Oak Tree Bend run devil run

@Anneliese mid-day, sunny

Tears in her eyes, Sahalie threw herself into the dark safety of her birth den. Spieden had stopped feeding them there, they were too big now and slept either outside or in a much larger, shared den. She shoved her muzzle into the loose dirt of the wall as if it were a pillow on a teenagers bed. Only muffled sounds escaped, but what did rebounded off of the cavernous den walls. Sobs overtook her body in waves and her chest heaved as she fought for control. Her paw throbbed so horribly she could hardly bear to stand on it anymore. Unceremoniously, she collapsed against the cold shadow of the den and cradled her wounded leg.

With some certainty, she knew that her dad was probably going to have to amputate it. There was no way this paw would ever support her weight again. It just hurt so much! She probably wouldn't be able to walk either. The little Tainn sobbed harder, now grieving for her soon to be lost foot. Drift would tease her. Spieden would look at her even weirder. And — worst of all — everyone would be sad all over again. This time it would be her fault.

All she had wanted was to romp in the little flower patch just beyond the clearing. The petals had been so bright and inviting, and the smell was more lovely than anything she had known. But little did she know the flowers had been guarded by a pack of tiny, furious, yellow wolves! At first she laughed at the threatening hum of the little wolves as they whirred around her. They actually kind of tickled as the burrowed into her fur.

But then the fun was very much over.

She had followed the soft sound of sobbing through a short patch of the territory, the sound unfamiliar but childish and assumed to be one of the puppies she knew had been found, but had yet to meet. As Anneliese pursued the upset little being, she was forced to face the fact that she had indeed been avoiding her pack nearly the entire time she'd called them brethren. She had sworn to Spieden that she could handle the threat Garmr and his gang presented, but she had foolishly expected the war to be like one which would have been waged by her natal kingdom. Anna certainly hadn't expected these new comrades to be so utterly controlled by their emotions. If the loss of one hadn't been enough, a storm had taken another, the fallen queen was nowhere to be found, and her orphaned children were pitifully numbered and left to depend on the inept Spieden to care for them. It was exactly the sort of mess Anneliese had been thoroughly trained to avoid.

Still, she could not ignore a crying child. Finally, Anna chased the small thing down to its burrow, the smell of birth and the poor thing's true mother long faded. Lowering herself to peer in, she wondered if perhaps the small creature was perpetually sad for no good reason, consumed whole by the flood of emotions her pack emanated. Made so thoroughly uncomfortable by the thought was she, Anneliese hoped dearly that this mournful racket had a more grounded reason behind it.

"What is the matter, princess?"

(This post was last modified: Jul 30, 2015, 11:43 PM by Anneliese.)

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Shallow water has trapped several fish in a small pond. Hunt Opportunity

@Anneliese
Somewhere beneath the din of her own racket, Triell's daughter heard a voice reach out to her. At such a young age her attention span was small, and her crying tapered off quite abruptly when she realized the voice she heard was not familiar. At this point she figured she had finally gone and exposed herself to pretty much the whole family —despite their reluctance— but it appeared she was wrong. She sniffled. Her paw still throbbed. Not wanting to seem like a faker, the girl did not turn around immediately. Desperately she yearned to be coddled and taken care of. She knew this without ever having received such a treatment in her life. But also she did not want her foot to be chewed off, and this was something she was quite convinced of. Sahalie began to chew on her dark lips, unsure of what action to take, tears still in her eyes.

Though no one had suggested it, the girl shouted angrily, "I'm not hurt!" Another horrid lie, and she knew it. So many poorly executed lies in the last few days. Not a good girl. Her attempts were so painful that she screwed them all up. Her dark muzzle dug farther into the loose earth walls. Some clods of dirt came away and tumbled down over her snout and onto her paws. Instantly it occurred to her that if, maybe, she covered her paw in dirt no one would notice there was anything wrong with her. This made an acceptable amount of sense. As casually as a dumb cub could, she began to shovel dirt neatly onto her paw.

In an attempt to distract the unfamiliar inquisitor the girl shouted "What's princess?"

The girl, Sahalie she remembered as the name being spoken a time or two in her proximity, immediately stilled upon hearing her voice, the wailing subsiding into small sniffles. Nothing else happened, and Anna craned her neck in further, wondering what it was that was keeping the child from answering before she suddenly did. Given the seemingly random nature of the declaration, Anna assumed one of two scenarios must be true. The girl either was hurt and trying to hide it, or had recently been taught by some experience or another that being hurt earned you punishment and wanted to clear up the possible misconception before Anna could scold her.

"Then why don't you come out? I'd love to see you, Sahalie," she answered kindly before back away from the den, attempting to lure the whelp out into the sun so that she could better appraise the situation.

Anna reclined, musing over what else she had caught in the air; the little one asking what a princess was. She began to wonder if maybe this pack was backwards in hierarchy as well, though Darrah had seemed pleased with her reference to his title as prince. And it was their title, wasn't it? It's how it would have been back home, and thanks to her upbringing she couldn't quite envision what other sort of system would keep a pack going strong. Yet how could no one here show them enough respect to address them as such? Despite their absent mother, their distant father was still king regardless.

"Well, your father Triell is our king. Ah, another word for alpha or leader. As you're his daughter, that would make you a princess. A possible successor to the throne." Would she understand any of that? Anna had no idea, nor was she used to conversing with youth by any means.

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@Anneliese

She sniffled hard. This woman wanted to see her? Would love to? Sahalie knew what the word love meant, but never imagined it being used in such a context. It was so carelessly tossed in there. Love, Sahalie felt, was what she and Drift felt, what she truly craved from everyone who had pulled away from her. From the tone, this craving did not seem to be the woman's intent. The girl chewed her lip. Maybe she had said the word on accident. It shouldn't have bothered the girl but it did. She felt an awkwardness that pressed her ears down against her skull. Hesitating only another brief moment, Sahalie wiggled around and crawled out of the cave, deciding that she should not turn around someone that said they wanted to see her. But she stopped when her nose hit the sunlight, and the rest of her body along with her dirt-caked paw remained in the darkness. Her eyes were always expectant.

The answer that accompanied her question was a little hard to swallow. There were a lot of new words in that stream of speech. Words like king, alpha, leader, successor, and throne. Basically any of the context words. Sahalie was too young to know much about hierarchy in a pack such as Oak Tree Bend, where the wolves drifted around aimlessly and interacted almost accidentally. She had yet to see who was superior and who was not. But it did seem strange to her that her dad was the only one with kids, and the language being used seemed to imply that her dad was special and better in some way. The girl nodded as if she understood, but her knitted eyebrows told the real story. "Mmmm..." she puzzled, trying to see if she had a grasp on things. Quite suddenly, questions began to tumble out of her mouth. "Darrah is princess too? What is throne? How do I successor it?"

One last one. "Can you fix my paw?" This woman seemed like she knew a lot of words. Sahalie figured she must also know a lot about paws, too. Sahalie trusted her, as a knowledgeable adult, to know how to handle paws. Quickly she threw her dirty paw over the lip of the den for the white woman to see.

(This post was last modified: Aug 13, 2015, 12:45 AM by Sahalie.)

Ah, there she was. Anneliese's gaze fell as a soft and warm beam upon the princess' dirty face, and had to fight the urge to reach forward and clean her off. Unknowing of the little girl's personality and exposures, she needed to be careful not to smother and scare her back into her hideaway with unwanted attention. Satisfied with just seeing her shadow-framed face for now, Anna chose to recline, watching as the little one mulled over her words. Clearly, they were giving her a bit to think on, and when the quick firing of questions hit the air, her grin turned sheepish. The woman was found to be too wordy by adults even when pursuing casual conversation. She wasn't entirely sure how to alter her words in order to make it easier for the child to understand, but as long as Sahalie was curious and willing to ask, Anna would do her best to answer her.

Before she could, however, the king's daughter thrust forward her paw and asked the woman to fix it.

"So you are hurt then?" she questioned, but not without a smile; it wasn't a scolding, but she did want to know why the girl found it necessary to lie about being injured. Now having been invited to do something, Anneliese felt comfortable to stretch her neck forward and gently clean the dirt from the miniature paw with her tongue. Only once clean was she able to inspect it, sliding her own paw beneath it and lifting it up ever so carefully. There was a swollen lump visible through the sparse black fur, and she could only suspect that the girl was bitten or stung by an insect of sorts.

"What got you, Sahalie? Was it a bug?" Did she even know? "I know just the thing to ease the pain, but I'll have to leave you here for just a few moments in order to fetch it, and then I can answer all your questions too. Is that all right?"

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@Anneliese


Her frown twisted uncomfortably at being called out in this way. "Mmmmm," she considered whether or not she could take things back now and pretend that she was not hurt again. But that seemed complicated. And this women knew so many words that she probably would know a lie when she saw one. Her ears dipped. "Yeah," she breathed, her dark and dusty head turning away to avoid the judgement.


But the woman didn't seem to care so much. She heaped questions atop of the young girl's, questions that were a little hard to understand. The first bit was easy enough, she shook her head eagerly at the word bug. It was definitely a bug but she had not know what sort. "— They were BIG and they flew and they were all like... fuzzy. It tickled me so I thought it was good. But then it hurt me— " Except the woman was still talking. She clamped her mouth shut. Turn taking in conversation was still hard for the girl, especially when she had so much to say and felt like she was bursting at the seems. It was not often that there were others around who would talk to her, and often it was hard to restrain herself when a thought popped into her head. Did it matter so much when she hardly understood what the wolf was saying? Something about leaving and bringing something back.


"Uhm," the girl said, faltering and twisting her head away more and more shyly. When others left it made her sad. Sometimes they didn't come back. Or they were gone a super long time. "Uhm... okay. I am trusting you."

i hate transitions sorry this is so awkward
also i'm bullshitting all this medical stuff so yay

It was clear that she was hesitant about letting Anneliese go, and the woman found she couldn't blame the child for this. Having an absent mother and a distant father, siblings who had already lost themselves and pack mates drowning in grief who'd rather secluded themselves than carry on all factored into shaping this young girl's mind and the paladin found it an absolute shame that she had to grow up in such an environment. It was at this moment that Anneliese determined she would spend the rest of her day with the pup, so long as she'd have her company, and hopefully add a little sunshine to the child's life. As with Darrah, perhaps it wasn't too late to help.

"I promise I'll be back soon," she swore, touching her nose to Sahalie's crown briefly before taking off.

It had been a quick trip to the woman, though it might have seen far longer to the younger mind. She had been able to retrieve a small stash of green ginger leaves from her personal den, and carried them upon her tongue along with a scoopful of mud gathered from the banks of the river that quenched the pack's thirst. It was a horrible taste, but as a practiced medicine she was able to ignore the bitterness within her mouth and soon was back within Sahalie's presence.

She deposited her gains upon the forest floor in front of the little girl, licking her foreleg once to clear the rest of the mud from out off her tongue before going about her work. She seated herself, and smiled at the child.

"Sounds like you upset a bee," she informed her, recalling the excited information that the Tainn heir had given her earlier. "They get their food from flowers, and easily get angry when bigger animals come close. It's best to avoid them."

As she spoke, she was separating the leaves from the mud with her paw, and once it was all reorganized she once more took the green ginger within her mouth. She chewed upon them until they were but a poultice, before depositing the green pulpy mass upon the scoop of mud. As she mixed the two together, she began to explain exactly what she was doing to Sahalie. It still escaped just how little the child might actually comprehend, and all the same she thought it important still to expose the princess.

"This is a plant most commonly called wormwood, though why it has such a funny name I wouldn't know. It's medicine, which means it will help you to be healthy and pain free again, if used right. The mud will help cool the bite, and hopefully draw out the bee's stinger, which is what it hurt you with. Can I please see your paw?" she asked when the mixture was completely incorporated.

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Nervously Sahalie waited for the white woman to come back. She figured she should sit still in case she re-injured her paw but found that, as a cub, this was something she was unable to do. She bounced in place, humming off-handedly in the way the bees had. This at least help some of the time pass and distracted her from wondering if the lady was ever going to come back to her and explain how she was going to successor the throne.

Her countenance instantly brightened with the return of the woman, though her eyes latched immediately to the things that she carried with her. This was the "ease the pain," it appeared. But it was just leaves. Her brow furrowed. Was she supposed to eat them? They did not look nearly as appetizing as the vomit she partook in nightly. The dark girl was about to reach out and nip at a few before the woman began to speak again, giving a name to the bugs that had hurt her.

"Bee," she nodded to indicate her understanding. But she was puzzled by the thing about the flowers. Sahalie did not eat flowers. She had tried once, because they were so colorful, but they had just tasted exceedingly bland. She wrinkled her nose. Bees seemed pretty stupid. Eating flowers was dumb and she was not sure what she had done to upset them. She was not going to eat their flowers.

Her mouth hung open as she watched the woman chew the leaves and then mix them in with the mud. This seemed like the sort of thing Drift would do. He often had a lot of mud on him. Maybe he liked to do "medicine" like the white lady did. All the things the woman said sounded very good, and Sahalie was not one to argue. Eagerly she held out her paw, knowing finally that it wasn't going to be amputated. She felt a sharp throb. "Is the stinger still in me? Are you putting that on my paw?"

"And don't forget to tell me about the thrones."