Blackfeather Woods Something about you turns me to a savage

Ramsay didn't hesitate to bolt out of the den early every single morning, and most days, that was an uneventful affair. Potema did nothing to stop him and his siblings often joined him. That morning when he burst through the vines that hid the den's entrance, however, he stopped in his tracks rather than proceeding to the stream to slake his thirst. The dwarf had become familiar with the layout of the glen: there was the pond and falls, which someone usually prevented him from going toward; and there was the stream, which he was allowed to approach; and over there was the other boy, much older and much larger, who never engaged them; and here, where the vines were, was the den. He knew his way around it, knew its smells, its colours and its sounds.

Imagine his surprise when, upon stepping out of the den with his usual exuberance, Ramsay encountered not the normal sights of the glen, but the glen's resemblance with a completely different colour palette. Overnight it had snowed heavily on Blackfeather Woods, and though it was unlikely to stick around for more than a day or two, the snow had stayed long enough for Ramsay to find it in the morning. Apprehensive as he was about new things, he reclined back on his haunches, providing an interesting sight for anyone who had never seen him with his short spine before, and growled skeptically at his transformed surroundings.

@Titmouse if you wanted to have him invade the Glen, otherwise would love @Cassiopeia or really any other adult(s)!

Not knowing how many days had passed since his abduction, Titmouse woke that morning in the cave with an intense hunger and a more desperate thirst. He was foggy from sleep and probably the herbs he had been convinced to start taking - but they hit him hard this morning. Bolstered by the sounds of activity outside, and sort of forgetting about his injuries, Tit scrambled to his paws and hobbled straight for the cavern entrance  (or what he assumed was the entrance, thinking he saw flickering light).

As he stepped out he did it with his bad leg. First there was pain, then cold, then some confusion as he spied a dressing which someone must have applied to it, and then more pain - everything sort of happened all at once. He grit his teeth and tried not to scream when his leg buckled and he went face-first into the snow, hearing it crunch beneath his weight. A part of Titmouse registered that as the breaking of his leg all over again - and, delirious, he rolled on to his back and began to laugh.

Unaware of the mutated mess just out of his vision, of course.

Ramsay drew in a deep breath and turned his upper body so he could regard Cyron across the way. The older wolf had come to the Glen some time ago, but he ignored the Spiderlings and the Spiderlings ignored him. Without Euron and Maegi around to keep his attention, Ramsay was growing both restless and unsure of the snow, and considered heading out toward Cyron for once if only for some comfort from the change. He hopped up to his feet and took two slow steps across the cold ground, then nearly leaped out of his skin when a burst of laughter broke the tranquility of the glen.

The dwarf scrambled backward, butting up against the tangled vines as little hackles flared up over hunched shoulders. He slammed his ears as far forward as they would go, ignoring the unpleasant ache that took root against his scalp, and spun his body around several times before he spotted it: the source of the disruption. A blue-grey wolf lay in the snow across the glen, belly up, and from him boomed the sound of wild, unstable laughter.

Ramsay summoned his toddler's courage and bounded over to the other wolf, who had a splash of colour along his flank the likes of which Ramsay had never seen. He had no idea what was going on, but he sure liked the sound that wolf made. By the time he got there, his maw was opened wide into a soundless grin, and once he was close enough for Titmouse to presumably spot him, he began to mimic the other wolf's laughter. Only Ramsay's came out sounding wooden, hollow, and fake, for the short boy had never actually laughed before.

Nothing was funny. He was hurt, alone, in the middle of a dark forest filled with crazy people - maybe forever. But everything was so bright and clean and cold; having never experienced winter before (to his knowledge), Titmouse found this drastic change to everything he knew, absolutely bonkers. He'd gone from a secluded cave of black to an endlessness of white -- so he laughed, cackling until his lungs hurt and then he ran out of air, and stopped.

But the laughter didn't. It carried on, growing hollow and detatched from him, until it enveloped the air all around him. Tit rolled to one side (propping himself with his good leg), and leveled a look towards the black smudge whose laughter had not stopped spilling. What he saw made him do a double-take. It was a wolf but - it wasn't. What the fuck are you? Tit blurted as he hastily scrambled to his feet, the snow flying everywhere in his haste.

The wooden, repetitive ha-ha-ha issuing from Ramsay's lips came to an abrupt halt when his unknown guest rolled over and peered at him. For what felt like a very long time to him, he pinned Titmouse with his curious navy blues and breathed shallowly, waiting for something to happen. He was very young, but Ramsay already knew that he elicited a particular reaction in others, even though he didn't understand why. Those who were around him the most—Vaati, Ganondorf, his siblings and a handful of others—had tempered their reactions, barely flinching now, but this stranger had never been exposed like they had.

So without doing anything at all but standing there, shivering and staring, Ramsay caused Titmouse to lose his shit.

A huge grin broke across the babe's face as first the eyes bulged, and then the wolf scrambled up from his position in the snow. Ramsay's short tail began to wag rapidly behind him and he toddled several clumsy steps in pursuit of the steely grey wolf with a far more sincere giggle, misinterpreting the reaction as something of a game. After all, he didn't know why this happened. He didn't know that he was different yet. But already he liked the feeling that it gave him—that he was special in some way, he could make others do things like this, which was hilarious to his primitive baby mind—though in time he would come to learn the truth of that.

Whatever it was, it looked incomplete. There were legs and feet, a tail, a head - but something looked off. It looked like it was all head, it looked like -- You're just a kid! Tit realized next. This did nothing to undermine the strangeness, the otherness, and he still wanted to keep his distance. Although he couldn't tell how old the blob was he decided it didn't really matter, he really didn't want that face, those teeth, or any part of it near him. The boy ducked his head as the child barrelled closer and he bared his teeth. There was no way he'd let this thing come anywhere near him regardless of its age. This must have been a dream or a figment in his mind - something - because nothing like this creature should've existed in Titmouse's world.

Cameo! Unless something dramatic happens / and or I am tagged for interaction.

It was Ramsay that possessed fur that could rival the dead of night in color but it was Euron that was the shadow. He often came after his brother's initial charge, trailing behind quietly. This time he had lingered behind longer in the den, sniffing some particular spot at length, until a sudden and strange noise from beyond the vines caught his ears and his attention. His head snapped up and half a breath later his feet drew him to den entrance, where he halted immediately upon seeing the snow.

The pup had a had a predisposition to minding his whereabouts and being aware of what was ahead. His nose dropped down again and he sniffed and prodded the curious substance. He sampled it next by tongue, and deemed it nonthreatening both by his own assessment and by Ramsay's lack of concern for it.

By the same predisposition, Euron was inclined to seek walls in the manner of rodents - stealing along the side of the den and keeping close to bushes and such. It was a behavior that was developing gradually and it manifested again now. He slid out from the barrier to watch his brother and the stranger from beside the relative security of a thick tree, against which he leaned a white-patched shoulder and gray flank.

The boy pressed his newly lifted ears forward in response to Titmouse's exclamation and he aimed a huge, toothsome grin up at the blue-pelted stranger. Titmouse grinned back at him, too—or at least that's how Ramsay interpreted it. The adult's threat was lost on the young pup, who had yet to experience the physical backlash that came with ignoring such a display. Ramsay associated Potema with aggression, but the other adults in his life were nice enough, if distant. None of them ever gave him a reason to fear them, and he lumped Titmouse into the same category.

He cantered toward Titmouse with his tongue lolling, ignorant to his gorilla-esque gait and the unfamiliar tangy scent of fear permeating the Glen's air. He only stopped running when a dark shadow passed by in his newly discovered peripheral vision, and like a hawk, he snapped his body to the side and fixed his gaze on @Euron. For a moment his scrutiny was intense as he flipped through the faces in his memory bank, but then his jaws parted into another wide grin and his tail wiggled. Euron preferred to stay near the edges of the glen and Ramsay did nothing to persuade him out, but he knew if Euron seemed relaxed, then there was nothing to worry about.

So with a yip, the stunted pup spun back around to Titmouse and galloped straight toward that bright, interesting marking on the older wolf's flank.

When the boy came in closer, Titmouse didn't think, he just reacted. The bared fangs became something much more volatile as he nipped the air with them - snapping and growling more vehemently, and with zero regard to the creature's age. The boy was defending himself against an alien threat and although the mutant did not know any better, it was a lesson Tit was eager to impart. His warnings had not worked so far and when the creature turned its attention upon the injured boy, he just did what came naturally.

Whether the blows landed or not, Titmouse would not relent. As long as Ramsey was near him he was a frenzy of snapping, growling, biting, and tearing.

Had Ramsay been any closer, Titmouse's jaws would have surely crushed his much smaller face. Lucky for him, the first crunch of tooth on tooth only accompanied a stinging sensation in his nose, which Titmouse's sharp incisors nicked on their way down. He reacted immediately, and by the time the adult wolf's jaws closed a second time, the dwarf had already backpedaled far enough to be out of harm's way, displaying a very strong instinct for self-preservation.

But there was nevertheless damage done, for blood welled bright where his nose was scored, and tears welled even brighter in his navy blue eyes. Titmouse was in the glen, and the only wolves who ever came to the glen were family. They brought food, warmth, affection; all the things Potema had taken from them. He had mistaken the stranger for a similar relation and been burned by it. Although he had already been cursed and abandoned from the moment he was born, Ramsay had never felt the sting of betrayal before. The way Potema treated them was simply normal, but he hadn't ever expected to be attacked by someone in the glen.

He turned quickly and raced past Euron, whining, until he found a safe place near the glen's highest and steepest slope, as far from Titmouse as he could get.

The encounter turned sour before Euron could form any sort of initial impression about this new wolf. The gray male erupted in a mad cacophony, and his teeth bared down on Ramsay who was forced to flee. He sped past his alarmed and wide-eyed brother who looked only for a moment at his retreating littermate before he snapped his eyes back to the aggressor.

There was an unsettling calmness about him now. He lacked an expression but there was a subtle darkening of his face accompanied by an unblinking stare that quietly devoured the details in front of him: the red swipe of fur behind the wolf's foreleg of particular note. Euron got to his paws. His nose briefly tipped into the air as he drew a breath through it, and then he turned and walked off.

He would go to his brother.

He didn't get a good grab or anything, but nicked the kid's face well enough to taste blood; the kid was running off after that, retreating so fast Titmouse wasn't sure how to feel. A part of him was so pumped full of adrenaline - another, guilt. But he had defended against the unknown and came out the other side the winner, at least in his mind. There was a moment where the boy thought he was alone, and he took in the strange sensation of the ebbing adrenaline, the desire to chase, and a feeling of being watched. He looked up in time to spot a pair of eyes on him - but he couldn't tell the expression upon the stranger's patchwork face; the wolf turned and vanished after the mouthy creature, and Titmouse decided in haste to make his own escape as well.