Willow Ridge with everything around based on principle

7 years old, got his bat in his hand;
He’s looking for his father and he doesn't understand.
'Cause dad's too busy, got some deals on the way.
His son sits alone as the children play...
- Cartel; "Wasted"

Mom was away again, doing goodness knows what. Since Angier - Uncle Angier as he was commonly referred as - was busy doing his rounds about the pack territory borders, Gus was, once more and as always, he was left to his own devices. At four months old, he was old enough now, or so he thought, to at least look after himself and return to his designated 'rendezvous' site before or whenever his mother called for him. These days though, he was often reminded, time and time again, to simply not wander far enough as to prompt her to search for him. Being left in the middle of what seemed like a sea of willows, though, didn't help anything.

The boy was just laying around beneath the shade of his mother's willow tree on his side when a something small came scurrying about in the grass nearby. Its hurried gait rustled the drying grasses and, ultimately, garnered his attention. Up on all feet he went, using his nose to follow after the creature, whose bushy, gray tail was held up high, just like his mother's when she had a mind to scold him for straying too far for her liking.

This sort of chasing game sped up when the thick-furred rodent caught sight of Gus, whose lumbering, puppy-pawed footsteps easily announced his presence from several miles away. For a while, he trailed after the squirrel, until one of his paw pads pressed down on something hard and unpleasant to step on. While the squirrel chattered angrily about losing its snack, Gus, meanwhile, was preoccupied with trying to figure out what it was that his target had dropped. If anything, the pine nut had been splintered into a number of pieces under pressure. It didn't smell like food, the bits of rabbit bones and whatever else Taima managed to rustle up, but it seemed edible, even if nothing particularly propelled him to try it firsthand.

Heaving a sigh, Gus plunked his rear onto the ground, looking longingly up into the willow branches where the squirrel was surely holding a grudge. "Please come down," he softly yipped, unaware of how close he was to Willow Ridge's den and Infirmary. "I just want to play..."

(This post was last modified: Sep 17, 2014, 10:10 PM by Octavius.)

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Almost immediately after being accepted Titan had begun looking around for things and familiarizing himself with the lay of the land. He had firstly found a pack cache, of which the youth dared not to touch after just joining the pack. He didn't want to look like he wasn't going to do any work while he was here and just chill out eating all their food. Titan was going to make sure to prove himself to each and every wolf in his new home.

Secondly the older boy found some well worn trails that had numerous wolf scents upon them. He tried to gain information on other pack members by the smells of them on the earth, grasses, and trees that they had swept by. He could tell it was a larger pack much like Whisper Caverns had been. Though they seemed to have a bunch of pups. For a moment Titan wondered if he would have to do more pup sitting duties since there were more of them here than at the caverns. There had only been one pup over there and it had been taken care of by the adults mostly. Titan hadn't even known about it until the pack meeting.

After finding the trails Titan had relegated himself to the edges of the territory intent on exploring the place further the next day. Which was what he was doing right now as he found himself at the well worn trails once more.

Now there were three... no, four pups that Titan could scent living within Willow Ridge. At one point or another they had passed by the trail he was sniffing around, and one of the smells was very fresh; as if the pup had walked by just a few minutes ago. Wondering what the little guy was doing alone, Titan followed the scent trailing it into the deepest parts of the willow forest.

Eventually he slowed to a stop just after finding the pup. With his delighted blue eyes Titan cocked his head curiously to the side and let his tail being to wag. His black ears had caught the last bit of what the child had said, and following Gus's gaze, Titan could see what he thought the kid had been trying to play with. The squirrel had disappeared into the branches, but a few birds were still flying around the smaller twigs.

"Aw but birds are no fun to play with. They fly away when you don't even get close to them." Titan grinned while sticking his nose out in a friendly greeting. His tail still wagged as the yearling watched the pup amused by his actions.

(This post was last modified: Sep 17, 2014, 10:25 PM by Titan.)

A voice startled Gus as he continued to stare up at where the squirrel had been. He whirled around, clumsily turning himself on paws that were still far too large for him to maneuver with. Instinctively his ears lowered and stared up into the face of a tall, dark-coated man whose eyes were as blue as the clear afternoon skies above. "Aw," the yearling empathized, "but birds are no fun to play with. They fly away when you don't even get close to them." Gus' poise and self-assurance returned at the mention of birds. Even a hint of a scornful glare made itself apparent on his mousy face.

"It wasn't a bird," he said, backing up slightly as he pursed his lips. "It was a... a... uh." His brows knit together as he tried to think of what his mother had called them. His disappointment in himself only blossomed when he realized that Taima had only introduced the creature to him just the other day when they spotted one scurrying past the pack borders. "It was," he tried again, his confidence wearing thin. "It... It dropped... this."

Shifting the taller man's attention to the pine tree seed seemed like a better idea; anything to draw the yearling's attention away from him for the briefest of moments while he tried to remember what the fluffy-tailed thing had been. He lowered his nose down to try and unearth it from where he had accidentally embedded it into the ground with a single step. "I stepped on it," he admitted, his tone suggesting that he might have been expecting some form of scolding, "but, it was an accident. I scared it."

Cocking his head to the other side Titan swiveled his ears listening to the pups voice. He hadn't meant to startle the child, but then again Titan had been sticking to the bushes somewhat hiding to stay away from other pack members. He hadn't wanted to meet them quite yet. Although talking with pups was way different than talking with other adult wolves. He could be more himself around the younger wolves.

Amused at the annoyed face the child had made at his own comment, Titan gave him a half smile then looked back up to the tree again trying to see exactly what the kid was talking about. Whatever it had been was gone now.

Tipping his head back down and then glancing to the pine seed that Gus motioned to, the young Thorben stepped forward to sniff the thing. The familiar scent of squirrel hit his nose making Titan chuckle.

"Ohhh, it was a squirrel you saw. My bad little bro." Titan tipped his head to the pup half jokingly and half apologetically. Then he looked back up into the trees.

"Oh I bet you did. You and me, we are VERY scarey to things like squirrels. Prolly because we can eat them if we catch them." He half hoped the squirrel would come falling out of the sky so that he could catch it for the child, and also for himself to munch on. He was very hungry, what with his giant stature and the fact that he hadn't eaten yesterday.

"But still, its more fun to play with friends than it is to play with prey like that. Why aren't you with your siblings? I'de probably join you playing tag if there were more of us." Titan asked not knowing that Gus and the other three Archer-Lyall pups weren't exactly from the same litter. He had yet to realize that there were two litters currently living within the willows.

"Ohhh, it was a squirrel you saw. My bad little bro," the yearling had said. It should have been two coherent sentences to the boy, but the contemporary, yearling-fashioned lingo in the expression that was his second statement was lost against his ears. His nose wrinkled, his... bad? Gus' eyes widened as Titan explained that the both of them were frightening to smaller creatures like skwerls. The older youth continued, "But still, its more fun to play with friends than it is to play with prey like that." Gus briefly frowned, trying to lend a piece of his mind before being stopped in mid-sentence by a question and a proposal about a game of "tag" (which he had never heard of before, despite the fact that he knew how to play a similar game with his mother called "chase."). "You can't--"

"Siblings?" he questioned, hoping the brute wouldn't interrupt him again. After all, he knew what the word meant; Taima used to tell him about her siblings - his uncles Renier and Ryvet, and his aunts Trisden and Calla - all the time and about how they would one day travel to meet up with them and the rest of their family soon enough. "I don't have any." His voice should have been sullen, maybe even a bit lonely, but with the way Gus had stated such a fact, the remark came out as though it wasn't at all startling to him - as though it was normal for some families to have just one cub (despite the fact that the rowdy litter close by, both his mother and father, and his grandfather, all had at least more than two cubs to their numbers).

After sometime, the thought struck him and he slowly came to what his companion had meant in regards to siblings. Them... Uncle Angier's cubs... "My mom says I'm not allowed... to play with them."

Titan looked at the boy confused for a moment by his comment. He didn't have any siblings? the echo swirls around within his mind before Titan's dark brows knot together as if he were in deep thought about some serious situation. Then the pup spoke about not being allowed to play with the others. That's when it occurred to him that this little guy wasn't a child from Elettra's litter. The thought of another female having a litter, or a pup with her in the pack intrigued Titan. Though it wasn't the first time he had run into that sort of problem. If his mother had had pups this year, she would probably have been in the same situation with Rory and Athena. He paused for a moment letting that fact sink in. He felt bad for the kid and wondered what it would have been like if he had grown up alone. Hell, if he had grown up alone but able to see another litter playing happily together close by. It was seriously depressing. He must be so lonely. Titan sighed quickly then looked back up to the rusty coated boy with a warm gentle smile.

"My name is Titan Thorben, What's yours?" Titan asked hoping to change the sad note of the conversation after introductions were over. He decided then that he liked this boy, and that he would try to find him to hang out with if that was okay with the light coated boy. Gus's loneliness pulled at Titan's heartstrings, and despite his intimidating height and size, he was just a big teddy bear. He enjoyed being around others.

In the four months that Gus had last seen and been with his father, nothing much had changed apart from the fact that his mother kept insisting that he change his name. The lad tilted his head slightly, as though unsure what he ought to say. He was proud of his name in all of its sophistication and grand number of syllables - Octavius Percival Lyall Aquila - and he could not yet understand why his mother had simply wanted to call him: Octavius Lyall.. The Aquila part was one that he particularly wanted to keep; as much as he knew, it was one of the only thing left of Datura that he possessed, and he was loath to just drop it. What kind of heir just went by a first name and surname? Even his mother had a middle name to her titled moniker - the Lady Taima Enap Lyall. It only made sense that he keep all of his names.

Against his judgement though and being a little too meek for his own liking, he settled for something uncomplicated and straightforward. "I'm Gus," he stated. He couldn't help himself, though, "My real name's Octavius --" he made sure to pause for good measure, to even think that anyone would call him Octavius Octavius was just ridiculous, "Octavius Percival Lyall Aquila." A look of guilt seemed to flash over the ginger mask on his face, then, making his large ears come back against his neck for a moment and his little nose wrinkled.

"My mom says I'm an heir," he said slowly, his tone hinting at his uncertainty of being called such a thing, "A yung lored. Are you one too?" His skull straightened as he fully addressed Titan now, surely for such a regal being, the Thorben had to be something or someone of status. Otherwise, he ought to start thinking about making himself scarce. If he was not supposed to play with the other cubs, surely, he was barred from talking with the other adults too... especially if they weren't someone important like Uncle Angier or Aunt Elettra.

(This post was last modified: Oct 23, 2014, 10:16 PM by Octavius.)

Titan leaned forward intrigued in the pups answer. The golden boys nickname was much easier to remember than his real name. It was a long and intimidating name that made Titan glad that his mother hadn't tacked on a middle name to his own. Though he had to say that the name did sound like a respectable one. He recognized Lyall in the jumble of family names then wondered if that meant that Gus was somehow related to Angier and Rook.

"An heir to where?" Titan managed the rhyme while asking Gus the somewhat innocent question. Then smiled as he thought about how to answer the sun coated pup truthfully. Narime hadn't been one to use titles often. Usually she had only mentioned her queen status in business or tense situations. When she was home with family and pack she had never used the title. He had grown up knowing he was a prince and heir but not throwing the title around carelessly. However, now that he was here in Willow Ridge was he still considered the firstborn heir of Whisper Caverns?

"I was the first born heir to Whisper Caverns pack. A prince in my own right, but... Well my birth pack is only half a days travel from here. Inside Willow Ridge I'm not sure if I even qualify as a prince. " Titan voiced his answer before turning to look in the direction where Hush meadow resided. The dark wolf wondered what life had in store for him. If he would ever have the chance to be a king. "I suppose I would be a lord while living in this pack." Titan added before glancing back to Gus to see the boys reaction.