Wolf RPG

it had been the sound of newborns that had driven indra to leave bearclaw, sickened that they shared the same father laurel's offspring would. it was not their fault - they were blameless -- but it did not lessen the blow any for indra, who had already lived through a life without a father and who wished no part of it on her sister's children.

once, someone had told her that you don't own something unless you could swallow it -- and she could not, would not, swallow the fact that laurel's children would soon be born and xan didn't even care. when had he last come to their den, to see how laurel was doing? if he had come, indra was not aware of it. laurel was bigger day by day, as were indra's worries. did he even know?

these anxieties had a stranglehold on her; they choked her vision as she made for the open meadow. in spite of all the wherewithal, she would see to it that her blood wanted for nothing -- even if it meant extracting her very soul out to please them.

Funny, how you two people can live on opposite sides of the world and be burdened by the same problems. While Indra was worried about her pregnant sister, Wraen was troubled by the same issue thrice-fold. And though daily hunting trips alone or with other packmates helped her not to think about the "certain doom" that awaited, getting away from Sunspire altogether was a welcome change.

She had been following a trail of a mountain goat and discovered a passage to the Rising Sun valley. Of course, she did not know the latter by name - for her it was an entirely new land. Careful to mark her path, she immersed herself in the joy of newly found attraction and was busy exploring and sniffing for a long time and without meeting another living soul.

Until... she stopped in a clearing and spotted a wolf with a russet pelt in the distance. She remained standing, while observing the other carefully.

she had never been an expert hunter, and so, remained oblivious to another's presence until the wind nearly clouted her across the head with wraen's scent. she jerked her head round, searching for the presence the wind suggested was quite near, and laid her eyes upon a monochromatic female not too distant from where she stood. indra felt alarm trickle into her chest initially, but it faded as she regarded the steely woman's conformation: no sign of aggression was held in her posture, nor did she look particularly displeased to see indra.

she might have ignored the woman's presence except she thought she recognized some semblance of scent upon her. indra's brow knitted and she took a few steps towards wraen, her muzzle bobbing as she drank the cold air through her searching nostrils. "who are you?" she asked into the wind, trying with difficulty to pin what allegiance the female held by scent alone.

The other was first to ask for introductions and, since Wraen did not read any hostile signs in the other's body language, she approached in a calm and confident manner. The russet girl could have been her age, maybe a year here and there. At a certain period in life it got a little difficult to tell exact age by looks alone. She gave a quick all-over look, wagging her tail in a friendly fashion and then took a step backwards, smiling.

"I am Wraen from the mountains - may I know your name?"

the manner in which wraen approached was poised, careful - indra studied the fall of her steps with her own deliberation, measuring each stride for any sign of change or trickery. none came -- instead, the friendly wave of a tail and a warm smile -- indra's defensiveness fell away and she offered her own muted smile in return.

the mountains weren't well known to indra -- not the way the valley was -- so she looked past wraen to the distant towering figures. "i'm indra redleaf. from the valley. i needed a walk."

"A Redleaf - how curious..." up until now Wraen hadn't  met anyone, who shared her family name. Her uncle's side of the family had converted to Redhawks, once they had moved to caldera, leaving Osprey and probably handful of other Redleaf-DiSarinnos in the world to carry on the family name and legacy. 

"I can join you - I know mountain paths over there better, but I presume that you are more familiar with the valley - that is a mystery to me," she offered.

the female repeated indra's last name, and she tilted her head to the side, her ears splayed in confusion. "how is it curious?" she asked cautiously, feeling uncertain -- did this wolf know of her mother, or perhaps her father? indra didn't like the idea of either of her parent's reputations being associated with her and felt her limbs tense.

when wraen offered to accompany her, indra offered a quick smile -- while she had not longed for company, the idea of walking alongside another wolf did not seem unpalatable. presently, she had been at her most vulnerable alone, and appreciated the offer. "and i don't know much about the mountain. seems our educations are oppositely matched." she began to walk forward, canting her muzzle to the side to see if wraen would follow. "i was thinking of seeing if there were any grouse around.. my sister is pregnant and thought it might be good for her caches."

"I have hunted grouse before - sounds like a good plan," wherever hunting was involved, Wraen was all in game. Ever since she had begun to work meticulously to learn and practice the trade, she had grown to love it and enjoy the possibilities it brought along. 

She waited for Indra to lead the way, because it would take herself a lot more time to find the birds in question. Once the direction was settled and they had begun walking, Wraen returned to her companion's earlier question: "Your surname - it's just that I am in part a Redleaf too. Hadn't met any other wolf up until now, who shared the family name. Any chance that Osprey or Peregrine, or Atticus and Crete ring a bell to you?"

indra would have wagged her tail excitedly as wraen accepted to come along -- only, she had no tail and had to supplement by a brief upturn of her lips. as they walked along indra took the chance to briefly study the female once more - her scent, her manner of walking, the cool chrome of her pelt. she altered her direction slightly, picking towards the bramble lowlands where she had on more than one occasion startled grouse from their roosts.

when osprey mentioned her surname again, indra's ears pulled back and she thought for a moment -- reflecting on if saena had ever shared anything. she hadn't, and a small disappointed frown briefly haunted her muzzle. "no.. i'm sorry." indra spoke lowly, her head canted downward as she thought of how shameful it was she knew so little about their family. "my mother's name was saena, but i never knew her parents and she never told me of them. my father's name was reek. i was born in phoenix maplewood, if that means anything to you.. were you born here as well?"

"I might have heard about Saena," Wraen said, raking her memory for the person in question. She remembered her, because the name was unusual, but could hardly recall any other specifics on the wolf in question. Osprey might have mentioned her on passing, but having never got on well with her niece had not said much of anything else. Arguments and differences in opinion were old and long-forgotten and were not important in the present day. 

"I might be wrong and this just might be another wolf with the same name, but she was related to my mom via very convoluted and complex branch of the family tree," she said with an apologetic smile for having nothing better to offer. "I was born near the shores in a pack called Donnelaith. It was lead by the Mayfair family, but we left it, when I was very little and when I returned a year later - nothing was left of the place or the wolves that had once lived there. It was as if they had never existed."

it appeared if saena was a relation at all, perhaps she was not an important one -- indra briefly glanced along osprey's silvered agouti coat. the two could not have been phenotypically more distinct from another: and as indra wracked her memory for any recollection of a similar colored wolf, she realized her family history that she knew of had no charcoal grey wolves in it. not like wraen, anyway.

wraen indulged the girl's question with an answer: donnelaith -- indra worked the name over in her head -- it had a pleasant ring to it. she imagined the glittering coast, the distant shores -- but her attention snapped to wraen rather abruptly at the mention of mayfair. hadn't she heard that before?

where had she heard that before?

her brow scrunched in concentration, but no answer rose to the surface. "i'm sorry to hear that. so, you didn't get a chance to see them again? are they gone..? that's very sad."

"Well, I am more curious about, what happened to them and where they went," Wraen replied, feeling that sympathy was out of place here. She had probably met Mayfairs as a puppy, but that was before the time she could have had any conscious memories. They were just names and faces, woven in the fabric of her history and origins, but nothing more. 

"In the end - my mom used to say - that the older you get, the fewer friends you have and eventually those few are the people that matter to you the most," she was not too sure, if she agreed wholeheartedly here with Osprey, and yet it was true for her mom. With the myriad of friends and acquaintances she had met in her lifetime, only Dante had remained as her only life-long, beloved and trusted friend. And in the end - how many more you really needed? 

"Have you been traveling a lot?"

indra nodded -- she understood that curiosity -- there was a story in those charred oaks, the fallen timbers. a story that perhaps she or wraen would never know.

as wraen went on, revealing to indra the pragmatic nature of her mother, indra couldn't help but feel a bit cold -- it must have been nice, she thought, to have a mother so wise. indra had always loved saena, but as she grew older she grew more introspective -- and she saw saena for what she truly was. not just as a mother, but as an entity, a living thing -- a flawed living thing.

she supposed now her life was an accurate representation of those who mattered most. laurel, blondine, tadec... and that was about it. maybe someday phoenix, though for now she kept her hopes from ever getting airborne.

"i haven't lately, no. but in the past, we traveled a lot. i'm tired of it. i want one home, and i want to stay there forever. no more traveling, no more sudden departures, no more problems with others -- just me and those that matter to me the most. what about you?" it was a lot to come out of indra's mouth -- particularly since she was often so reticent around strangers.

"I spent most of my childhood as a nomad and I too was very happy, when we finally settled down," Wraen shared the same views on the matter as did Indra. Though she was happy to wander outside Sunspire quite often, it was wonderful to always have a place to return to and people, who would be happy to have you there. 

"I agree with you - it is a great experience to build your own life the way you want it, once parents are not around to tell you, what to do. Me and my friends recently started a pack of our own - basically almost two-year-olds in the core with little experience in leading and management and it has been a very exciting road so far. Let's you learn a lot about yourself and others as well," she said.

"Where do you live exactly?"

indra walked alongside wraen, one ear tilted as the woman spoke of her life so far: of the pack she and her friends formed, of her experiences. indra thought it sounded wonderful, but fretted for her own future: would they have the same luck wraen had been afforded?

when wraen asked after her home indra slowed to a stop and swung her hindquarters away, her level gaze scrutinizing wraen for any malign intentions. she was reminded of redshank, of his warning that not all strangers were trustworthy. how in this minute could she ensure that wraen wasn't like ithrik, and wouldn't hurt her?

her ears folded and a hard glint appeared in her eye as she wrestled with answering honestly and lying. in the end, the truth won out -- but indra answered begrudgingly. "bearclaw valley." she wanted to press and ask for more - like how hard had it been to set out on your own? but her mind was too preoccupied with wraen's ulterior intentions.

Wraen, who had been lucky enough of never being assaulted by strangers (except for good scares that she had quickly recovered from), was taken a little aback, by the apparent unwillingness and immediated suspicions her question evoked in Indra. Her face betrayed confusion at the sudden change of the demeanor, as well as awkwardness as well. She had no idea, what was wrong with the obviously harmless inquiry, and how to remedy, whatever she had done wrong.

"Are you alright?" she finally asked, because it did not seem likely to her that Indra would break the silence. "I apologize, if I insulted you in any way."

indra scoured the grey woman's features for any semblance of wickedness -- even a drop of malignant motives was enough for her to feel vindicated in the mistrust she placed in this redleaf-not-redleaf female. yet as much as she scryed, as much as she panned along the silvery muzzle and soft eyes of her companion, she could find no harmful impulse within.

she rounded her shoulders, but the tension was still there. "it's just -- you're not supposed to tell strangers where you live." she admitted, feeling the tightness of her body roil down her spine. "someone told me once i shouldn't tell people that kind of stuff, and i didn't listen -- i should have listened." her ears seemed to fall back and for a moment the redleaf looked deflated before a newfound fire stirred in her gaze. "you're a stranger, just like everyone else. you could have bad intentions."

"That is a fair point," Wraen agreed and nodded, but did not understand exactly, how telling the name of the pack and the approximate location of it, could do any harm to her. After all, when you were within the borders, what could happen to you? Apparently Indra had had a very different experience in this matter and therefore Wraen decided not to argue with her on this.

"And you don't trust me - that is very smart of you also," she said. "I - on the other hand - am not so smart and I like you and your company. And I would consider it a missed opportunity to gain new acquaintance, if you decided to leave here and now. But - you are free to do so. I won't chase after you, I won't follow you."

wraen's transparency -- that fresh honesty indra so dearly deserved but never got -- it withered her. she crumbled before the steely-clad woman, her gaze hooded with careful thought. it was so tantalizingly rejuvenating to receive that kind of unveiled and vulnerable honesty, that it nearly seemed to transform the somber redleaf.

bled clean of her resolve to lie to wraen, indra shrugged and cast her reservations to the chopping wind. "it's just that... you shouldn't trust wolves." she admitted, for the briefest of spells searching for wraen's eyes -- not long enough to be challenging, yet long enough that the beseeching manner was clearly imposed. "you can't trust people all the time, they only ever think for themselves. what if someone followed you home, or attacked you?"

"I tend to concern myself with a person at hand and not the whole lot out there that I have not yet met," Wraen shrugged, though she had to admit that Indra was right and that a certain level of being careful would not hurt one bit. "Anything can happen, but rarely does it all happen at once."

"So let's put it like this - are you going to follow me home or attack me?" she stopped to look at her companion, her question half-serious. "Because I promise that I won't."

it seemed everyone in the world had a different experience than indra. perhaps a bit jaded, or a bit bitterly, indra reflected on that -- wraen's logic made perfect sense for wraen, but indra could not shake her defensiveness so easily.

she tried to roll her shoulders, to smile warmly and convincingly -- but everything felt a little hollow. even wraen's words had a ring to it that echoed, and indra fixed the female with a sorry expression. "no." she answered honestly, for she had no intention of doing either of the two things wraen had mentioned. "but promises don't mean anything, and people lie."

poor wraen might realize eventually she was beating a particularly stubborn and particularly dead horse -- as much as indra wanted to believe this woman was inherently good, her past experiences warned her against it and she could not ignore them.

Wraen found it a little difficult to distinguish, where the conversation regarding Indra and her as individuals ended and where one with two different views and experiences in life clashed together. By now (and not through the most pleasant circumstances) she had learned that people were impossible to change and that you had to respect each one of them, no matter, how wrong you thought they were in their actions and opinions. It was a life-long lesson to learn, a difficult one as well, but here and now she decided not to push the subject further. They would get nowhere.

"Do you like stories?" she changed the topic abruptly.

indra expected some sort of counter, some pushback -- at the very least, some sort of utterance on no, here is how you are wrong and here is why -- they always came, those admonishing little speeches.

except this time, they didn't. it surprised indra, in a passively good way -- and she expelled a small sigh of relief that she wouldn't have to stalwartly defend her position for the nine-hundreth time with a stranger who had no idea of her past life-experiences -- and thank god, for that.

wraen's abrupt change of subject was clever, but indra didn't see it for what it was. her brow furrowed a moment as if confused, but then she shrugged and offered a half-hearted "yeah, sure," - her tone still slightly bewildered, but intrigued, by what the woman had to offer.

"When I was little - me and my mum used to play a game," Wraen began, smiling fondly at the memory of her and Osprey walking together, listening to the stories of, how all things had come to be on this Earth. All the young cub had had to do, was to point out to something, and her mom would come up with a short tale. And with years and years of experience in the story-weaving craft, she had not had to look far for the right words and the events. 

"There - in fact were many games, but this one particular has stuck in my mind," she continued. "It's called - How this thing came to be? - meaning that you point out to anything your eye catches, ask it and the other person has to come up with a brief history of it," she finished and stopped, looking over to a rather small lake (compared to the ones she used to hunt at), brow furrowed and her looking back to a particular story.

"Do you want to play?" she finally asked, turning her attention away from the lake and back to Indra.

indra listened, intrigued -- she liked the way wraen's face lit up as she recalled her mother, and the warmth it exuded. darkly, she had no such emotion gentle the harsh edges of her face when she recalled her own mother, yet all the same, she recognized and appreciated love when she saw it.

as wraen elaborated, indra became aware it involved imagination. the redleaf frowned; she had never been a storyweaver, had never perfected the craft of creativity -- but she would try her hand at it, if it so pleased her comrade.

"sure," indra repeated again, though she felt her ears sweep forward in slight interest, and she looked upon wraen in a way that suggested she was ready to engage.