Flycatcher Downs now that you're done shuffling the tits off the queens

@Indra and @Laurel if you want to come too!

It was one thing when the devils chased him atop the drumming hooves of some animal. It was another thing when they pursued him in some indescribable, flying monster. It snarled so loudly that it deafened him to the world around him, and it carried a savage windstorm beneath its wings which whipped his fur and stung his eyes with thrown snow.

He ran on in fury and in fear, abandoning his trail of Lucy in favor of self preservation. Skwol took to the densest timber he could find, borrowing on the strategies employed by grouse and hares to elude ravenous hawks. It worked. The devils circled him but could not find him, and gradually the wind no longer shook the trees, and the roaring died to a distant ominous drone. Panting for breath, Skwol stared after the demon until he could no longer see the sun glinting off its smooth hide. Only then did he rest briefly — and fitfully, in trembles.

—

He stayed his course for countless hours. Ears plastered to his skull in tension, but springing to life at every sound. His lope was stiff and only just bridled from becoming an energy-devouring gallop. If he wanted to cover ground he had to remain efficient. His determined and single-minded track took him north, away from the direction he had last trailed Lucy in. He had not come so far only to lead devils to another wolf who did not deserve to die by their blood-spattering thunder.

Several times more he heard the predatory hum threaten the landscape, but as the day gave way to evening, the world resumed its natural and comfortable quietude. Skwol stopped at a small creek to slake his thirst by desperate gulps, and then in the snow he lied down and wondered how far he would have to run to escape the evils that sought him so tirelessly.

Until I die, he thought grimly.

a sound louder than any thunderclap roared overhead and indra jolted awake, startled by the deafening snarl. immediately she looked for laurel -- who was not besides her. the noise was cacophonous, positively shell-shocking -- it reverberated from the ground to her lungs and she could hear and sense nothing but its choking roar.

she flung herself into a gallop, looking everywhere for laurel as the black demons growled overhead. the trees shook in their wake and wind unnaturally turned on its tail and riffled back. indra once had paused to look at them and was horrified to witness their metalic sheen, and the almost captivating gyration of its odd wings. it was enough to seize her heart in terror and she ran again.

she cried for laurel but no answer came. by the afternoon the strange predatory birds had ceased their movement and she was exhausted. she was stumbling as she came across a familiar figure -- skwol. his fur was in disarray, and he looked different from the last time she saw him -- indra instantly altered course towards him, scuttling as fast as her wounded body could take her. "skwol!" she yelled, loping through the snow with her ears back and muzzle low in fear. "what's happening?!"

Laurel'd gone out to relieve herself, and much to her surprise when she returned shortly she did not find Indra anywhere. She blinked and looked around, called for her sister but found nothing. She'd experienced storms before and though they were always a bit scary, she had taught herself not to show she was scared for Indra's sake. Yet these were extraordinarily grumbly and dark, and they seemed less abstract than regular storms, though the sounds were similar, but more consistent. Every time they growled she shrank a little, but reminded herself to be strong in case she found Indra soon.

She kept calling but no response came even as she followed Indra's illogical trail into the wild. Maybe she was also relieving herself, but soon she found the trail lead too far for that to be the case. Laurel kept calling but it felt like the angry sounds from the skies drowned out any sound she made. In the distance she saw Indra looking demure wandering towards some other wolf. She felt a growl rumble in her throat and started running towards the pair through the storm. Her sounds were not loud enough to breach the storm but her body language spoke volumes as she barrelled towards the other wolf, intending to plant her body between him and Indra. Stay the fuck away from my sister!

"Skwol!" His blackbird called, prancing through the snow and slipping into a play bow, hips swaying and eyes beckoning. "Come onnnn," she teased as she whisked herself through the trees and down the slopes, bounding across the meadows with the elegance and grace of a young doe. He chased after her, toward the river where the sun was setting, toward that future that had been promised to them so many moons ago. "Skwol!" She called to him.
"Skwol!"
"Skwol!"
"Skwol..."

The white wolf started to stir. "Come back..." he murmured as his forelimbs stretched out and his massive paws dragged through the snow. He could not reach her. The black girl with the dancing tail faded behind his eyes but he thought he could still smell her, ready for his possession.

"Skwol!"

Skwol jerked awake, clambering to his paws like a newborn moose, awkward and unsteady as his plush ears flung forward and he bristled defensively. "Indra?" he squinted, slowly anchoring himself in the present and allowing the furs along his neck to lay back. She was gone, but her scent... Skwol shook his head in bewilderment. "What—"

He heard it then. The baleful yowling of the devils as they soared nearby. Their threat sharpened him and spurred him into action. Snarling and slavering with the ferocity of a cornered bear, his fierce yellow eyes scoured the skies as he stepped around, his fangs aching to clamp down on something. But the devils moved on by them to hound some other unfortunate souls, and his wild savagery came to lay squarely on a young female hurtling towards him and Indra.

The white wolf roughly shouldered by his companion, denying the interloper a clean path to her, and prepared to receive the threat with a hateful roar and teeth bared at the ready.

indra made for skwol as quickly as she could -- he, like her, was bewildered by the monsters that darkened the skies -- he looked almost defensive as he rounded upon her. fearfully she shrunk back for there was an intensity in his eyes that was feral and monstrous and for a moment she thought he had turned to kill her.

she froze, fear paralyzing her small frame -- and then he shoved right by her.

in a stunned motion indra slowly turned her head in time to see laurel hurdling towards them - it was easy to piece the misinterpretation in the scene; she thought he was a danger -- and he believed her a threat. "no!" she yelled, suddenly finding her legs again as she twirled around in a flurry of limbs and snow. "laurel! no! he's a fri- skwol, stop!" indra's voice cracked then, a faint edge of hysteria lining the end of her pitiful plea as she threw herself between the two with shaky breaths.

The threat of the wolf was her biggest problem right now, for he was down here while what was up there merely growled but had not done any harm just yet. Laurel pressed forward through the snow and was ready to fling to his throat, to do anything to get him off Indra. There was nothing that could stop her now, but luckily for all of them the snow slowed her down considerably, enough to give Indra time to jump between the pair of them.

Teeth stopped being a threat when she saw the flurry of red but Laurel was too late to stop running as her sister's form was suddenly between her and the threatening male, so she tumbled right into Indra, probably sending both of them flying towards the ground in front of Skwol.

Skwol knew how to make his size work for him. He was not one to favor chasing and dancing around trying to land agile strikes. He anchored his feet to the earth and braced strongly; a nearly immovable force that challenged the threat to come to him, to the raw power of his waiting jaws.

Indra's screech caught his ear. It did not shake him from his defensive stance though he did take note. He was still fully prepared to meet the aggressor when he saw Indra surge forward in his periphery, hollering a name he did not recognize and pleading for him to stop. She and the other wolf collided in an unavoidable tumble in front of him and Skwol — having registered that Indra knew this wolf — swiftly sought to grasp the paler female's scruff to pull her off his companion and separate them before either could be hurt.

He hoped the tangle and Indra's pleas had been enough to discontinue the stranger's attack, for her to realize that the white wolf was no threat to Indra. If that was not enough, the calm but firm bass of his voice might be as he issued a single question, "what is going on?"

perhaps it was because there was so much going on that day -- the challenge, the snarl of alien birds above -- but indra felt high-strung and on edge, and it was likely her sister did too. she threw herself in laurel's way and the two tumbled in a swirl of flinging legs and snow -- and then, all of the sudden, they were entangled on the ground.

indra regained her bearings enough to sit upright in the snow, the entire right side of her body consumed by white powder. she shook her head and looked at skowl out of breath, and then to laurel. she rose from the ground and walked to laurel, glancing over her body to make sure she had not been hurt by their collision. "sorry," she breathed, looking to the ground in slight embarassment that she could be so clumsy. skowl's question had significant merit - what the hell was going on? indra genuinely didn't know. there was so much going on she didn't even know where to start. "what's going on?" she repeated, the tonal inflection of her words brimming with the first soft touches of hysteria.

"there's things in the air, and we were running, and laurel got challenged and i just -- wait --"  she squinted, pulling back enough to level him a pretty hefty look: "what are you doing here?" not that she minded he was here -- just that the last time she had encountered him had been miles and miles from the valley they were in now.

Everything happened in a blur. She felt something catch at her scruff, she thought anyway, as she and Indra crashed into the ground but when she looked she and Indra were both laying on the ground next to each other. She quickly got to her feet as soon as her head un-jumbled, catching Indra's soft-spoken apology as she jumped up. Indra then went on to demand what was going on, right after another did. The aggressiveness left Laurel's body language as she realised that he and Indra must know each other while Indra started to ramble a jumbled story of all the things that'd gone wrong lately.

Indra then asked the guy what he was doing here and she followed his gaze to him. There was a hard to determine expression on Laurel's face; she was conservatively neutral at best, ready to defend Indra if she must but no longer riled up enough to go into attack mode.

The rapid beating of his heart and the quickness of his breaths subsided as the ruckus did. The earthen wolf did not press her attack as Indra echoed his question. He could hear the stress in her words and knew how her mind reeled by the way she expediently chained from one subject to the next. Laurel had nothing to say, but he could plainly read all he needed to on her face. He appreciated her protective nature and understood it. He was the same. Relaxing his muscles, he tried to assuage her unease with a slow and calming wag of his tail.

"Devils," Skwol growled quietly in response to Indra, turning to face her and press in closer to her. His broad muzzle reached forward with an automatic and inspective aspect. He sniffed at her cheek and her ear, seeking assurance that she was ok and searching for any scent of those two-legged demons. "They chased me here," he went on to inform her. There was so much more to that story, to what he knew of them, but he left it at that as his snout slipped down to her neck and he leaned in further.

His examination did not require such nearness, nor the languid way he nosed through the plush furs with an insistence he was unaware of. He did not need to breathe against her skin to see if she was injured or stricken by ropes. But the white wolf was tired and stressed and felt as though he was had one foot in the waking world and the other in a dream.

indra was uneasy as she witnessed skwol pull laurel from the ground; she watched on like a fretted hen, afraid they would both resort to physical retaliation in her presence. she breathed an immense sigh of relief as laurel stayed her hand, though she could not truly read the expression her sister wore. she was slightly puzzled, but was distracted as skwol explained his reasoning for being so far in the valley.

it made sense to indra - she cast a fearful gaze upward, ears back as she mistrustfully scanned the skies. she was about to respond when she felt skwol suddenly press up alongside her -- the contact was alien and while it was not unwelcome, she felt her skin prickle on edge as his snout trailed down her neck. the motion rendered her spine in a chilled shudder, and while she did not rebuke his contact she eyed him in wary silence.

The situation was diffusing but the growling in the skies was still there, albeit further away now. Laurel looked at the male as he said that devils had chased him there. The wag of his tail did not go unnoticed but it was only a start of rebuilding the burned bridges between them in this awkward first meeting.

The male then sought closeness to Indra, which elicited a growl from Laurel. She stepped in close and warned: "Stay off my sister." She knew what males were like, all of them — she wouldn't let this one hurt Indra in any sort of way. If she needed physical comfort, Laurel would be the one to give it.

To emphasise her words Laurel pressed her nose between Indra's fur and the guy's, at the hook of Indra's neck; before she would receive a proper introduction she would not let him so close.

Blackbird...

She smelled so real. The touch of her soft fur against his lips.

Skwol's wandering snout was jostled as Laurel stepped him to separate him from Indra. Unthinking, his reaction was kneejerk. He whirled and tried to shove Laurel back with his broad head and muscled shoulder, growling lowly with his ears thrust forward dominantly and his tall stance unmistakably possessive and guarding.

His father's steadfast voice broke suddenly and loudly through his mind.

"Get a grip, Skwol."
The young pup pressed his paw down harder on the bone, his snarling head lowered defensively over his claim and his eyes fierce and flashing in challenge.
"You think that marrowless bone is worth fighting me for? I could kill you. You're not even half grown. Instincts are there to guide you, not control you. Think!"

Oh no. The aggression writ across Skwol's face slackened into horror and embarrassment as he realized he had been beguiled by Indra's season. He stepped back, away from them both, folding his ears back and slowly shaking his head. His body sagged under the weight of his misstep. "Indra," he murmured, unable to look her in the face and still trying to gather himself. "I didn't realize... I—"

He couldn't help that fleeting glance to her flank. Nor his sudden alarm.

"Your tail!"

his nose trailed along her fur - a chill riddled her spine. her fur ruffled; her dark gaze followed his.

and then her sister came, jostling between the two of them with a growl that rocked indra from her strange trance. she looked abruptly to laurel with guilt - guilt that immediately transformed to horror as skwol whirled upon her sister with aggression.

indra did not even think about her reaction: it happened smooth as reflective instinct -- a snarl erupted from her little chest and she sought to shove him hard -- enough to rock him away from laurel and turn his attention to her. her ears were pulled back defensively and she quickly quit his side, positioning herself alongside laurel's flank in protective measure. all softness in her gaze was gone, this time replaced by mistrust. he had lashed out at her sister -- he was not the friend she thought he was.

as soon as she aligned herself with laurel's flank, his aggression had melted into one of shame and horror. her lip curled back in a doubtful grimace, even though his deportment was suddenly crushed by the weight of his misstep. she did not know the cloying scent of her season had been responsible for his actions -- all she knew was that he had threatened her sister.

she flinched as he mentioned her tail, but her gaze did not soften. "what about it?" she replied thickly, nudging laurel carefully.

Everything happened in a blur after that. As soon as she came between the pair of them the guy turned on her and shoved her away hard. Laurel hadn't seen it coming at all and though a snarl tore the sky she fell on her side at the shove without being able to grab any part of him as she went down. She heard Indra's displeased snarl and Laurel quickly leaped back to her feet to aide her sister against this weirdo's aggression.

Suddenly he seemed all cuddles and rainbows, looking guilty and terrible — Well, good, he deserves that, she thought haughtily — which only further aided in Laurel thinking him some weird freak that her sister should have nothing to do with. "What the fuck is your problem, you weirdo freak?" Laurel shouted at him, adrenaline still running through her veins as she shuffled closer to Indra, both to know that she had her sister by her side and so they could react quickly if he would try to harm either of them again.

He seemed to suddenly notice Indra's lacking tail, which angered Laurel because it was both odd that he hadn't seen it before, and stupid that he would remind Indra of her lacking tail, which was already a huge cause for insecurity for her. Laurel's stance remained defensive, her hackles pricked, as she waited for him to explain himself.

Shamefaced and overwhelmed, the white wolf retreated several paces with slow, deliberate steps. He had nothing to say for himself and could only cast his eyes to the ground when asked what his problem was. In desperate want of solitude and for the chance to collect himself from the turmoil, Skwol turned and loped away from the sisters.

poor skwol ;-;

indra stood alongside laurel, her closeness feeling both protective and unifying. the last vestige of warmth had quit its gentle glow on her countenance, replaced then by a frigid stare aimed directly at skwol. he knew his blunder plain as she did, but she felt wounded for it -- she did not even try to cajole him as he made his shameful departure. as laurel shouted after him indra slung her head over laurel's withers, whispering a quiet "let him go." into laurel's ears. she did not want this situation to escalate -- she felt confused, invalidated, and sad -- sad that she had been dumb enough to trust a male when they had all been so shitty to her.

how could she have been so stupid?

poor skwol indeed
No answer came from her accusing screams, and she hissed a low growl after him when she heard Indra's soft whisper in her ear. Laurel wasn't about to run after some random guy anyway, and she'd achieved what she wanted — for him to feel like a dumb-ass and realise he was being a weirdo freak — so there was no reason to risk her hide. She stood with bristled hackles and only when he started to run away did her hackles slowly fall flat again.

Turning her head to nuzzle Indra gently Laurel asked: "Are you okay?" Obviously not physically, but he had talked about her lack of tail and that had to hurt. Laurel snuggled her face into the fur behind Indra's ear and whispered softly: "I think you're perfect."

my heart ;-; laurel is precious. last one for me! feel free to post, or archive

laurel did not chase after the man's receding form, which elicited a relieved sigh from indra. the male's mention of her tail still stung -- she could stoically hide how much she missed her tail to anyone except laurel. laurel saw right through her facade as if it were a thin piece of river-bound ice. she nodded dumbly, returning her sister's nuzzle with a light butt of her head in affection. "i think you're perfect too." the girl rejoined softly, finding solace in her sister's company. 

they were each each other's world entire - indra would not have changed that for anything.

Though the reciprocation was unnecessary, Laurel smiled softly anyway. "Let's go home," she said after nuzzling Indra's cheek and she started leading the way back to the safety of Bearclaw Valley, feeling like she could handle the world by Indra's side.