Big Salmon Lake teach itself to start beating again.

Preferably none of the Bratz plz! Not yet anyway ;) 

Liffey was exhausted. She had barely slept since leaving the Caldera in spite of how hard she'd been pushing herself. When she'd first left, her mind had been far too overrun by her emotions to pay any attention to actually tracking down Rannoch's pack. That fact was still fairly true, but it was partnered now with both her weariness and a partial desire to be by herself for a while. The Blackthorn felt battered and bruised by the altercation with her mother. Somewhere in her heart, she was excited to find the others and begin her new life. But at the same time, she simply wasn't ready to answer the question she knew would come the moment she saw Rannoch again: Are you alright?

Because the answer to that was no. Liffey wasn't okay. Not even a little bit. Not in any way, shape or form. She felt worse than she ever had in her life. As much as she had hated her mother in those heated moments before she'd left, it tore her apart to be away now, knowing her family was behind probably hating her for leaving them. It killed her to know how she had hurt them. It killed her to not be there with them, trying to make them feel better. Would she ever see them again? Would she ever be able to make this right?

Liffey stopped to take in her surroundings, even though she hardly saw any of it. She was panting heavily as she pointed her gaze to the South, feeling awful as she imagined the Caldera just beyond Bramblepoint. She bowed her head miserably and forced herself to turn away again, hating herself for it.

She and her fellow notched-earred sisters moved in unison away from Moonspear on yet another tracking mission. As ever they would return, but she, @Lyra, and @Alya wanted to improve on their inteded trades out of the territory. The herd that had moved through Bramblepoint had made their way out of the forest and toward the Lake. Her sisters had separated from her briefly as they scoured the whole of the territory, but they were always a howls distance away. 

Hydra stared at the cloven-shaped imprint of one of the herds members. She sniffed at it, determining age and health and sex all in one go. Her tail waved—they were closer than ever. A movement in the corner of her eye distracted her, and Hydra lifted her head abruptly, ears pricked and forward as she squinted. Was it one of the herd...? Hydra prowled quietly toward the way she had noted the movement... only to recognize that what had moved was not prey at all, but a familiar face. They looked miserable, and Hydra could not help but rudely wonder if she'd been attacked by another wolverine recently. Not the comforting sort, Hydra licked her chops and slowly made an attempt to move away, hopefully not noted at all by the other.

Liffey heard movement nearby and turned to face it. For a moment, she didn't spot the black wolf upon the landscape. Eventually, her eyes zeroed in on the moving shadow and she bristled warily. Her altercation with the wolverine had been a terrifying and embarassing moment for her. She would never again take her surroundings for granted and be caught unaware.

Her alarm settled in a matter of seconds as she recognized the stranger before her. It was one of the wolves who had come to her rescue that day... Good ol' whatserface (I have no idea if Liffey will be learning their names or not yet). She dropped her defensive posture to one more neutral as she gave a short call to the other girl, hoping to be able to speak with her. She never had thanked her for what she and the others had done that day. At least, I don't think she did.

Her attempt to escape silently had been for naught. Did the wolf know she had been trying to leave the scene? Her head turned toward Liffey, and she noted no visible signs of distress that indicated such. At the very least the other, after calling her, no longer appeared down in the dumps—so perhaps there would be no comforting that needed to be done at all. One could only hope. 

Hydra altered her course, and once again she faced Liffey and headed toward her. Her stride was long as she chuffed in greeting, her eyes flashing with recognition and rememberance.

The other girl changed her trajectory to aim towards Liffey. She tensed slightly as a familiar feeling of anxiety at speaking with a near stranger reached for her. She shook her coat to drive it away and licked her lips. She was not a kid anymore to be shy of strangers, but a grown woman to... well, power through that shyness 'cause it was definitely still there.

"Hey," Liffey said as the other wolf came nearer. Her tail waved amiably behind her as she offered a genial smile. It felt like a relief to be speaking with someone else and to put her energy towards this instead of dwelling on her misery. It was still there, nagging in the back of her mind, but it was easier to ignore now that there was something else to focus on. "I never thanked you for the other day with the wolverine," she continued, "You and the others were amazing."

Hydra couldn't remember much else from the day other than her sisters and Alya's Cypress destroying the strange smelling creature (her parents identified the corpse of it as "wolverine" and now so too had the stranger), which was what they had set out to do in the first place on their hunt. That they had saved Liffey simply worked out for the girl but that hadn't been what Hydra was thinking of in the moment. Oh, yeah, no problem. Though if you see any wolverines after me, I expect the same thing, she quipped, but there was a severity in her gaze that implied she might be serious. Her ears twitched. I heard wolverines are nasty things, little but fierce. Did it just... attack you? She and her sisters had kind of arrived in the throes of Liffey's struggle, and she had wondered how it begun.

Liffey smiled at the girl's response, but faltered slightly when she realized the look on the other's face was not entirely farcical. If it came to it, Liffey knew herself well enough to know that she absolutely would risk her life to save someone else's. The problem was she was unlikely to be as successful in the endeavor as the others had been in rescuing her. That struck Liffey then as a very real problem that she ought to work on fixing.

"Uh.. well... It did, yes," Liffey replied, biting her lip and feeling like a complete moron (which she was), "I didn't realize it was there, came too close and it attacked me. Got me pretty good too before you guys showed up." She angled herself slightly to show the rumpled fur on her back and flanks where it had dug its claws in before she'd gotten away. "Definitely not a mistake I'll be making again..." she muttered, hoping she could keep that promise to herself and not be an idiot again in the future.

"Were those your siblings?" she asked, wanting to quickly move away from the topic of her stupidity.

Now that she knew the scent of wolverine's, Hydra would actively avoid them too. Though they looked like prey, they fought like predator—she imagined that they were just as formidable as a healthy fox or coyote, if not more. Hydra's eyes fell upon the marred parts of Liffey she willingly displayed, and Hydra observed them as though she might be Lyra. But she knew very little of healing other than what her sister shared. As far as it not being a mistake Liffey would make again, Hydra stated, That's good, because there were wolves out there that would, well, have a wish of vengeance out there and do dumb things like go after it alone. If Liffey had help, that was a different story. Anyway, it did not matter; the wolverine was dead, so vengeance had been exacted at the end of the day. 

Those were my sisters. We're not related to Cypress, she informed, and then she pressed on, How do you know him, by the way? Cypress, I mean, After all, he too had come to her rescue. Then again, maybe she did not know him at all—given she didn't know herself, or her sisters.

Liffey was glad her effort to steer the conversation away from her mishap with the wolverine seemed to be working. It had been a frightening incident made worse by her embarrassment over it happening at all. She much rather wanted to learn more about this dark wolf with her equally fierce and talented siblings. And... Cypress?

"Cypress?" Liffey repeated in surprise, "I actually don't know him, but I've heard of him. I know his brother, Rannoch." At least, Stevie is assuming that at some point Rannoch would have mentioned the name to her. How strange that she had actually been rescued by Rannoch's brother and she hadn't even known it... At least now when she caught up to the group she was currently seeking, she knew she would recognize a second face.

The pair spoke for a while longer before Liffey headed off home, Hydra presumably doing the same.