at one of Crowe's hind legs as he did so. "Unpredictable? I coulda seen that from a mile away," He said. He danced on his nimble paws. "C'mon, you can do better than that," He teased, baring his teeth in a grin.

There is a family of deer nearby. Hunt Opportunity

Just to sum this up and get it archived.

It would only occur to Mercy later on in his life what Crowe was trying to do, and it would only be some time after that that Mercy would realize that Crowe had done his best to make sure that he hadn't alarmed Mercy when speaking to him about the fickle ways of life and death. Though for Mercy it was all fun and games, the lessons he learned from Crowe were important for his survival; the snowy guardian had taught him how to hunt and had begun teaching him how to fight- skills the growing pup would need as an adult, and especially as a member of the pack. For all wolves needed these skills to survive and contribute to life in a pack.