Stone Circle do no harm

Although there were decidedly more pups than the male had first assumed, Easthollow seemed to be a good pack, all in all. They didn't expect him to see to their young, and in fact, appeared to want him as far from them as he could possibly be. That day well with Murdock, who had never been great with pups even through his first two (rather short-lived) runs at fatherhood.

Instead of worrying about the pups, the male was able to put his time toward hunting. He'd only gone after small game thus far, but had contributed a fair amount to the caches nevertheless. Today, he decided that he'd hunted quite enough for the time being, and was busying himself with tidying up one of the caches near to his favorite sleeping hole. Something inside of it had been giving off a ripe smell, and Murdock had emptied it that morning to see what was the matter.

A small pile of rotting remains laid a few yards away while Murdock dug away at the cache, clearing away the slimy,  rancid dirt at the bottom. It might not smell very nice to some, but to a wolf, it was a rather pleasing experience. Especially for Murdock, who was as fond of digging as he was of anything. Half-buried in the dirt and bowed as if in play to accommodate the low ceiling of the cache, the male happily dug away. His tail arched up behind him, wagging merrily as he worked.

She'd decided to take a stroll around the territory that day because why not... although ever since getting lost she'd made stereo go nowhere near the borders just in case she had the same problem repeat itself.

As she walked she soon found herself lost in her thoughts thinking over many things when suddenly someone seemingly half buried in dirt, digging caught her attention, and another thing what ever he was digging for smelt aweful, so curiously she padded over to him.  Upon reaching him she wasn't sure what to say at first, but finally words came to her and she spoke.  "What're you doing and what's that smell?"

A muted smack! and a muffled oof! followed Aurora's questions as Murdock gave a little jerk of surprise. He backed out of the hole and gave his pelt a firm shake before sweeping his eyes over his company. His gaze was somewhat critical as he observed that it was a girl that'd snuck up on him, and that, although she was grown, there was a very young cast to her bright blue eyes.

He decided to forego the flirting.

"I'm cleaning out tthis cache," he replied, "and that smell is rotten meat. Ain'cha ever smelled rotten meat before?" His question, though not terribly polite, was voiced in simple curiosity instead of spite. He had no quarrel with this girl, despite her youth.

She shrunk under his critical gaze, worried what he was thinking, she'd only asked a couple questions though so if wasn't like he could really be angry at her.  Everything would be fine she told herself.

"No, I don't think I've smell rotting meat this rotten... but um thanks for cleaning it out..." she replied a bit awkwardly.

The male shifted uncomfortably as he saw the effect his words had on the girl. Irritation flared up deep in his gut - in Murdock's opinion, there were few things more terrible than a flinching woman - but he showed no outward signs of it. "Come on, now," he said reprovingly, turning back to the cache and scraping some soiled dirt out of the entrance. "Didn't mean anything by it."

He turned and carefully picked up a rock from the pile beside him. Moving gently so that he did not hurt his teeth, he placed it at the entrance of the cache and then nudged it deeper with his nose, stopping when it hit a dip and rolled toward the bottom. "Gotta line it with rocks," he said to the girl. "Drains better, that way."