Bramble Falls Thunder of Guns

@Craw

8th March, evening

That strange girl left well and truly behind, Morganna had continued on her way, north of the Sacred Grove, all but stomping her way across the landscape. If she was itching for anything at the moment it was a good fight, despite having allowed the previous contender to escape relatively unscathed. It was pissing her off that the old gods chose to curse her with a heat cycle that felt like it would never end, and knowing nearly every other adult female was suffering the same hell she was barely made it any better. Jaws snapped together, teeth exposed in a silent snarl as the sound of trickling water caused her ears to swivel atop her head, hardly a welcome distraction.

If the falls were flowing again the spring melt would soon turn the fast flowing river into torrential rapids and their calm streams into raging rivers. She could still remember the feel of water inching up her legs as the den flooded. There was no Guiness to ferry small children to safety anymore. She would have to chose a den on higher ground (providing she survived this hell and sucessfully conceived at all). Stress, stress, worry and stress. Would it ever end?

It couldn't hurt just this once. Stubbornly and desperately avoiding her wasn't practical when her heat was lasting this long; there were important matters they needed to keep on top of which were completely separate to her raging need to be mounted. That her body was dragging it out for his long was infuriating. She was head bitch, so she was the most justified to go into full season, but still, damn.

Strong for so long, it had been one straw too many on the camel's back when he crossed her trail, her stink still plain even though she must have passed by many minutes ago. Wondering why she had headed so far out of the territory (for he had been prowling around the peripheral forests escaping this very scent) he finally broke and turned his paws onto the path she had made. It felt good to be pursuing it, even though he kept reminding himself that there was nothing to be had at the end of it. Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing more than a catchup with the leader he was supporting in the pack he'd temporarily adopted.

Nothing at all!

At some point Morganna's scent had mingled with that of another, of another female, but she was nowhere to be seen by the time Craw came upon the scene, the snippet of history lost to time and memory and only preserved here for a short while in their aromas. For a not-so-brief moment, Craw considered changing course to chase up the other female, the loner and stranger and nobody, and take from her what wasn't waiting for him at the end of Morganna's road. But he wasn't supposed to be thinking about that. With a grunt and a frustrated growl he'd stuck to his original plan, and the bitch took him far from the willows, through the forest and past the rivers near where he'd met Pharika - Pharika, Pharika, no, he still couldn't place it - and, finally, to a place where the crashing sound of a waterfall rose up from a faint echo to a rumble, and she was thick in his nose now; she was nearby.

"Morganna?" he called, voice harsh and rough, tired of chasing her, needing a moment to mentally prepare himself before she was stood before him. Stood still, he waited for a response, nose wrinkling in agitation as he tried to pre-emptively calm himself.

Morganna was ripped from increasingly stressful thoughts (of children being snatched up by the yeth hound, or drowning in a den flooding, or even being stolen from the very banks by an angry sturgeon...) when a familiar, raspy voice called her name. She hadn't noticed her breath becoming so shallow and rapid, or the encroaching dark at the edges of her vision until his voice snapped her out of it. She gasped for air like a drowning woman, a savage shake bringing her back to reality as unsteady paws tottered to turn and lay eyes on the guardian. "@Craw?!" she called back, a little louder and far more frantically than was necessary. A final swing of her head and several rapid blinks later she almost had her breathing back under control.

All of this stress could hardly be good for her.

She picked her way towards where his voice had called from, her eyes briefly squeezing shut with each inhaled breath. She had to get back to earth and ground herself, and instead chose to use the memory of the tree talker as kindling to reignite the rage that had been slowly smouldering since their last encounter. When peach eyes finally fell on the silver-furred brute a more familiar smirk crossed her face. "Idiots. Everywhere." she declared, implying that so far this venture from the security of those she knew had been fruitless. So far.

His name rang out in her voice, and his chest clenched at the sound as he turned about to face its origin. Why did she sound so fraught? Was something wrong? Only moments later did the woman herself appear, and on her face slid that trademark sneer. No, she was all right... considering.

Taking a deep breath, partly to steady himself and partly because he wanted her perfume (two things entirely at odds with each other), her blunt remark was enough to distract him from her most distracting state; with an open-mouthed snort he sneered at her, closing the distance between them enough to snap at her cheek, the affectionate gesture rough but typical. "Then get rid of them," he growled, able to make an educated guess at a few of the identities who had inspired such a frustrated comment. If it was the first thing on her lips, no doubt it was the first thing on her mind, also.

Of course it wouldn't be as simple as that, for she was so hesitant to take the nuclear option, so emotionally bound to the value of family that she couldn't see that some of her relatives were poison to her ambitions. But they'd had this talk before, many times, and he knew better than to outright say so to her face; his suggestion would not be seriously taken, no matter how seriously it was intended.

The snap by her cheek made Morganna smile instantly putting her in a better mood than she had been before. Her own head swung low to push against @Craw's broad chest while teeth snapped playfully at his legs. She didn't carry the weight to push him around but that didn't mean she wouldn't try to entice him into a spar. It would probably prove more useful than any fishing she might manage out here.

She pulled back with his rumbled response, head cocked and sly smile painted clearly on her features, "Oh but darlin', surely yer better suited ter fixin' my problems fer me. I have no say in where you lot sit." and so she was forced to sit around, keeping herself available in her ivory tower waiting for prince charming to come and save her from her evil uncle. Yeah right.

She moved in close, a shove of her shoulder against his before trying to dart out of reach. He had clearly been avoiding her and she couldn't blame him. She reeked, which only set her to wondering. "What brings yer out this far today, worried I might be running away?"

She'd be lying if she said it hadn't crossed her mind.

(This post was last modified: Mar 20, 2016, 05:21 AM by Morganna.)

This made it far easier, her playful retaliation helping to mentally re-associate the hormone-ridden bitch as his sparring partner rather than anything else. A fight would certainly keep him distracted, too. A growl bubbled low in his chest as she bit back, picking his feet up to twitch them away as he roughly rubbed his chin and nose through the fur between her shoulders, feeling a little more alive.

He was pleasantly warmed up when she pulled back to bite back words instead, her taunt smooth and coy, but Craw just showed his teeth as response, jaws parting slightly and tongue curled. "Your mother was never so hands-off, as I understand it," he rumbled, a challenge to her - but he took her meaning well enough, and accepted it with a calming of his features. "But I hear you."

Angier was on the descent, but Skoll still lurked in place at Second... was her brother a part of her plans? Craw didn't know whether she wanted him to challenge all the way up to Nicolo, but to unseat her uncle with a man she found more favourable was no doubt her plan. Did she really entertain the idea of Skoll as her equal? Or was her intention to truly let the male ranks organise themselves?

Judging by her scent, she had been mingling with plenty of them - and he was letting himself drift back to that subject, but the longer they just stood in each others presence the harder it was to ignore it. "And if you leave I will be sorely disappointed," he growled, affection and cold honesty in his tone both, yet he still avoided the meat of her question. Then he made a bold guess. "But your condition will be over soon, especially as busy as you've been trying to fix it."

Morganna smirked at the description of her mothers leading style, shoulders pulling up in what could only  pass as a shrug. "She chose our father, he left b'fore we were born, but she left the males ter their own devices, @Angier challenged up." She was recounting most of this through tales told rather than her own experience. Most of it had taken place even before her birth, and what had not, she was too almost too young to remember. "Difference is, they all chose ter follow her, look at the shit-fight I inherited." There was a bitter edge to her smile, truly she probably had done a little more to influence the eventual outcome than @Elettra had, but she wasn't done yet. She wouldn't be done until her Uncle was dead or gone.

A bark of laughter left dark lined lips when he commented on how busy she had been. "Clearly not busy enough." she countered with a growl, as both problems plagued her still. He hadn't moved to close the distance with another attack, she had to wonder just why he was here. She found the whole experience distasteful. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She should have felt safe within the confines of her home, not out here hiding away. Ensuring the future of the pack surely shouldn't be a chore. Hormones were making her weak. "Will it always just be a job I have ter do?" her voice was soft, she never intended to speak the words out loud.

Maybe he'd been wrong about Elettra, or maybe Morganna was being generous in her telling of it. The Ridge reeked of the matriarch, no longer queen of them but no less its mother. Craw doubted that she would have let just any man take the place of Leader. It couldn't be coincidence that Angier had stepped up and simultaneously become her lover.

And her daughter was right; loyalty was not the easy road for Morganna as it most likely was for Elettra. Inheriting such an empire was no simple feat, and needed to be delicately done - it was both fortunate and unfortunate that Morganna's ascension had happened the way it had. The accident had given Morganna the perfect excuse to fill in for the ailing Elettra, who was not arrogant enough to think that she could rule in her condition, but that was the whole problem. Morganna was a fill-in, and, Craw suspected, on some level she thought herself as such. She hadn't earned this. She hadn't fought for it and taken it through her own endeavours and powerplays and effectiveness. It had been handed to her, just because she was the most eligible, and now she was right, it was a mess. Who else in the pack was just waiting for Elettra's health to return enough to turn her eye back to what she saw as hers? Who else saw Morganna as temporary?

In some ways, Craw did. He was on her side, of course, but it had happened wrong, too fast - she hadn't earned it. There was no denying she was doing a decent job with her rank, showing her consistency and ability to stay the course, but she hadn't had to defend it yet. How long until she was expected to step aside to the rightful queen? That would be when she was tested, and finally show that she deserved it, but with the politics of the male ranks... conflict could well come to a head even before that time.

Oh, he'd been thinking about her situation a lot.

He chose to let her flippant remark about her rutting habits go without comment, because he wasn't about to suggest an alternative. That she whelped would help her cause, and that was about as far as he wanted to go on the subject. Instead, her question was what peaked his attention, twitching his ears towards her and bringing his narrowed yellow gaze onto her face.

"Yes," he said gruffly, aware that she probably hadn't meant to show quite that much uncertainty. "But you've chosen it. You didn't have to; you wanted this, you want the power and authority to shape your corner of the world, make it exactly how you want it to be. You want the recognition and respect, want the name Archer to mean something more than just Elettra's legacy - to be YOURS. It's not easy, it'll never give you a break, and if you're good, it's for life."

His lip curled up to bare his teeth, the snarl a manifestation of his conviction, his words a small window into the wolf himself. "If you don't want it," he breathed, watching her, watching her, "then you know how to get out." Escaping authority was only ever one exposed belly away.

It would seem he had misinterpreted her question, "Not that." she all but growled back almost pouting, "This." She flicked her tail causing another cloud of stink to surround her, a sour look of displeasure plastered firmly on her face. Why the hell wouldn't it just go away?!?! Perhaps next year she would select one of the subordinates to deal with this part for her. She was selective when it came to touching at the best of times, and she wasn't certain there was enough grooming nor baths in the world to get over the way her skin was crawling.

Spring was officially her least favourite season.

Her frustration made her movements sloppy. She went to feign in towards @Craw again, a snap that should have been aimed at his shoulders falling short as she tripped over her own feet and barrelled into his chest with the top of her head instead. She pulled back in an attempt to shake it off but she was certain he would make her pay for such a foolish mistake. She felt like an awkward 6 month old again, all feet and ears. The sooner this was over with, the better.

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