Redhawk Caldera I'm wide-eyed, and it's midnight

AW but preferably for members Sasha hasn't met yet!

It had been a while since she had first joined the pack, but the vivid memory of the process was still fresh on her mind. In fact, the girl had yet to meet many of her fellow pack-mates, something she had been meaning to do but never really accomplished. For a moment, she felt a rush of worry. What if she messed up when she talked to someone? What if they had a hard time understanding her? Sasha shook her head as if to rid herself of her inner turmoil. 

The viking sat down, shifting in the grass in attempts to get comfortable. Sitting and waiting for someone to notice her wasn't the most dignified thing, but she'd rather do so than approach anyone.

With the long grasses licking his hocks, Shrike turned away from his border patrol, pausing only to remove a bit of rabbit fluff from the fur of his ruff; he'd lucked out no his sentry duty and had managed to catch himself a small snack, something to tide him over until he found himself something bigger and better to eat. For some reason, he found himself craving duck, but pushed that notion aside. He'd have to find a pond, and it was well beyond the season where he'd be able to surprise a mother duck sitting on her eggs. By now all the ducklings would have been nearly the size of the adults, and far too flighty (pardon the pun) to even attempt to catch. 

He considered what he might do next- he caught sight of @Finley in the distance, but thought he ought not bother her, as she had the focused look of a hunter, and he'd already spent most of his energy. He'd be little more than a bother to her and a hindrance to her hunt. He crossed the scent trail of @Ferret, but thought twice about finding the ruffian; he was getting bigger and had not matured out of his boisterous puppyishness yet, so in favour of saving himself from more than a few nips and bites, he didn't seek out the youngster. Fortunately for Shrike, though, a figure- unfamiliar though clearly at home- appeared in the distance. Her coat was dark but flecked with soft greys and lighter browns, and she had an aged, grey look about her muzzle that did not match the youth of her figure. There was a mildness about her lips that proclaimed no devil, so Shrike continued toward her, tail curling upwards slightly as he approached the relatively new pack member. New to him, anyway. 

"Must be new," He commented idly as he strode toward her, stopping but staying on his feet, lest she shoo him off. He looked away for a moment, keenly aware of the lame small-talk he'd just started. And what better way to continue than with an introduction. "'M Shrike Redhawk." He said, licking his lips one more time and flicking his keen ears forward.

An unfamiliar figure made it's way towards her, causing Sasha to instictively stand up. Fortunately, he smelled of her newfound pack, putting the female at ease. He seemed friendly too from what she could see. Tail up instead of down -- always a good sign.

Sasha could not help but smile when the male guessed she was new. "Yes, I joined not too long ago," she said, her response rich with an Icelandic accent. There was a moment of silence that usually happened during small-talk, and Sasha glanced down at the ground. The male decided to break the ice with an introduction, a casual way to interrupt the silence in which the girl was thankful for.

"My name is Sasha Vasiliev," she responded, stating her full name as he had done. His last name was Redhawk -- did it have something to do with their pack, or was it merely a coincidence? She doubted the latter to be true. Still, she could not help but wonder it, although she hadn't gotten to know Shrike well enough to jump in and ask.

Woah. While the female seemed normal at first, Shrike was quite startled by her accent, and the way her words ran together in some places and halted in others. He tried to pick out exactly what was going on- whether she had something wrong with her mouth or actually had an accent and settled on the latter, nodding in a surprised way, finally when she answered his question. "Ah." Came his monosyllabic reply. Truth be told, Shrike was really still quite surprised by her accent, and trying to figure out where she could have come from, to talk like that. He hadn't had much experience with wolves with accents in his life, and wasn't quite sure how to react. 

"Uh, Sasha Vasilev?" He asked, hoping she might repeat her name. He knew the name Sasha, but her surname had been too quick for him to catch. "Where you from?" He asked curiously.

She laughed lightheartedly at his attempts of saying her name. "Close, but not quite," she smiled. "Vasiliev," she spoke this time a bit more clearly, putting emphasis on the bit he had missed. She had an understanding at least -- many names here were hard for her to pronounce as well, and this was no different.

Her expression showed a flicker of concern at his question, though it was more of a slight frown. "I come from far up north. Very far. Took me a few years to get here....so," she trailed off. "Very far." But she had to get away. The pack she belonged to -- though ruled by her family -- was not the most magnificent thing she could remember. "The pack is called Fryst Skógur. My þræll Mordur and I ran away," though the statement seemed grim, she smiled at the thought of her friend. Wherever he was now, he was probably doing well.

"Sorry if that didn't make any sense," the girl apologized, realizing that the majority of that sentence probably was hard to decipher. "How about you, were you born here?" she queried, glancing at the male.

"Vasiliev," Shrike repeated slowly, eyebrows lifting in an expetcing expression as he hoped to be praised on pronouncing the word right. It was as different as her accent, and he tried just a bit to imitate her accent so he could better pronounce her name. Unfortunately, Shrike wasn't terribly adept at imitating accents, though he was fairly close with his pronunciation. 

He also was not terribly good at figuring out what an accented wolf was saying, and while he managed to make out what she was saying, he could only do so with a very focused expression on his face, often watching her mouth to use that as an aid as well. "Oh." He said, when he finally put two and two together and understood that she'd come from somewhere very far North. That might explain her thick, fluffy coat. "Sounds cold." He commented. "What's Mordur? Brother?" He asked, having missed exactly what she'd been saying, other than that she was from a pack with a complicated name, and something and she had run away together. 

She apologized and he smiled slightly, shaking his head to dismiss her apology. It wasn't needed- if anything, he felt sorry he couldn't understand her better. "Uhm, nope. But not too far from here. Peregrine's my cousin." He said, simply assuming that Peregrine was the one who had met her at the borders.

sorry for the late response -- I broke one of my wrists and sprained the other, but the sprained one is getting better so I can manage!

"Better," she said, offering him a slight smile. He was trying his best and although it wasn't perfect, she genuinely appreciated the effort he was putting forth. "It was very cold," she responded to Shrike's statement. He asked who Mordur was too, but that was a bit more complicated to explain, especially without making her look bad.

"Mordur was my þræll. That means servant," she paused. "My pack is ruled by my family, each member has a þræll of their own," she spoke slowly, drawing out her words in order to be understood clearly. "My servant was Mordur. However, I considered Mordur a friend and treated him like my brother which...is not allowed," she trailed off, leaving the rest up to interpretation. "Now, I am here."

She listened as Shrike explained his connection to Peregrine. "Cousin? Oh." They didn't seem very similar, but then again, she had only met the two breifly.

He'd have to try a bit harder than normal to remember her surname, but figured as long as he could remember her relatively simple first name, he wouldn't have to be bothered terribly about her surname. He couldn't help but wonder if most of the wolves where Sasha was from had such unusual surnames, and figured due to the accent she had and the fact that she spoke words he did not understand that yes, they did indeed have strange surnames. Perhaps it meant something in a different language- he couldn't tell. Shrike only spoke one language and had never aspired to learn another, nor had he ever been exposed to it a great deal.

His ears flicked back when she explain ed that whatever a Braell was, it meant servant. A servant? Wolves had servants? This must have been a very different culture, from which she had come, as the idea seemed both strange and condemnable to Shrike. Fortunately, it appeared as though Sasha felt the same way, and he felt himself developing respect for the woman before him, for rejecting the social norms of her culture for ones that he himself embraced. Wolves shouldn't be servants. "You're a good person," He said softly. "I wouldn't have been able to have a servant either." He said. Though for hi, it wouldn't have been unnatural to reject the idea- his culture did not implement the use of wolves as servants. She, however, had knowingly rejected the tradition and stepped out of her family group because of her beliefs. "Where is Mordur now?" He asked quietly.

She smiled warmly as Shrike complemented her, dismissing it with a small shake of her head. "No, I was not acting brave...others have tried to speak out like I did but they only failed. I was not killed for it because my father would not dare kill me, no matter how mean he was" she admitted. She had always felt as if she had had the unfair upper hand in her former pack. Still, deep down, his soft-spoken complement did make her happy. He spoke again, and she smiled again. "I am very glad you think that way," she said. "Many others would gladly have them. All the work is done for you when you have þræll," she explained, wrinkling her nose in dissaproval. "It is horrible and wrong."

The conversation changed as he brought up Mordur, a slight pang in her stomach reminding her that she did not know the answer to his question. "He is somewhere...." Sasha trailed off. "But he is OK, I know he is. He wanted to be free from me, so I granted that to him. He is somewhere, happy," she spoke not only to convince Shrike, but almost as if to convince herself as well.

So she was a brave wolf, but a humble one too. It was nice to see, of course, and led Shrike to judge Sasha as a wolf with a good head and a kind heart. When she admitted that she wasn't at risk of being killed, he supposed that others might have been, for doing the same...And that she wasn't the only one to have protested against the system that was at state in the pack. While it was sort of nice to think of not having to worry about hunting, he enjoyed doing his own work, and being busy, so while he'd prefer to not have to worry about food- as they had during the famine- he wouldn't have been able to accept having a slave, of sorts, doing all the work for him. "We are meant to help each other." He commented. "As a pack. Everyone helps everyone else." It was redundant for him to say this, he knew, but he felt it was important that Sasha had her views validated now that she was a part of a new pack.

It seemed as though Sasha had no idea where Mordur was, but that he was happy. "He left too?" He asked, hoping for an affirmative answer. If he stayed in the pack, he didn't think it was likely that he'd ever be promoted beyond the rank of servant, or that he'd be happy. If he stayed, he'd likely simply be placed in the service of another wolf- not likely one as kind as Sasha.