Heron Lake Plateau Flavor cats (in the comfort zone)

Yo @Fire u want dis thred? Probably forward dated a few days.

He was definitely making the whole healing process go slower than it should have, or maybe it just felt that way.  Sure, it wasn't as bad as yesterday (maybe?) but he'd at least come to accept that right now he couldn't do nearly as much as he wanted.  His shoulders hurt when he walked, and he still had to be careful when he lay down because he had a 50/50 chance of hitting something that was still pretty unhappy with him.  Seriously.  Could this be over so he could be back to normal?

Right now Quixote was wandering fairly aimlessly.  He'd done a little bit of a patrol before giving up on the idea, now curving in towards the center of the territory.  He didn't like feeling useless like this -- he wanted to provide for his mate, which was still kind of a weird thing to think about, even if most of the pack probably had assumed they were together officially already.  Quixote had already gone and appropriated that duck that he saw @Screech bury the other day, but now he was out of ideas.  Either he needed to find something else to do or he should just give up and stop moving so things would stop hurting until he felt better, as unappealing as that was.  Right now he was about half way between the lake and the borders.  Quixote slowed, then stopped.  So.  Now what?

She had done some scut work with @Ben/@Lucca*, and therefore she had heard about the Redhawk clan's war and the move that followed.  Unfortunately, she had no fucking clue who Quixote was, or that he was the alpha.

Ceara was hot on his trail and had the benefit of being a healthy energetic youth to boot.  She was determined to introduce herself to as many of her packmates as she could and this was one she hadn't yet.  It didn't take her long before the dude was in sight and she called out to him casually, tail swaying gently behind her.  What's good?

*or any active member who wants to assume things happened behind the scenes

As he was attempting to figure out what to do, an unfamiliar voice called out to him, and he looked over his shoulder with a half second of concern before he spotted a pretty familiar sort of stripe.  Well, that pretty much meant whoever it was probably was supposed to be here.  Though he turned in place, his posture didn't really otherwise change -- Quixote was a pretty casual dude and hadn't really needed to pull rank on anyone but Screech, and that guy... Well.

Mm.  Hell if I know.  Not my hunting.  Which was bad in two aspects -- one that it made it considerably harder to find food in general, and then in turn basically everything he found went to Raven, who seemed to be leaving less and less leftovers for him.  It left Quixote almost always at an uncomfortable level of hunger these past few days, but he'd deal with it, though it made digging out a rabbit warren in search of a nest of tiny bunnies seem like a more likely option.

Without considering that it might sound kind of like some creepy foresight, Quixote asked, You're the new chick, uh.  Ceara, yeah?  The first part was not hard to work out, but the latter was provided by Raven somewhere in the land of offscreen while they talked about what events had gone on.  Ceara might be able to conclude that he was Raven's mate by the scents if she was paying attention and stopped close enough to him, though at this point of the day it might not be as obvious as if it had been first thing in the morning.

Stop.  Rewind.  This guy knew who she was.  And that was weird, because she had absolutely no idea who he was.  Raven had introduced herself as the only alpha of the pack when she had recruited Ceara, and that was about all she knew.  Scent or no scent.

But this dude did seem to smell a lot like Raven, which probably meant that at very least, they were close.. and with Raven's um.  Condition.  Ceara put two and two together and figured that it was probably this guy write here who had smooshed his bits into Raven.  We have a winner!!!

That's alright, I've got you covered. She'd proven herself to be a decent hunter, and given that she had to be moving constantly or she'd just die, she made a mental note to drop her food off for Raven and Quixote instead of at the communal den for the food-hogs.

Now she'd been standing here an awful long time like, internal monologuing.  Oops!  Yeah, that's me.  I recognize your smell, but I don't think we've ever met.  You fucking weirdo.  I was just.. she rolled her shoulders ambiguously, workin'.  Like I always do.  What're you up to?

Honestly, they hadn't had any new joiners other than Ceara since Quixote and Raven had gotten the title.  It'd be easy to put a name to a face even if she wasn't easy to describe.  But there wasn't that little, 'Oh yeah, you're Quixote!' recognition he'd kind of been expecting.  @Raven had accepted her, not Towhee, right?  Aaawkward.  But then again, they were kind of both still getting used to this all, weren't they?  But that didn't mean he couldn't tease Raven about it that evening.

Maaybe he should make sure, just in case.  Yeah, I'm Quixote -- other alpha, Raven's mate, idiot who slides off cliffs, blah blah.  The most familiar thing about his introduction was the self-deprecating humor, while having to say more than just his name just still seemed weird and he wasn't quite sure how to handle it.  Either way, he wasn't gonna let anyone else make jokes at his expense, and would beat them to the punch, since chances were it'd come up in conversation anyway.  

What was he doing? Umm. Dunno.  I'm not gonna be at 100% for another day or two.  Walking is stupid, but so is doing nothing.  He'd taken it easy for a few days but he was going a bit crazy now.  Let's be real, he'd pushed himself way too hard too early, and this was probably his body being a jerk and literally hiding his lunch.  But was she implying that Ceara had some food stashed somewhere?  Other than the caches he knew about -- and didn't try to completely raid, since there were other wolves (and puppies) in the pack that kind of maybe needed food sometimes too.

Ding!  There was the lightbulb in her head.  Her posture immediately slaked into something much less causal, and she felt heat creep in her cheeks as her gut roiled in embarrassment.  Gee, Ceara, you don't even know who your alphas are.  What a dumbass, you look so professional.  These guys are totally gonna wanna keep you around.

That's okay, she offered quietly, I seem to get tangled up in thorns, or dive after fish and cut my lip on rocks, or.. you know, anything else that could possibly happen.  If there is a worst outcome, hoo boy, it'll always happen to me.  

She cleared her throat, scuffed her paw on the ground.  So um.  I heard you guys relocated because there was a war...?  The question was unbearably open-ended, but she couldn't bring herself to pry further.  I was gonna patrol, but, I kind of wanna know .. what happened.

2muchtext

Yeah he was totally gonna tease Raven about it -- mark that on the list, #1 thing to do tonight.  Quixote didn't seem to react much if at all to her change of posture, even if inwardly he was a little amused.  Getting messed up seems to be the theme of the month.  We're all gonna drive Raven batty.

But then the subject changed.  The war, eh?  Fun stuff, he'd be talking a while.  He nodded his head to indicate she should join him, Yeah, uh.. Short version I guess.  Can explain more if you want.  Quixote shifted slightly over to the side so that when he carefully took a seat, a scraggly I-guess-that's-a-bush gave him a tiny bit of shade across his back.  Even the short version of the story was pretty long, but maybe that was because Quixote wasn't a great storyteller.

Before I joined up -- was in the fall or something I think -- I guess one of the nearby packs, Blackfeather Woods, started causing trouble.  Like attacking and kidnapping people -- and not even being too smart about it by picking lones, they went after pack wolves, too.  They ended up capturing one of Towhee and Raven's sisters -- the one from Drageda -- and holding her captive, and I guess when they finally let her go or she escaped or something, she was in a really bad state.  Or at least, that's what he could vaguely remember -- he'd been given a cursory backstory about it and it had kind of been a while.  Towhee's probably best to ask about that though, which he chose partially because she was the one who told him, and also because she was the most interested in fighting stuff.

I joined some time after that -- maybe a stupid choice to walk out of one war into another, but figured I could help them plan tactical stuff, and it was a better choice than some of the other weirdos I met.  That was under Finley and Elwood as alphas, if it matters.  Eventually Drageda came over for the final planning, we sent away the pups and stuff so they'd be safe, and the rest of us went on over, split into groups and attacked.  We ended up winning and all the Blackfeather wolves scattered to the wind.  Temporarily of course.

He tilted his head, Was supposed to have a third pack in the mix too, Moonspear, but they never showed -- I dunno if they sorted out their issues on their own, or apparently Screech had some problems with them so that might have caused trouble too.  Honestly he was pretty unsure about how Moonspear fit in -- he swore he remembered Towhee saying Screech caused problems with them, but she didn't think they were worth worrying about now at all.  Maybe he was just more paranoid.

Later, for whatever bizarre and illogical reason, they moved back into the forest again.  Maybe had a new leader, but Towhee -- she was alpha by then -- didn't want to stick around to find out if the new management changed anything.  So now we're here.  I would have rather just seen if that guy was more reasonable than the last one so we wouldn't have to go halfway across the planet but eh.  Wasn't my call.  Shrug.  That was about all he could think of though, but he'd been babbling quite long enough that it was time for her to ask some questions if she had 'em.

this is so lame i'm sorry

Hahaha... haha.. short version, right.  Most of the names and places he said flew right over her head.  What was a Drageda?  Who was this Towhee and.. why had she not met her yet?  Finley and Elwood?  Nyoom.  Nyoom.  That's all of this, going over her head.

So she asked a question about the one thing she kind of did understand instead.

Uh, so, how do you even.. manage a fight that big?  Like, who calls the shots?  How do you figure it all out?  With that many packs it has to be.. you know?

And he really had left out a bunch of details too!  There was just no good way to shorten the whole thing, at least from Quixote's perspective.  It was a whole big disaster that dragged on for ages.  A disaster with a tiny bit of organized chaos, Usually you break it down into several groups -- we had like.. Uh.  Four? Five?  Something like that.  With someone running each.  He couldn't remember how the other groups were arranged, partially because he hardly knew anyone then.

They'd been sort of hastily arranged groups from his perspective, and that had probably been a little bit of a problem.  But still, it wasn't like there was nearly as much conflict here, so no point for that much intense training.  Ideally you're putting folks together that compliment each other's skills and have them used to fighting as a group, but I don't think folks had the background or the time to spend trying to learn it all -- and two packs, of course.  And a few had ended up worse for wear, as he idly wondered if Sebastian had finally healed up by now -- certainly by now, right?

So a good (relatively) example?  Like back where I was from, I was assigned to point these two massive idiots -- both senses of the word -- in the right direction.  They just wanted to crack skulls, not be smart, but if people realized they were dumb as hell, they were easy to avoid.  So I had to be hideously distracting so they could just go at it.  Others just fought well together, good at predicting what their buddies do and stuff.  Never was his luck to get that kind of squad though.

That was how it had been in the little desert pack she had run with for a while; they all had assigned toons and would often spar together, but she had never thought of it that way, how it would be useful during wartime.  

At least you were smart enough to be able to carry them.  Ceara could've seen her younger self just getting frustrated with them.  In a way she admired Quixote, although she never would've admitted it out loud.  Maybe you could show me some spar stuff sometime.

To a certain point, Quixote didn't really think that it was any skill of his.  It was survival, a desire to not be dead yet in case things might improve.  It hadn't.  Kind of had to be or I probably wouldn't be here now.  Wasn't like I had much of a choice -- you figure out what's needed to survive.  I just dunno if it's worth bothering to try and set up a squads here or something too -- not as serious, of course, but if some other bad neighbor showed up, it'd be nice to have done already.  But we're also in the middle of nowhere.  Living that way in the past wasn't his choice.  Now?  He didn't know what he'd do or what would be good.  So many things had changed -- there was always the past, but what would be best for his future?  What would be best for his soon-to-be family?  If he didn't have to worry about Towhee wrecking relationships with any future neighbors, did he have to be formally recognized as some sort of diplomat?  Should he focus more on hunting?  What would he have done if he'd grown up elsewhere?  Far too many questions that he didn't know how to answer.

He nodded, Yeah, just lemme know some time after I've healed some more.  Can always help if there's something in particular you want to work on.  Although, at least for the near future there just wasn't going to be a good time.  Too much was going to happen that would throw him far enough off track that he'd probably forget the offer had even been there.

just wrappin' this up

Maybe if I get good enough, I can figure something out.  I'd like to say I'm pretty good with strategy, but.. she rolled her shoulders.

Cool, that'd be great.  Thanks, Quixote.  She gave a respectful dip before she headed out to continue her duties.