Cricket Creek Bog dude, that story can go anywhere.

Pox was bored. Ever since his uncle had died, most everyone had been sad and lame and uninteresting. Don't get me wrong, Pox had been pretty unhappy about their loss as well. He hadn't been the closest with Colt, but he still had developed a pretty damn high opinion of the guy. He had just seemed so cool. But now he was dead, and that was a bummer, but... Wasn't it about time to quit crying and start having fun again?

Foxegrine Blackthorn certainly thought so, even if the rest of his family wasn't inclined to agree with him. But you know what? Whatever. He was young, energetic, adventurous and wildly clever. He would just go off and find his own fun. He usually wasn't that successful in his attempts to escape the borders and go running around the world outside, but his mother was being toom uch of a bummer to catch him at it this time. And thus, for the first time, Pox was freeeeee!

Now, he just had to figure out what sort of crazy awesome thing to do with that freedom. For the moment, he decided to chase crickets. But that was just a warm-up for the big show. Even if he didn't know quite yet what the big show actually was...

You get my 100th! :)

With the adults so preoccupied with Colt's loss and what it meant for the pack's future, the pups had more freedom than ever. Sugar took advantage of it but did not abuse it; she strayed from the rendezvous site on her own pretty regularly (often coaxing @Avery to come with her) and she never went very far. She certainly didn't leave the territory.

But when she discovered Pox's trail and it led her toward the borders, Sugar barely hesitated in tracking down her brother. When she found him chasing crickets in the bog bordering the copse, she stopped and watched him a moment. She had no desire to scold him about being out here all by himself, though Sugar moved closer, deciding it was probably best if they stuck together out here in no man's land.

"There're some plants here I've never seen a'fore," Sugar observed, her voice a murmur. She blinked and corrected herself, "Before." She stopped within arm's reach of her brother and asked, "Did you catch anything?"

Pox hummed happily as he crunched down on a cricket. It was only the second one he'd managed to catch after spending a good half hour chasing them, so he was feeling quite satisfied by the accomplishment. The cricket itself was not at all satisfying, though. The taste wasn't great, but the crunch made up for it enough that Pox was happy to creep forward to catch another once he'd swallowed his prize.

Sugar's appearance caused him to pause, though only for a brief moment. He quirked a brow at her and shook his head with a roll of his eyes. He didn't mind her tagging along, but he could not have cared less about her fascination with plants. He might've made a beeline for the trees to try and lose her completely were it not for the question she posed, which presented him an opportunity to boast. 

"Of course. I caught tons of stuff!" he insisted, shooting a grin her way before he was struck by a sudden stroke of genius that drove him to then proclaim, "I'm hunting swamp dragons."

She grinned at his mention of dragons, all too willing to play along with his imaginary game. But before Sugar could contemplate what role to take or any other logistics, a sound distracted her, causing her little head to snap sideways. There was a flurry of movement near a tangle of brush growing in and around what looked like a big mud puddle. From all the way over here, Sugar couldn't be sure what she was looking at.

"Hey, what's that?" she said to her brother, glancing at him. She didn't wait for an answer before darting over to investigate, her pink nose wriggling.

When the ground softened beneath her feet and Sugar found herself walking in muck, she slowed to a stop. The thing moved again and she let out a small gasp. It was a rabbit, covered head to toe in mud, flopping about rather helplessly in the puddle of sludge. It appeared to be tangled in the scraggly roots of the nearby undergrowth as well as smothered in bog slime.

Sugar didn't react quite the way he'd wanted upon learning he'd caught a bunch of stuff. She was supposed to be impressed, but instead, she became distracted. He frowned as she darted away. After a moment's hesitation in which he struggled against being curious and being too cool to care, Pox followed after her to see what silly thing she was after. It was probably something dumb like a flower, but whatever.

Pox's eyes widened with excitement when he saw that it wasn't a flower, but a rabbit, wriggling pathetically in the mud. He had never really been this close to live prey before if you didn't count the few seconds before he chomped its head off. "Oh, cool!" Pox crowed before he sprang recklessly towards it, wanting to get a good few whiffs of it before they offed it. The rabbit began to flail in earnest as he neared, splashing mud around. A glob of mud hit him in the side of the head, causing him to pause so he could shake it off. He frowned in irritation before looking back at his sister.

"Should we show dad?" he asked, not yet figuring out how exactly they would manage to do that. Bring him here? Drag it there? He hadn't thought that far yet. He just figured this was something super cool and he wanted Elwood to see it.

The rabbit's struggles did not stoke a predatory response in Sugar but, rather, a sympathetic one. Even as Pox crowded in to take a look, she pushed closer to make sure he didn't hurt the creature any worse. Her brother sniffed at the flailing rabbit and then asked if they should fetch Elwood, a question which Sugar met with a blink. What would their father do with a filthy rabbit?

It then dawned on her: this was prey. Beneath the mud, there was fur, muscle and bone. Sugar swallowed, feeling torn. On one hand, this would make a relatively easy kill. They could call Elwood to come take care of it or even give it a go themselves. However, she couldn't get quite rid herself of her empathetic response toward the poor critter.

"What if," she proposed, chewing her lip as her beady eyes touched on Pox's face, "we tried to help it?"

Pox gazed at the struggling rabbit with an increasingly predatory gaze. He wasn't sure how to go about killing it, but he did know that he wanted to eat it. That's where Dad came in. Dad was the best at killing things (in a not creepy, but perfectly natural way).

His sister apparently had different ideas. Pox's ears twitched as she spoke and he turned to her with a frown on his face, not sure he'd heard her right. "Help it?" he repeated, his voice tilting it into a question at the end. He glanced at the pitiful critter again, his frown deepening before he turned back to Sugar and tacked on a blunt, "Why?"

She expected some pushback, though Pox's reaction was much more bewildered than argumentative. He wanted to know why she proposed such a (preposterous) thing, which was fair. Sugar nibbled at her lip some more, contemplating why exactly she felt an urge to help, not harm, this particular rabbit.

"It doesn't seem fair," she said slowly, "trying to kill it while it's stuck like that." Sugar wasn't sure how to explain any better than that. Any other predator would've seen the situation as advantageous, a stroke of good fortune and an easy meal. But it felt unsportsmanlike to the youth, although she wasn't aware of that term.

But... "What if I try to get it unstuck, then you can hunt it?" That seemed a lot fairer to her, anyhow.

Pox scrunched his nose up at her recommendation. The idea of letting it go and then chasing it did not at all sound alluring. It sounded like they would just be making extra work for themselves, and what was the point of that? It was its own stupid fault it had gotten stuck. Why shouldn't they take advantage of the situation and kill the thing where it was?

"That's stupid," Pox informed her bluntly, shaking his head, "We'd just catch it anyway. What's the point of letting it run around before we kill it. Let's just kill it now." Because of course they would catch it. There was no way it'd get away from them in this state. Even bothering to unstick it from the mud would be a waste of time.

He argued that her suggestion made no sense. Sugar stayed silent a beat, trying to form a solider argument. Perhaps if she reminded him that it was good hunting practice, he would be more open-minded about it? Her lips parted as she prepared to pitch this to him, when a flash of brown caught her attention.

The rabbit had loosed itself and now darted past them, moving quickly, yet not as rapidly as hares usually did. Weighed down with mud and quite likely exhausted, it chose the lesser evil by passing closely to the wolf pups rather than risk going deeper into the bog.

Sugar didn't argue the point any further, which left Pox to 1) feel super triumphant and superior and 2) now have to figure out how to kill the rabbit. He turned back to look at the creature, a feeling of uncertainty sinking uncomfortably into the pit of his stomach, when suddenly, it sprang free. 

It didn't move very quickly, but unfortunately that didn't prevent Pox from reacting poorly to it. In an ideal world, the boy would've sprang straight into action and snatched the animal as it darted by with one deft, swift, silent movement. Unfortunately, the exact opposite happened. He moved, but it was not deft, nor silent. It wasn't the right direction either, for the rabbit's sudden jump startled Pox so badly that he threw himself backwards with a panicked squeal.

It was, at least, swift, but that wasn't exactly a blessing in this scenario. It simply added to the embarassment he felt immediately upon tripping over his own legs and falling into the muddy pit the rabbit had just freed itself from with a splat.

Pox made quite the spectacle of himself in his pursuit of the rabbit. Sugar could only watch helplessly as the frightened prey skittered away while her brother ate dirt—or, rather, mud. Part of her wanted to laugh at the ridiculous display, though Sugar bit her tongue. Unlocking her frozen limbs, she moved toward him, bending over his prone form.

"Are you okay?" she asked. She was able to keep her voice even, though her black eyes danced in amusement. She wondered if Pox would find it funny too (at which point, she'd permit herself to laugh) or if he might get bent out of shape about the whole fiasco.

Pox didn't get stuck quite like the rabbit had, but it still took him far too long to struggle his way out of the mud puddle. Heat flushed his cheeks from both embarassment and anger--anger of course being inspired by his embarassment. Mud was splattered all across his body and his face, but he still managed to glare through it at his sister.

"Of course I'm okay," he spat, then literally spat as there was mud in his mouth that he didn't want there, "Why did you let it get away?" He narrowed his eyes accusingly at Sugar. Some part of him knew it was his fault, that he'd acted stupid and that was why he'd lost out on his prize. He didn't like it being his fault, though, so he tried to make it hers.

Unfortunately, Pox chose the latter option. The laughter died in her throat when her brother accused her of letting the rabbit get away. Sugar didn't respond right away. She had never wanted to catch it in the first place. And when it had freed itself, he'd gone after it so quickly, it hadn't even occurred to her to give chase too.

She didn't want to rile him further, though she refused to shoulder the blame either. "I didn't," Sugar said matter-of-factly, shrugging a shoulder, aware that even these two simple words might rankle. "But we should find something else to hunt. Want to?" she invited in the very next breath.

Pox's eyes narrowed at her response. She denied that it had been her fault (which was ridiculous because anyone with half a brain could tell that it was), and that did indeed rankle him. His lip peeled away from his canines, but only slightly. He wasn't "attack" level angry, but certainly "we're done here" angry.

He scoffed at her invitation and heaved a dramatic roll of his eyes. "How about I go hunt and you just go home," Pox snapped, "You'll just be in my way. Go pick some flowers or something else no one cares about." With that, Pox strode past her with his chin and tail lifted. He was still splattered head to toe in mud, and stumbled a little as he began due to still being a bit stuck in the mud. But, he felt that he was still making his point.

Sugar made no reply to Pox's cutting remarks, letting him pass and be on his way unmolested. Her lips pursed as she sat there a few moments, wondering why her male peers tended to be so moody and, sometimes, downright mean. She supposed @Bronco was an exception, though Pox, @Crow and @Elfie had all treated her rather unpleasantly now and she misliked the trend.

A sigh gusted from her mouth as she finally found her feet. Pox's words had hurt her feelings a bit, though at least she had @Avery. That thought made her lips twitch into a faint smile. Trying not to think too much about Pox's ill treatment, Sugar did exactly as he'd suggested: went home, found her sister and then spent the rest of the day sleuthing for any flowers or rocks that caught their eye.