Dead Empress Backwater smile like you mean it

Random Event: Dead Empress Backwater, a snow drift has hidden your pack's caches!
All welcome, though Eros is calling out for @Viorel bc that's his go-to.

It was the fifth cache he had tried, the last that he knew of within what could be counted as the den's vicinity, and he was winded. He had never had to dig this much to reach food before, and with his stomach twisting and gurgling at him all he could think was one thing: all of their food was gone.

Had they been robbed, had the snow covered up the theives' tracks? He had a hard time believing the adults just stopped hunting or that the pack had spontaneously chowed through every last thing over the past day. No, this was bad. Something was wrong.

Eros' plopped his hefty hindquarters into the snow, animated frown very evident upon his maw, before calling out loud enough to echo in the relative quiet of the woods;

"Daaaad?"

His tone was drenched in concern.

(This post was last modified: Dec 16, 2021, 08:03 PM by Eros.)

Archer had been unsure of the snow at first. He still didn't know if he liked it. He didn't mind being wet, but the snow was cold and wet, and he didn't like that the pond was iced over. He couldn't practice fishing.

Now, however, he was really starting to dislike the snow. He'd been following behind Eros all day, trying to dig out food. Finding little rodents was nearly impossible now, and even though the frozen food wasn't his favorite, at least it was food. Only now, they had to work that much harder to get it - and they hadn't been able to find any. Everything was gone, and as much as he was trying to remain calm for Eros's sake, Archer was starting to get a little worried too. He didn't smell anything that might have taken their stores, so did that mean they'd just run out?

Archer is very haggard and thin; it is obvious he is not doing well.

The only thing that answered him was the sound of Archer following behind him, trying to find food as well and also coming up empty. The proved it - if his brother couldn't figure out where the meat was, it was definitely just gone. Eros' lips twisted down with great sadness. He waited a minute more - or at least, what felt to him like a minute, could have very well been ten seconds - before attempting again to get an adult's attention.

"DaaaaAAAAAD?"

His head twisted back and forth, expecting someone to appear at any moment.

"MOOOOOOM?"

Clover had been attempting to sun herself on a rock under the weak winter sun to no avail. The cold air was simply too much for the sun rays to break through, and she quickly found herself wandering through the pack territory. She felt her stomach rumble with hunger, and decided to head towards one of the food caches closest to the den site. The snow seemed deeper today, almost strangely so, as she dug where she knew there to be food as she had taken from it only days ago, but no matter how much she dug she couldn't reach the food.

Her digging was put on hold as she heard Eros call out for both parents, and worry shot through her. It must be very bad if he required more than just one adult, and so she hurried over to where he had howled from, putting on hold her thoughts about the snow-covered food cache.

She came upon the two boys (now wasn't that a surprise?), Eros sat back on his haunches with a large frown on his face, and Archer beside him looking very worried. They didn't seem harmed in any way, and she moved closer, concern etched onto her own face. "What's wrong, boys?"

Archer didn't join his voice to his brother's just yet; he was busy looking around their surroundings, trying to see if there were any unusual paw prints or smells around them to hint at a thief. There was just... snow. That's it. Snow blown into drifts against every vertical surface, making it deeper if they tried to get anywhere out of the open. Everywhere they'd buried their food.

The sound of another wolf coming their way met Archer's ears and he turned just in time to see Clover joining them, clearly worried as she answered Eros's call. Of course it was her. Archer resisted the urge to huff. At least she was doing her job as a healer, checking in on everyone. "We can't find the food," he said shortly. "It's all gone."

Archer is very haggard and thin; it is obvious he is not doing well.

Oh thank the Ocean, he thought when finally not just an adult but a parent figure arrived. He lifted himself back off his rump to trot to her, giving her muzzle a reverent nudge to show his appreciation. Archer, on the other paw, didn't move at all to greet their second mom, and his tone didn't go unnoticed by his brother. Eros shot him a glare over his shoulder, and would have shoved the other boy were he still at his side.

"Someone took it!" he elaborated to Clover mournfully, looking up at her with puppy eyes that asked she pretty please help him find food before he starved. To death.

(This post was last modified: Jan 15, 2022, 10:39 PM by Eros.)

Archer's response had her momentarily stunned, but she accepted Eros' warm welcome with a quick brush of her cheek against his and a reassuring lick to the side of his muzzle. His addition to Archer's curt statement had a single eyebrow raising, partly in curiosity, but also a but in bewilderment. It was impossible for someone to have taken all the food from a cache so close to the main den, one of the adults would have definitely noticed the presence of a stranger or a scavenger inside pack lands. She took note of his pleading expression, and silently took a few steps to inspect where they had dug up the snow that was definitely covering were the food cache was supposed to be. And yet, there was no food to be found.

She hummed loudly, eyes narrowing as her muzzle lowered closer to the snow, inhaling deeply, but all she could smell was the iciness of the snow and the scent of the two boys. No one else had been here recently, so the food hadn't been stolen, but then where was the food. "No one stole the food, otherwise we'd be able to smell traces of a stranger here," Clover said as she turned back to the boys, her tone as educational as it was confused, but then she remembered the cache she had just been digging at before where it seemed as if there had been an endless amount of snow.

Her head tipped back to glance up at the sky. It had snowed a large amount over the past few days, so perhaps there was just a large snow drift on the ground that was making everything deeper than normal? "I think perhaps there is just a very large amount of snow covering the ground today due to all the recent snows, especially where the ground was already softened from us digging it up often which is making it seem as if the caches are empty." She looked back down at the dug-away snow; the boys had dug pretty deep, but she was tall enough to still stand above the ground if she were to hop down into it.

"Would you two like to help me dig this even deeper, that way we can know for sure if the food is really gone, or if it's just covered in a very thick layer of snow?" She would need to bring this up with Viorel and Vayko regardless, but the two boys seemed hungry and she wanted to try and at least get them something to eat before she took matters further.

Archer Valle

Eros was, of course, quick to jump to the worst conclusion, but this time Archer didn't immediately discount it. He wrinkled his nose, but said nothing. Just because he didn't smell anyone didn't mean nobody had been there, right? What if there was a sneaky no-smell something that stole their food? Not that he would ever say it.

Clover herself discounted this and explained that they would in fact smell someone stealing their food, and Archer felt a bit better for it. The world was a safer place without sneaky scentless thieves. He watched the other mother closely as she glanced around, considering the situation - he assumed - before she finally spoke. The snow? Archer cocked his head. But they'd been digging in the snow. All day. His eyes narrowed at her, but when she asked them to dig with her he shrugged. Three sets of paws were better than two, and she was bigger. It was worth it to check, he supposed. "Alright," he said, then tucked himself back in their dug hole and began scraping at the snow again.

His toes were cold.

Archer is very haggard and thin; it is obvious he is not doing well.

She didn't answer immediately, instead stepping away to investigate herself. While Eros doubted she would come to a different conclusion, he still watched raptly. She was a grown up using adult logic - he wanted to learn from it if he could.

No one stole the food, she determined first, and Eros' ears lowered while his features wrinkled and knit with confusion. Then... what else could explain it?!

When she gave her own deduction, he found himself just as skeptical as Archer felt. They'd already done that, and there was no way that much snow could fall in one stretch. Right?

Archer agreed to help, and so Eros followed his lead. It felt useless, but he dug anyways.

Neither of the boys seemed overjoyed at the thought of digging some more, even erring on the side of skepticism, but she didn't let that hold her back. She began digging with practiced ease, sending chunks of snow flying behind her, but making sure to not hit the boys. Her paws began to sting from the cold as they dug deeper, almost impossibly deep to the point where the hole was pretty much as tall as she was. There couldn't possibly be this much excess snow around.

At long last her claws scraped against something that wasn't snow, and with a grunt of effort she excavated it, a great sigh of relief escaping her at the familiar scent of carcass meat. Clover stopped her digging to grab the meat and bring it up out of the hole, letting it drop on the snow. That had been a lot of work for a morsel, but the boys looked hungry enough that she'd gladly let them have it. "See? The food is still there, just hidden under a huge snow drift!"

It made her hopeful that the rest of the caches would be the same, but she would definitely have to let the other adults know about this new development so they were all aware. Until the snows melted and retreated, it seemed they would struggle to get to the food they had already stored, but at least it was definitely safe from any scavengers that dared to pass closely by.