Oak Tree Bend Eat and Run

for @Ruenna . Others welcome, but please ask before joining!

It was easy to keep to himself, especially because usually when you slept, everyone ignored you. He could only pretend to be asleep for so long, eventually the world would know he was alive, and mostly well. That and he was getting anxious, just laying around like some sort of dumb animal (which he very much was, but it'd be wise not to tell him that). He'd gorged on a good meal or two, still finding it difficult to spare anything else. Larkspur still felt like a loner, he felt the need to eat everything he could and then some. He'd made himself sick because of it, his stomach uncomfortable and full. For the time being, walking off the pain seemed like his best bet.

He had been thankful to see that the Spectral Woods eventually did lighten up, with the particularly sunny spots closer to the heart of Oak Tree Bend. Lark wanted to lay around in those spots, but still feared seeing @Alastor again, so kept out of the way. A deer antler was clamped firmly in the wolf's bloodied jaws, limping as he walked. Everything felt... off. It wasn't so bad being at the bottom of the totem pole, but something about Oak Tree Bend unsettled him.

Or maybe it was just that having a place he could call home for a while unsettled him. It wasn't his home, and he knew himself too well to get comfortable enough with the idea. It'd all go south sooner or later, and probably sooner, making his best bet to heal up and move out. Sahalie would head north to visit her family, and he'd just move on.

Larkin plopped himself down in a particularly shady spot to lazily chew on the antler. His mind went numb as he did so, teeth raking against the rough antler. It felt good to not think about anything, and at that moment Lark decided he was going to spend at minimum the next three hours chewing on the antler and thinking about nothing at all. The whole ten, solid minutes of antler chewing were bliss... and then he smelled it.

It was after him.

Larkspur didn't give it a second thought. He knew it was that lynx, out for blood, trying to lure him with half-eaten carcasses. It could have been some different sort of lynx, but in his gut he knew it was the same one. He got up, and like the man on the mission that he was, his sniffer went right into full-drive as he tried to pick up the thing's trail. It might have been crazy, to think that a lynx was after him. He couldn't recall one time that a cat had sought out a wolf. He might have ignored it, had he thought it wasn't real. But Sahalie had said it was, she'd smelled it too. The silvery wolf's teeth clamped together as he sniffed and sniffed, then made a silent vow.

He was going to kill that lynx. Screw his shoulder, he wanted the thing dead and he was going to be the one to do it.

(This post was last modified: Jul 21, 2016, 03:04 PM by Larkspur.)

-does SoW lynx summoning dance-

Being a responsible pack wolf sure did make you restless. For a considerable number of days in a row so far, Ruenna had watched the sun set with a deep-set regret that she had not chased it all day. Instead she had woken up here and woukd go to sleep here and over and over and it made her feel so impotent. She couldn't hunt effectively for more than just herself, the idea of marking borders was still strange and unnatural for someone who had spent most of her life not only hiding her existence from rival predators but avoiding the territory of others, as well. Having and maintaining a food cache was so forward-thinking that it blew her mind. She would have been happy to pupsit, except that the mothers all seemed quite private and - understandably - preferred that role to go to the members they knew and trusted. But oh the stories she could have told. Maybe she would tell Serach and Triell - they would understand. She wanted to contribute, she just... didn't know how. Not in a practical sense.

The girl had been laid on her back, idly batting at a thin hanging twig as it swung past her face, first to the left and then to the right. The game had started with more enthusiasm but now, with the sun much further along the sky and with nothing else meaningful for her to do, tedium had worn in. And Ruenna had no idea how to handle being bored - and lately, she was bored a lot.

Thus the sound of movement nearby - merciful distraction from her idleness, who cared who or what it was - yanked her from her mindless swatting. The thin leaves on the end of the branch brushed against her nose as she stared at where the sound had come from, eyes and ears all alert, snorting once and then twice and then three times to try and remove it. When that didn't work, she just pulled herself up and left it behind altogether, a brand new possibility unfolding before her, and there, she could see someone walking by with such purpose. He was unfamiliar but who cared, that's what she was used to, and because she also made a really bad guard.

Initially she crept after this stranger on his mission, taking advantage of his obvious concentration to pursue unnoticed, but almost immediately that grew boring so she pumped a little speed into her step to catch up with him. Setting a serious frown on her face, a deliberate pursing of the lips, a keen twisting of ears forward, she lowered her nose as though tracking something and, just as she began to level with him, gruffly stage-whispered (because it was the only important part of the narrative she wasn't clued into yet): "what're we huntin'?"

He had stopped, almost frantically sniffing around in an attempt to find the cat's trail. It had been a long time since he'd been on the hunt for something and getting out of a battle with a lynx unscathed was doubtful. Lark didn't care, just so long as he could kill the thing and sleep a little bit better at night, he'd be happy. He caught whiffs of the thing, but nothing solid. As moments went by, Lark only became more and more irritable. He should have let it go and gone back to his mindless antler-chewing, but he was hardly the quitting type. He was going to find that thing, today, and he was going to kill it, today.

Then there it was again. The smell was stronger now, and Lark's dark heart leaped in joy. His tail swished to the side as he took a step forward.

He'd been so wrapped up in what he was doing that he hadn't even offered the girl a passing glance, much less realized that she was there. When she spoke, Lark almost jumped out of his skin, stumbling in an attempt to not hit the ground. "Shut up," he loudly whispered, and tried to get back to work. With his new company, concentrating was becoming a little bit difficult. Larkin turned to the girl, "There's a lynx following me," he knew it sounded crazy the second he heard the words, but it was the truth. "So I'm going to kill it, and if you'd like to keep me company, then actually help instead of blindly sniffing like some sort of incompetent idiot." Lark stood there for a few more moments. "Or get lost, you're distracting me," he growled, then resumed sniffing.

Being no stranger to the kind of startled reaction which came from inserting herself into other people's business without invitation, Rue barely bat an eyelid. Nor did his frustration bother her, because she had elicited many different kinds of responses from doing this sort of thing, and irritable snapping was very far from the worst kind.

And the guy could tell her to be quiet all he wanted, but he'd learn that's not how Rue operated.

"I see, I see," she said seriously, nodding at his gruff explanations, his insults and dismissals rolling off her back like so much water. A lynx, huh. That would be pretty exciting. And it was stalking the guy, no less, which was even more exciting! "What kinda fella we dealin' with, here?" she whispered hoarsely back, slipping easily into a noir detective kind of persona - all she lacked was a chair to lean back in as she stared meaningfully at a map full of criss-crossing lines while she took a drag on something bad for her lungs. Now she knew what she was supposed to be tracking, there was definitely a distinctly feline aroma wafting in the air, her nose wiggling as she sourced it. "He plottin' revenge, is that what t'is? You nab his brekkie? He think you his ugly long-lost brother?" Poor deluded kitty. So far she didn't hadn't connected the dots that he was a stranger in her pack's territory, or that, following on from that, he smelled like Spieden and Sahalie. That didn't tie into her narrative.

There are several fresh rabbit tracks in the mud. Hunt Opportunity

Larkspur looked at her and glared, good and hard. He would have preferred to chase the girl off and continue his lynx hunt alone, but he knew it'd be best just to find the cat and go back into hiding. "It's a dumb cat, it doesn't think past its nose," he took a few more steps towards the scent, which was getting stronger. He glanced back at the girl, whom he deemed much too old to be playing with fantasies that involved cats that thought that he was its kin. Cats were stupid, dumb animals that didn't care about much more than food and licking itself clean. Up until this point, they had left Lark alone most of his life.

He caught a good whiff of the thing and began to follow the trail with more confidence. Larkin tried to walk quickly, silently praying that the girl would leave him alone (he would have prayed a little louder, but he was attempting to be quiet). He zig-zagged through the Spectral Woods as he chased the scent. It was all for naught, as the trail seemed to die down. His teeth tightly clenched as he angrily paced around, blissfully unaware that the thing had hopped up a tree. It hadn't even crossed his mind that it would have climbed the tree, and at this point he was too angry at the girl to bother looking up.

A jubilant manner was only so maintainable on the best of days, let alone when one was deathly bored and now getting nothing to bounce off of at all. Had this been a normal encounter, she would have weighed the pros of an extended encounter with the pros of just cutting her losses now, only the difference was she couldn't just skip off into the sunset and never think about him again - as she slowed down and glanced at him, frowning in displeasure, the reality of her situation seeped in through her make-believe, and along with it the fact that he smelled like pack. Because that was a thing now.

Ugh.

Stupid boring new packmate in this stupid boring place. She trotted after him for a bit, though now lagging behind by an increasing margin before deciding that it wasn't worth it and stopping altogether. Jaw set as her teeth grit together, she stared at his backside unhappily, sullenly watching him carry on searching for his 'dumb cat'. If it was so dumb then why did he care about it so much?! He was the dumb one.

He really was the dumb one - so focused with his nose to the ground chasing after his target, he completely missed the subtle flash of movement which caught Rue's eyes and led them to where the lynx perched neatly in the tree. It glanced first at the other wolf then at Rue, perfectly aware of the situation - and, having absolutely no interest in antagonising it, Rue just grinned and wagged her tail, giving it a wink. The lynx tilted its head, an ear twitching, and blinked in return.

When her gaze fell back to her packmate's (ugh) retreating shape, she was wearing a smirk instead. "You ain't such a bright petal yourself, you know," she jeered, and wondered just what an intelligent creature could want with a joyless guy like that.