Oak Tree Bend The Demon Host

@Sahalie
@Aponi

He liked where Oak Tree Bend was. Lark had already claimed a spot for himself. Sort of, anyways. It was where he spent most of his time, as he couldn't really find it in himself to find a proper den to sleep in. Sahalie seemed to be with Spieden, who he wasn't entirely interested in getting to know, and everyone else might as well had been a stranger to him. He shouldn't expect anything more, but he felt in limbo. He wanted more out of the pack, but felt some sort of... block, he guessed. He was just passing through, anyhow, and if he kept himself at a good distance, he wouldn't feel so bad when he left. He had to go north, stick to his plan.

There wasn't much to do, not when he was supposed to rest. But he was anxious, and often nauseous, and couldn't seem to keep anything down for very long. At first he'd thought it was because he ate too much too quickly, but after attempting a few small meals, he'd found that it wasn't the case. Laying around doing nothing didn't help his wandering mind, and although Larkspur could keep his mind off of things by chewing on a bone, but today he hadn't been so lucky. Not a good bone, or an antler, or even a decent hoof to chew on.

He tried to chew through a rabbit's leg or two, but found that didn't make him feel particularly good, so settled on the next best thing: sticks. Sticks were not satisfying, and he couldn't chew on them for hours, but it was better than nothing. He'd found a few that he'd thought would be alright to chew on, most he'd hoped were sturdy enough to last him an hour or so. After gathering them (it wasn't so hard, the Spectral Woods seemed to be filled with okay-looking sticks), Lark plopped himself down in the sunny section of his spot. It was close to the water, but not too close, and half-under a tree, but also half-not.

With his mess of sticks, he picked the toughest looking one, cracking it in half with barely any effort at all. His second wasn't so bad, though he was much gentler with it than he would have been with an antler. He chewed at bark and spat it out, not finding the stick-chewing to be quite as entertaining as bone-chewing. Bone sometimes had bits of meat on it, and this... this just had bugs and dirt. Larkin felt the first few droplets of water on his forehead, signifying the beginning of a light rain. Crack! tore the large stick he'd attempted to keep whole. It can only get worse, he irritably thought.

That wasn't how he'd been raised to think, but rarely did days like this get steadily better for him.

(This post was last modified: Jul 21, 2016, 11:17 PM by Larkspur.)

Larkspur seemed to be settling in as well as anyone ever did—which was to say he had found himself his own little patch of earth and was keeping to himself. However, Sahalie wasn't just going to leave him to himself. The man had been injured and the responsible thing was to check up on him, take a look at his wounds, and prescribe him more random plants that came to mind that she just prayed she hadn't mixed up the names or usages. Her repertoire consisted of only a small amount of herbs and leafy things so it was unlikely that they had become confused in her mind. More likely was that Larkspur would develop some condition well beyond her "expertise." As a novice, the girl was hopeful and enthusiastic that Larkspur would be an easy case study.

As she rounded the tree the white man had chosen for himself, she noted the faint scent of vomit. Next, it dawned on her that there was a surprising amount of broken sticks and soggy splinters in some strange circle around Larkspur. "You chewed all these?" the girl quipped with head tipped to one side, "Are you feeling...any better?" Usually when the dark girl felt sick she ate grass, and while there was grass aplenty the man had opted for sticks. Good for...teeth cleaning—which he certainly needed—and maybe some other medicinal purpose she didn't know about.

It had not gone completely unnoticed by the silver woman that they had a new resident among them, one who smelled of sickness. Typically unless it was one of her daughters, or Sahalie or well really anyone but Triell and Naira she would have ignored this. But the stench could not be ignored. Unfortunately the man had set up his space within nose distance from her and Lila's den though she could not see the newcomer from where they slept. That meant every meal he regurgitated Aponi went on smelling until thankfully some other scent came on the wind to relieve them.

She was sick of it, pun intended. Leaving @Lila to play in the open space without a babysitter was a new development that had occurred within the last week or so but thankfully the child tended not to wander too far. Plus the mother wouldn't be too far gone for long should an emergency arise. Armed with a mouthful of herbs (most notably ginger albeit slightly dry from the time since collecting it) held within her jaws. The ginger had been sitting around since the three woman had been pregnant and may not be as effective as when freshly stored but it would have to do.

It wasn't until coming upon the clearing that she noticed Sahalie as her nose had been filled with the smell of herbs. Winking at the girl in greeting she came within a few feet of the newcomer and dropped the ginger on the ground. Glancing over him her nose wrinkled as sickly scent of his recent lunch filled her nostrils, "Eat this, it will help you more than sticks" The last word was perhaps said with judgement but the man was eating sticks for christ's sake.

Larkspur ignored Sahalie's first question, giving her an unimpressed look. "You're going to have to try a little bit better at the small talk if you want to stick around," he spat out bits of bark and attempted to dislodge a splinter from between his teeth. "I'm fine," but not better. He also didn't feel worse, which was good news to him. The large scab on his shoulder was healing, the scratches on his face looked a little less irritated, half because he'd managed to stop scratching at it. His guess would be that he just wasn't used to having consistent meals, and he couldn't sleep well because he wasn't used to sleeping well. He pawed at a stick, pulling it closer to him so he could chew that one to pieces, too. "What do you want," he could have been more kind, as she was the one that had been kind enough to help him, then get him accepted to the Bend. What could he say? Well, nothing besides no good deed goes unpunished. And that he'd already told her.

As Aponi made her entrance, Lark spat out his stick and lowered his head. She wasn't an unfamiliar face, but the two hadn't bothered much than a glare or two. She dropped something foreign in front of him, which he made no move for. It looked like a piece of a tree, or a root, then a few small flowers. He inspected it, though couldn't recall ever having eaten something that smelled like the ginger. Although he should have known more about herbs than he did, Lark had been mostly uninterested with the healing ones. Usually there was a wolf or two that knew what to do, and he put his faith in them.

Aponi, on the other hand, he was weary of. Larkin looked up at her, then to the whatever-it-was. He sniffed, the scent was strong and tangy, it made his nose tickle. "How kind of you, I've always wanted a-" he looked at it, still unable to come up with what exactly it was. "A root. My favorite, really." Larkspur, being as unwilling a patient as he could be, wasn't going to eat something that he had no idea about.

sorry about the wait dudes. <3

The girl bit her tongue at the criticism that lashed so suddenly from the man. Sure, he had been ornery in all previous interactions, but it surprised her every time how quickly the man could escalate to this degree of frigidness. He didn't even have to outright mean—some how he could still be hurtful without raising his voice or snarling. Her ears twisted around as she tried to find her smile again, "Hello to you, too, Larkspur," her giggle sounding more sure than the tone she spoke in. "Fine is good," she chirped, busying herself with checking at his wounds—shoulder in particular—so that she might forget the hard lump in her throat, "Why, I think that's everyone's favourite word around here. You fit right in already." Everyone was always fine and everything was always fine—without being fine at all—in Oak Tree Bend.

"I brought you some..." The girl's eyes widened suddenly as she whipped her head around, "..Some..."

Oh bother, she'd forgotten it.

Before any awkward panic could set in another wolf arrived. Aponi. That made enough sense to the girl, as the den she was keeping Lila in was somewhere nearby. The girl's tail wiggled in a greeting. A root thumped onto the ground before the bed-tethered Lark, and the girl's nose began to wiggle. "He's almost as bad as Naira," she directed at Aponi, "Don't you think?" The strength and spiciness of the scent wafting up was unmistakable, though apparently the man didn't know it. "It's ginger, silly!" she chimed in with a smile, "It's uhmm... it's for....." Her body twisted so that her back leg could get in a good scratch at her ear, "uhhhh..." Nope, no idea.

@Larkspur

Sahalie's hatred towards Naira truly warmed Aponi's heart. In fact if she could the silver mother would have adopted the yearling herself based on the comments alone. Snorting a laugh the she wolf grinned lazily, "Nobody is as bad as Naira, but he might become a close second." Of course the Aquila would never admit to herself that she probably would have reacted to some stranger dropping medicine in front of her with a sarcastic comment as the man had. She could do no wrong in her own mind. Still she grinned again thinking of the yearlings 'old' comment about her mother. The thought of that honestly was never going to get old to Aponi.

Sahalie answered his comment much nicer than the older wolf would have ever even dreamed have, but he got his answer all the same. That is until she faltered with the use, still Aponi was impressed that she knew the name of it. Plopping her rump upon the ground she filled in the blank, "It calms your stomach, stops vomiting." The blue eyes stared at the ill man expectantly, it was clear that she wouldn't be leaving until he had consumed it. She would force him to eat every last bite if it meant that she could stop smelling his vomit all day long. Actually, she might force him to eat every last bite just because she could.

(This post was last modified: Aug 19, 2016, 08:07 PM by Aponi.)

There is a moose carcass that has been scavenged by coyotes nearby. +15 Health

Larkspur gave her an odd look, trying to find some sort of meaning to her words. Without knowing much about Oak Tree Bend, he couldn't, but figured he'd find out soon enough. Or not, because he wouldn't doubt that the girl wrapped herself in drama. The silvery man wondered if Sahalie had told her boyfriend that she'd helped him make Oak Tree Bend his temporary home, or if she'd told him that he'd be traveling up north with them. But just as he thought of it, he magically remembered that he didn't really care, so didn't bring it up.

He continued to paw at the tangy-smelling root as the two went on about what he assumed was another Oak Tree Bend member. Sahalie tried to tell him what the root was, but was only half-successful. He then gave her a side-glance, if only to let her know that he was a little concerned at her lack of knowledge. Not just the ginger, but the strange-whatever-else-she-brought him. He bit his tongue this time, not daring to make a jab at her lack of knowledge. Not that he felt like he should be confident, not when his caretaker didn't seem to know exactly what she was doing. He knew how to not get poisoned, which with Sahalie's half-knowledge of herbs, was probably enough to keep him from not dying.

The older one chimed in then, giving meaning to the ginger. He didn't seem certain of it, and was still hesitant to chew on it. But then he got a look at her icy blue eyes, and suddenly had the premonition that if he didn't eat the thing willingly, he might have it shoved down his throat. His ears flattened and his lip curled up to show her a tooth before he was a Good Boy and ate his snack. Not wanting to drag it on, Lark made the mistake of taking a big chunk out of it. His original plan was to just chew it enough to where he could swallow, but it was so spicy and strong that his eyes and nose was watering. He coughed, spitting out chunks of the strong ginger.

Slightly embarrassed, Larkspur tried a new tact and ate the ginger in smaller doses, licking up the small pieces he'd spit out an carefully chewing on them. It wasn't so bad if he did it that way, and although his vision was blurred from watery eyes and his nose was sniffling, it was actually pretty tolerable.

In an attempt to save his pride a little bit and hopefully veer the conversation off of him, he spoke. "So I take it we don't like Naira, do we?" his voice was hoarse and tight, his insides were spicy from his mouth to his stomach.

Sahalie's noncommittal shrug was intended as a joke: she had yet to meet a wolf she disliked as much as the woman. However, the girl didn't linger on this thought when Aponi explained the medicinal purpose of the root she had so carelessly forgotten. Oh. That hadn't been what Sahalie had thought it was for at all, though, honestly this made more sense as vomiting was exactly what Larkspur had been doing. There were just so many plants to sort out that the girl could only manage to remember some names and which ones would definitely kill you. Her training had been left in a sorry state by Kyuu's departure. The girl huffed, a little dejected, but at least the white man's antics could cheer her up.

It was hard not to laugh when the man tried to tackle the root seemingly all at once. A frightening man like Larkspur should not have had much to fear from some simple plant-life, and yet the spicy root had quite a kick to it and soon the man was gagging as if he would vomit all over again. The girl managed to keep her expression controlled under a tight-lipped smile. And the girl was not cruel enough to deny the man a distraction from the embarrassment when she saw him looking for an out, "Not really. She's..."

"Maybe you'd get along, she seems pretty unsavory most of the time and sticks to herself. Until she likes to shack it up with my dad." Why was she saying this to him? He probably didn't care much about her dirty laundry, and it made her feel ashamed to sound so bitter and speak such ugly, judgmental things. It honestly felt a little unfair to the woman. A little. Not much. Sometimes Sahalie wondered if talking about her issue just made her feel more and more angry about the situation. Before she had come clean to Alastor it had been a whole lot easier to ignore Naira, but maybe this was just because before she had not had some siblings pop out of her rear end.

@Larkspur

The sideways glance tossed towards Sahalie was not missed by the older woman, something that was responded to with a single lifted brow. Was he really in the position to be throwing around any kind of shade right now? Larkspur seemed to come to the same conclusion following Aponi's words and stare. His displayed teeth only drew forth a roll of the blue eyes and a sigh of exasperation, she might have to take back her previous words at this point; he was as bad as Naira. Luckily for him he quickly redeemed himself with the comedy show he put on with his sputtering and coughing.

Lacking the tact that Sahalie apparently possessed Aponi couldn't contain the laughter building in her chest though she managed to maintain it to mostly snorting. These however turned to outright laughter following the yearlings brief description of Naira, a brief but very fitting description. Composing herself slightly the mother managed between her chuckles, "Luckily enough for you you're not actually related to her by blood." Realizing what she had said a strange look came over the woman's eyes for a moment before it was quickly hidden away.

Looking more critically at the white man the icy blue eyes surveyed his scars and obvious lack of body weight, what kind of stray had Sahalie brought home this time? "Besides the nausea and vomiting what other symptoms do you have? " Aponi may have hated the herbal lessons her mother had taught her as a pup but damn her if they weren't useful.