Stone Circle Trashin' the camp

I love Steph, I promise, even though what I'm about to do to her may not look like it. AW!  

 

Steph had been on her own the past few days after confiding in her mother. While she had made some good points, Steph was stubborn and holding fast to her feelings. She hadn't seen Murdock since her explosion, and she still made no attempt to seek him out. 

It was late afternoon and the sun began to dip under the horizon. Steph had been watching the bison from Stone Circle, enhanced at how close a small group of them came to her spot. They usually stayed in the valley, but maybe they came closer in search of food. She was crouched behind a pillar with only her head exposed so she could watch them.

Steph, itching for a run, suddenly gave chase to the closest one. It started to run, then turned to veer back towards the others. Steph, being ignorant of all the things needed to be done in a hunt, focused on just the one bison, and didn't bother to see where the others were until it was too late. 

One moment, she was playfully growling at the heels of her target, and the next she was being hit by a massive force. It sent her sliding several dozen feet, her breath knocked from her lungs. She tried to suck in air and get her legs back under her. Her brain was jumbled and before she knew it, another hit came upon her. 

The head of the bison hit her side, pushing her back into the ground, forcing out what little air she had gotten back in. The four month old pup was no match for the angry beast as it thrashed its head back and forth, horns slashing into her skin. Something inside snapped, possibly a bone,  but Steph had no air to cry out in pain. 

Steph's fight for life would not be so quickly doused, and when the beast moved to her lower half, she brought her head around and her open jaws clamped down on the side of its face. Steph held on as it bellowed and swung its  head in an attempt to get rid of her. She let go and was sent flying, landing hard against a stone wall as her head bounced off of it. It knocked her unconscious, and now Steph was at the complete mercy of a bloody, angry bison.

Murdock was sniffing around the borders when he saw a dark blur darting toward the herd in the distance. What a dumb coyote, the male thought, irritated by the interloper's presence but ultimately deciding it would be too dangerous to puruse the creature, considering what it was doing. He figured it would get what was coming to it with or without his intervention.

Still, he ranged a bit closer, curious about the coyote's health. Could it possibly be rabid? Would they have to be careful about catching some horrible disease?

Ultimately, though, the 'coyote's scent turned up something all the more chilling: It wasn't a coyote at all.

"Steph!" Murdock shouted, turning toward the dark shape just in time to see it slammed against a large rock. But the bison wasn't finished with her, yet. "Hey!" Murdock screamed, his voice cracking. "Hey! Hey, bison!" It turned toward the sound of his voice, dark, beady eyes glinting intently. The rest of the herd was rounding toward him, too, but Murdock swallowed his fear and charged toward them, hoping to take their attention off Steph entirely. Hopefully, someone else would hear his screams and come to both their aid.

And someone did come.

Ezra had been lazily tracking a muskrat when the screams broke into the air, the desperation in their tones causing the boy to immediately bolt towards the scene. Was it the threat his mother talked about? Were they being invaded!? No. It was much worse than that. As he drew near and took in the situation, Ezra quickly realized there was too much going on at once for him to comprehend. Murdock was running from, no, he was charging the bison and Steph was....and then it hit him. The grayscale boy felt his heart drop to the floor, eyes going wide with fear as the panic began to set in. 

He rushed to his sister’s side, stomach flipping at the sight of all the blood that covered her. A whine escaped him while he bent down to lick his sibling’s face, desperately trying to rouse her from unconsciousness. But it was hopeless and Ezra felt about as useless as a knife without a blade. He needed to do something, anything to get his sister away from the angry herd. And so without much thought on her injuries, the boy grasped his sister’s scruff between his jaws and began to pull with all the might he could muster. He choked back the sobs that wished to break into the air as he slowly began to drag Steph away, scared for both sister’s and his own life.

Ezra wasn't the only one who came.

Nanook barreled toward the screams, the forest around her a wild frenzy of clawed and snapping twigs. Her chest burned, the world turned a pin-holed blur of fury and fear. Her mind ran thoughtless, honed only to the feral drive which coursed her.

Stone Circle burst upon her vision, the once peaceful stones reeked of fear, bison, and blood. Chaos unfolded - Murdock, charging at the enemy, and two small shapes slowly drawing away from the violence. Her eyes fell to Steph, broken, and Ezra - and the pieces clicked.

Her body shook and bristled, a deep, agonized noise shook from her throat, and Nanook pulsed forward to form a wall with Murdock between the kids and the bison, snapping forward with every effort to drive the bloody beasts back. She saw the danger only so far as it extended to Ezra and Steph; any threat to her and Murdock wasn't important and wasn't considered, so long as the kids were safe - and whatever it took, the bison would hurt for what they had done.

zValette rushed to the noise as well. The mother inside of her screamed about something being wrong. Like a dark shadow, she rushed over their lands. The female watched the scene. Murdock was trying to lead the bison away, the smell of blood was there as well. Nanook was helping Murdock--- And then, then the mother saw her daughter bloodied and broken. Ezra was there as well. "STEPH!," she cried in horror.

The tears sprung to her eyes and rushed towards her daughter. From the mother came so many saddened whines and nudges but Steph was out cold. She noticed Ezra was crying. Out of guilt? Somehow the bison was angered and she wondered why for a very brief moment. Then the mother helped Ezra with moving her daughter. In the safety of Stone Circle. Scared grounds. She was certain the bison would not charge into the circle. It seemed narrow for the beast anyhow.

Valette couldn't stop whining. "Steph... Stephie... Wake up!," she whined and nudged her daughter. Keoni. She needed @Keoni. Valette instantly howled towards their only medic. She looked at Ezra. "What happened?," she asked her son, assuming he was involved. Valette could only think of her daughter right now. She would let Murdock and Nanook handle the bison.

The howl rent the air with an urgency that had the girl's stomach twist, and she loped from the wood to the stone circle, arriving after a moment to find chaos. Fear, bison, and blood permeated the whole circle, and the nymph slipped inside the stones, heart already plummeting. 

Her sister was a mess of blood and fur, slashes along her side oozing red into the snow. Glancing once to her mother, she made brief eye contact before turning on her heel and running back the way she'd come, fear rising. She was the pack's only medic, yes, but not a very good one. She hadn't had time to learn much from Krypton before her disappearance, nor did she know the purpose of roughly half her supply. 

She grabbed goosegrass and raspberry leaves, the ones she'd discovered via experimentation, marigold and cobwebs. After carefully grabbing the herbs in her jaws and affixing the  cobwebs to her shoulder, she made her way quickly back to the stone circle, settling down beside Steph and taking a ragged breath. Methodically, she lay the herbs beside her and began to clean the girl's pelt, attempting for all the world to look like she knew exactly what she was doing and was not, in fact, as terrified as the rest of them.

Mother’s call hadn’t been for her, but Clary came anyway, drawn by a terror she had never felt before. She hadn’t heard the screams nor had she been near enough to smell the blood, but mother’s call had pitched with inexplicable desperation - an anguish she had never been accustomed to - but the noise and chaos rattled into dreadful clarity as she stumbled between the sacred stones and saw her mother, her tender brother, quiet Keoni, and, nestled right in the middle, the bloodied heap of -

“Steph!” The girl hurtled forward, thinking nothing of her safety, seeing only the jarring wounds that lined her sister’s still and sleeping body and drawing the only conclusion she knew from putting two and two together: her sister was dead. The thought was too much, and she threw herself to Ezra’s side and sought to bury her face against her steadfast brother.

He was too intent on the bison at first to see who had come to his and Steph's aid. There were voices, gutted and scared, and dark blurs in the corner of his vision. But he kept his eyes on the herd, dancing dangerously between distraction and mortal peril.

Then another pushed past him, teeth bared and eyes full of fury. Though the situation terrified and angered him, he couldn't blame the bison for what had happened. They were only protecting each other, just as he and Nanook were now protecting their own kin. And there was nothing wrong with wanting to hurt them for it - it was only natural, in Murdock's opinion - but Nanook was more likely to get herself killed than to avenge the pack's child.

"Don't!" he snapped, snagging Nanook's tail between his teeth in hopes of shocking some sense into her. "Come on - we'll draw them away and circle back when they lose interest."

Her urged the shewolf forward, hoping she'd go along with his plan so that they didn't have two wolves out of commission by the end of the day. He refused to think about what they might find when they made it back.

He will stick near Nanook if she doesn't go with him and continue to badger her.

The normally calm and collected boy was a mess of emotions as he drug his sister away from the bison, chills running down his spine as he slowly made his way further from the herd. Ezra was so focused on his sister and her broken body that he didn’t bother to notice the arrival of his aunt or mother, at least not until the latter was by his side helping him get his sister to safety. He looked to his shaken mother briefly as they entered the stone circle, the tears in her eyes making the boy’s heart shatter into pieces. 

A whine escaped him when questioned, ears falling back in the process. “I don’t know” he answered honestly, gaze shifting to rest on Steph’s broken body as Keoni entered the scene. Ezra took a few steps back to give the pale girl room to work, heart beating out of his chest as he awaited the news of his sister’s state. Clary quickly arrived as well and the boy felt his chest tighten at the sight of her. He knew how close his sisters were and the boy let out a whimper when his pale sibling buried her face into his side. He shifted slightly in order to offer a few licks to the back of Clary’s head, hoping to sooth his sister as much as he could.

A sudden pressure seized upon her tail. Nanook spun with a wild snap of her jaws to rid whatever intercepted - only to find she clicked the air mere inches from Murdock's face. She locked her gaze. Past the scattered white and black which flecked the edges of her vision, the connection with someone beyond herself heaved her fury back to reality, and the world whooshed into clarity around her. The cry of her sister, the hoofbeats on the ground. The heavy throb of fury. The sickening clench of dread.

If Murdock had been any other wolf, he would have felt the score of her fangs against him, a justified punishment for getting in the way of protecting the only family she had left. But her sense of reason clutched to the greatest thing she knew of him - that he loved Steph, as though she was the blood of his blood - and this she knew so deeply that even in her heightened fury, she trusted him.

Nanook wanted to taste the blood of the bison, to spill the whole valley full, but with a deferential growl Nanook moved to follow Murdock's plan. She took a lope through the midst of the beasts and hoped he was right that this would distract the bison's attention and their movements away from Stone Circle and onto her and Murdock instead. And she, too, tried not to think of what they would find when the both of them returned from luring the herd far enough away.

Valette whimpered when Keoni got to the circle. Valette almost couldn't step away from Steph's body. The mother moved to her other two pups, standing protectively by them as she watched Keoni trying to treat her daughter. Valette couldn't help but watch Steph and give her two other children licks. Trying to comfort them, or so she thought, the mother was mostly comforting herself by having her other two pups close to her.

She believed her son when he told her he didn't know. She knew that Ezra wouldn't lie or at least, she could usually tell. Now her son seemed truly terrified. "Why Steph!," she whined. Mostly upset. "Please save her, Keoni," she sniffed. Now Valette was mad at herself for not picking up the medical profession. She wished she could help her injured daughter. She could hear the squabble between Murdock and Nanook, but Valette couldn't leave Steph's side till she would wake up again. "She will live, right?," she choked while asking Keoni.

Her mother retreated to give her space, the soft sobs of her siblings having her ears tilt back. What was she doing? She poked the marigold before beginning to chew the goosegrass, trying to ignore Murdock and Nanook as they took on the bison, tried to ignore the cries of her siblings. She'd cleaned up the blood as best she'd could, but it oozed still, staining the snow around the girl. 

Carefully, she began to apply the goosegrass, trembling slightly as she pushed it onto and into the deeper cuts. Would it even work? She'd only ever tried it on herself; what if she was wrong, it didn't stop the blood - and there was her mother, asking her to please save her while her siblings looked on. She waited with baited breath a moment, before turning back to the marigold, preparing it too and carefully applying it to the small wounds, sharp relief stabbing through her as the blood seemed to ooze rather than seep. It was slowing; though whether that was because of the herb of the mass of vegetation in the wound, she didn't know. 

Her mother, again. She will live, right?  She looked to her mother, ears flickering as she neither nodded or shook her head. She wanted desperately for the girl to live, but if she didn't -carefully, she dipped her head the slightest fraction, hoping the herbs would stop the immediate danger of death by blood loss; but there was also the potential for infection and underlying injuries. Choosing to focus on the now, she girl turned back to her work, raspberry leaves at the ready should the girl awake.

Steph was dead, she was dead, and there was nothing Clary could do. Ezra's touch had her burying herself deeper against him. Everything suddenly felt so cold, and she shook with a violent shiver, even with the comfort of her brother and mother about her.

For the first time, Clary was glad Keoni couldn't speak - she didn't look up, but squeezed her eyes tighter. She didn't want to see her older sister say what she already knew, didn't want to make it real. The wounds, the blood, the look of sleep. A sob clutched her throat, dry and staggered. Steph was dead, and there was nothing she could do.

Bison, unlike wolves, were not as apt to give chase when things ran from them. They feinted a few yards after the pair before falling back, their attention turning back toward the group that hovered around Steph. He and Nanook were forced to circle back, herding and fleeing in turn as they enticed the bison away from the scene.

Eventually, they had formed a tight, defensive ring and would not be budged or harassed away any longer. Murdock looked into the distance and saw that his packmates were mere pinpricks on the horizon. The bison wouldn't follow them back.

"Come on," he said to Nanook, his voice gentler now. He started toward the pack before halting once more to suck in a shuddering breath. They were still gathered around her. What did that mean? His paws wouldn't take him any closer to the scene. All he could do was stand there with a stricken look on his earthy face.

Let me know if I should change anything!

Unlike his pale littermate, Ezra could come to the conclusion of anything other than that his sister was dead. Because if such thoughts would enter his mind the boy would be unable to keep himself from bursting into a mess of tears and grief. Steph was strong and Ezra didn’t want to believe these wounds were enough to kill her despite how bleak the outcome looked. She’ll be fine he wanted to say, but the words never formed in his mouth and the most he could offer was a few quiet whimpers into the back of his sister’s head. 

Despite regaining his composure, the subtle signs of stress and nervousness could still be seen upon the boy’s face. Keoni’s look didn’t provide much hope and Ezra found himself slinking backwards in search of his mother’s comfort. She’s going to be fine.

Steph had been out cold for all the comotion. Her hearing came back first, and she could hear the whines and distress of her family. Her face scrunched up, confused for a moment as to where she was. Finally, her eyes opened, little by little, and she attempted to right herself. A searing pain in her side made her yelp, and she laid back down, her eyes going to those around her.

They landed on Valette. Mama, she said, fear laced in her voice. She then noticed Murdock and Nanook in the background, trying to get the bison to run. It was then that Steph remembered what she had done. How could she have been so stupid? She groaned and her eyes were cast downward, which caused her to see the blood-soaked snow. Her eyes widened and she looked at her body, the blood beginning to dry but still oozing from the vegetation-filled puntiures. Oh my god! Am I dying?! she said, obviously freaking out.

Murdock didn't have to tell her twice. Once they'd gruellingly lured the bison away, Nanook wiped her paws of them and honed her attention back on the specks of her gathered family. A weight sank like a stone in her stomach, and she tried not to think about what they would find once she and Murdock joined them there. Though she hoped for the best, Nanook understood the cycle of life and death. Having watched her own mother wither away from the attack of another animal, she steeled herself for the worst.

Nanook whisked past Murdock as he made his own way forward and covered the ground with growing momentum - but something felt off. She slicked back an ear, and heard nothing. Drawing to a step, she turned to look back. Murdock stood, stricken and frozen stiff, and the bison - 

The bison moved behind him.

Valette felt both her children lean against her. Valette almost had to look away, thinking that Steph died. But then there was some movement that caught her eye. The mother licked her son when he whimpered. She then noticed that Clary had closed her eyes. "She is alive! She is breathing!," she spoke to them, excitedly.

Then Steph called for her. Valette surged forward and showered her with licks. "Steph! Oh Steph," she whimpered and started to sniffle. The stress was quite bad on her. Tears rolled down her face but mostly in relief. She nuzzled her daughter's face. "Don't move. Keoni is making you better," she urged. "Don't look at it, just close your eyes. Mommy is here. And your siblings too. We are all here for you," Valette murmured and gave Steph kisses in relief.

At this moment, she couldn't really be mad at her daughter. The relief of her being alive was too great for the mother to even think of being mad at Steph for being so reckless. Valette would have a talk with her later about this, though she had the feeling that Steph would have some remorse herself. Selfishly the alpha female didn't realize what was going on in the distance with Nanook and Murdock.

Steph woke, and a wave of relief passed over the girl. Letting out a breath she hadn't been completely aware she'd been holding, the girl was quick to nudge the raspberry leaves towards the girl's maw, urging to her eat them with a quick gesture of her muzzle. Valette was quick to comfort the girl, and smiling shakily, Keoni moved to the small pile of cobweb, moving to affix them quickly over the girl's mangles side in an effort to stop the bleeding and keep everything in place.