Spectral Woods tear the skin

@Mabel plz get tag i'm dr0nk

It was hard. He grew up where everything he could remember was fine. It was like that for his mother, too. She was fed, her father was there. She had pack mates. A woman fed her. What more could she want? There was love somewhere but it didn't quite reach him. It was meant for someone but not quite him. Laurel wasn't meant to be the one that nursed from her, alone, in the spring time of her adulthood. Sahalie had done the same to her own wet-mother but she hadn't understood until that moment what it meant to be reduced, by someone who was not even capable of understanding what a mother was, to a mere milk sack. Why did Laurel ache for more? Why was a milk sack meant to be more? Laurel felt stupid for wanting more. There was no reason. Nothing in his life hinted there might be something.....

More....

They moved away from the shivering trees. But Laurel wanted to go back, as soon as he was able to. There were other mysteries. He knew where his nurse came from, and her mate. His father was not here. But he had died here. His mother had died here. And not much was known about them, very little was known about any of them but still he wondered with a morbid fascination why it was here that they died, out of any place that they visit. This land felt like a hungry monster, a cougar that preyed on the weak, waiting for thankless, stupid creatures to let their weakness slip. Was his father that stupid? Was his mother that week? Laurel did not understand why he thought so highly of himself but thought little of those that raised him or the genes that produced him.

Where did he come from?

The fog was thick here but the trees were thin. There were smells of a lot of wolves, but at least no boundaries near here. His "mother" said she was born to a lot of fog. This seemed like a fuck ton of fog. The answers might begin here. Or they would just confuse him til he gave up.

(This post was last modified: Jan 13, 2018, 01:35 AM by Lauraceae. Edit Reason: fixing drunk typos LOL )

Mabel was grounded. What else was new? But, thankfully this time her grounding meant that she could leave the territory as long as she wasn’t gone overnight. Rather than stick around and see @”Ayla”’s smug face all day long the cream coloured pup had taken off bright and early this morning and had no plans on going back until the evening. She would go back when she was good and ready and nobody could tell her otherwise.

There was hardly anybody left to tell her otherwise anyways. Mom and dad and Lila and cousin Nalda and nobody else. They were all gone and nobody seemed super keen on anything else even though Mabel heard her parents rumbling about their low numbers. Well, the Donata child could go out and get them more members if they would just let her go out and get them.

Thankfully, going too far didn’t seem necessary. Tracking the scent of some stranger nearby Mabel held her head high as she often saw her mom doing. Striding confidently into view through the fog she announced, ”I”m Mabel, who are you? Are you going to join our pack?” That was how this all worked wasn’t it?

@Mabel

It seemed unlikely that anyone might pass through here, and yet a shape appeared first as a shadow in the fog before finally it materialized, as if the thick, wet air molecules themselves were coming together to grant the shape a form. She was pale and she was proud—these were the first two things he noticed about her, but only one of these things could explain the reactive stretch of his eyebrows and thinning of his lips as he stared her down. Mabel. Alright, then, he thought with a protracted breath, Here we go.

"What pack?" he quipped back. The dampness that created the fog made it hard to catch any scent on her. Or on anything else. If there was a pack here it would seem kind of stupid. They'd have to keep a constant stream of piss in order to even keep the predators out, let alone any other wolves.

"I mean, not sayin' I won't but like you can't just walk up to me and assume I know what you're talking about." He was honestly trying to be polite about this. Sahalie always said that it made others to see that he was, "really" a nice boy. Did he look like a bad boy, he wondered? All he saw in puddles was a snaggletoothed, red-nosed face glowering up at him. "Like I—" he stopped suddenly, remembering she'd also asked who he was "Laurel—uhh that's me— wasn't really looking for one but, you never know I guess." A bit awkward, but it got the point across.

A young deer has been separated from the rest of its herd. Hunt Opportunity

Well, maybe recruiting people was harder than she thought. Instead of being enthused at the idea of following her back and joining them he had follow up questions. Still, she was determined to make this work and then maybe she wouldn’t be grounded anymore. A right cancelling out all the wrongs that she had done or something like that.

She wanted to huff and call the boy stupid, but that probably wouldn’t help her so instead she tried to raise one eyebrow like her mom did. She had been trying to teach herself this for a long time because it seemed like a pretty cool thing to be able to do but so far she had not mastered it. All those hours wasted staring into puddles for nothing because when she attempted it now both the ridges on her face shot up in the air. So she quickly dismissed the idea and let them settle back down to neutral.

Shit. How did she get this guy to join them? She couldn’t let him see that he had phased her so instead she let out a only slightly snobby, ”Uh, Oak Tree Bend.” Why didn’t he know that? Maybe he was stupid, ”Almost nobody comes into these woods unless they’re looking for us.” She almost ended it there but couldn’t help ehrself from adding, ”On purpose.”

@Mabel lol sorry this is craaaaaaaap

The girl, Mabel, made some weird expression with her face. Like she was surprised, but only with her eyebrows. The overall effect left Laurel wondering if maybe she needed to take a dump. Perhaps the meeting would be cut short. Perhaps her bowels could wait and it was only a passing feeling. Or, maybe, the eyebrows meant something else entirely and he was just imagining this proud girl stooping over to void herself in order to undermine any future arrogance.

"Oh," he breathed as his pupils pulsed once. He'd found Sahalie's birth pack entirely on accident, it seemed. Obviously he would know the name and all the stories—though how much he remembered was up for debate. "I mean, I guess I was looking. I mean. Not looking to join...necessarily..but," his gaze moved over her face, realizing that he was leaving a lot of things unsaid. But did he say the words "I know all about Oak Tree Bend" or "Sahalie raised me?" She hadn't left under the best circumstances—he knew that much. "I was looking for Oak Tree Bend. I'd heard about you guys I just...."

"Didn't expect to find you here?" Inwardly he sighed: she probably thought he was such a weirdo, and there wasn't really any way to salvage this.

All this guy said was oh. Mabel was beginning to believe that this Laurel really was just stupid but whatever, a stupid member might be better than no member at all. As long as he could pee on the snow and fill the cache holes then he would fit right in. The child had already seen enough members come and go to know that really as long as they stayed then they were better than the others.

So she was determined to bring him home, even though he was stupid.

Mabel wanted to roll her eyes but instead she just squinted at him as he rambled on. What the hell was he talking about? He was kind of looking for them but didn’t think they would be here. Setting her rump as gracefully on her ground as she possibly could the cream child squinted at him uncertainly. This time, her voice might have had a little condescension mixed with the confusion, ”We’ve always been here, for years and years.” At least that was what her father was always telling them, about his mother and how they had gotten there. Her tail twitched behind her, ”So, you were looking for us but you don’t want to join. Are we supposed to be expecting you or something?” She had never heard of a Laurel before.

I'm sorry that I keep taking characters that you're mid-thread in :')""

Laurel didn't like the girl. He didn't like the way @Mabel looked at him, he didn't like that stupid tone in her voice, and he didn't like how confusing he knew this whole situation was. "Well — no, no one's expecting me" on one hand, it all made perfect sense to him. But when he heard the words out loud and put them together, they weren't making much of any sense. Frustration bubbled up inside of him as he tried to find the right words to say, something that would make more sense instead of less. "And no, I don't really want to join, but..." he trailed off again and got angry at himself.

Fuck it.

Laurel let out a sigh, "Look, Oak Tree Bend is my mom's old pack. I wanted to just... learn more about where she was from," he didn't know what more information would get him, but it was at least something to work towards. "So I just wanted to... check it out, I guess?" he seemed unsure of himself, but that was only because he was very unsure of himself.

(This post was last modified: Feb 21, 2018, 11:54 PM by Lauraceae.)

Before Mabel had just thought that maybe this Laurel was stupid but now she knew for sure and the Donata child also knew she didn’t want to bring him back anymore. She couldn’t bring back a stupid child to the pack who made no sense when he talked, her mother would laugh them both right out. No one was expecting him and he didn’t want to join. She was quickly losing interest in anything that he had to say, and her bored expression on her face clearly displayed that.

Suddenly Mabel’s expression switched from bored to hard, a kind of expression that she had seen her mother wear more and more often. Aponi hated people who left unless they were allowed to and they came back, the child knew that for sure. She knew it in the cold expression and the way her parents walked after another member left. Looking Laurel up and down Mabel rolled her eyes, ”We don’t let people just come check it out. Especially not children of people who left, my parents hate abandoners.” Being the child of an abandoner was just as much of a sin as being an abandoner yourself.