Redhawk Caldera In Germany Before the War

@Towhee

The wind blew down from the northeastern Canadian wilderness. The winter storm was unrelenting and temperatures dropped well into the negatives with its wide sweep. The corpses of lesser beings who fell to nature's power were lost beneath mounds of snow. Forgotten as the world continued to turn; a testament to the futility of their short and meaningless lives. Along the eastern borderlands of the Caldera, Whip unearthed a doe from one such mound. Frozen and doomed to die a death of abject weakness, she had been abandoned by her herd. She would serve some purpose however, if Whip deemed her fit.

Though snow-blind and covered with a thin veneer of ice, Whip wasn't bothered by the cold. To say otherwise, would be an admission of weakness. Weakness that he had long since abandoned -- killed, like that poor girl in Themiscyra. He nosed the body with an exploratory poke, brushing snow away as he went.

How could something so familiar, so mundane, become so difficult? As Towhee attempted to make her usual rounds, she found it almost impossible to focus on the age-old task. She was supposed to be preparing to fight, yet she couldn't eat or sleep, much less concentrate. She swung between feeling horrible impotence and abject misery when she thought of the holes blown wide in the caldera's ranks, none more painful than Phox's. She missed him like a phantom limb.

More than once, she looked skyward, hoping for any sign of X. She hoped he was out there searching for Phox, as commanded. Maybe he would return soon with news of her brother's whereabouts. He couldn't communicate with her like a fellow wolf, but if he knew something about where Phox had gone, Towhee was sure he would figure out some way to tell her.

Her lips drew tight as she finally abandoned her distracted patrol and began climbing the caldera's slope. Pretty little sprinkles of snow dusted her coat, joining the heaps already on the ground. Towhee trudged through it mindlessly, though she paused and let out a long plume of silvery breath when she caught sight of Whip unearthing some frozen meat.

Whip uncovered enough. His lips pulled back, exposing the teeth beneath. He tore into the flesh of the fallen doe's neck and found the meat tough and nearly frozen solid. Whip did not mind -- the meal would sate him; give him strength for the coming war with the pack to the north. He would need it, he thought, if he was to kill again.

When Whip saw Towhee approach from the west, he stopped what he was doing (though, he continued to chew like some sort of savage) and he watched as she moved toward him. Despite knowing she would not hear it, Whip chuffed to her, inviting her near. "Is this what you're looking for too?" he asked her. The scent had been covered by the snow. Whip knew only from the sight of the mound. But, he wondered if Towhee's sense of smell was somehow more keen than his because of her hearing deficiency.

She didn't particularly feel like socializing, though she knew she would have to at least acknowledge Whip when he glanced over in her direction. Heaving a sigh, she turned and forded through the snow, coming to stand over the partially unearthed and evidently frozen carcass.

"No, I'm not hungry," Towhee replied dully, gazing emptily at the dead deer. "I know I should eat, though, keep up my strength..." She sighed again and shrugged, her jaw clenching as she momentarily looked away, then back to Whip. "You know, for the war. We're going to attack any day now." And I feel like shit, she added mentally. But she'd had enough of projecting her feelings outward (she cringed at the memory of yelling at Wraen), so she clapped her mouth shut.

With Towhee's lack of interest in the deer confirmed, Whip settled back into his meal. He gnawed idly as she spoke. She brought up that which had been on everyone's mind as of late: the war. "Good," said Whip. The war bothered him not. There were few constants that could truly be counted on in the waking world. Violence was one of them. It was a language all could understand. An art in its own right.

He remembered his sister's resolve at the meeting and saw it fleeting. No, there was something else written in her expression, but it was something Whip could not read. "You're bothered," he observed in pass, chewing as he spoke. "Are you afraid?" But, Whip knew fear. He couldn't see it in her eyes.

Unlike some of the other recent additions, Whip didn't seem remotely perturbed by the upcoming battle. Towhee opened her mouth to say something about it when he pointed out that she appeared bothered. Her lips pressed together and her fur prickled resentfully at his following inquiry.

"No," she replied curtly. Then she thought of the possibility that her brother might be held fast in the Blackfeathers' clutches and apprehension swept through her. "I'm not afraid to fight. I can't wait to go wring their fucking necks. But," she continued, speaking even more slowly than usual, "I'm worried. Everything's become such a clusterfuck. Have you heard about Tit? And Gannet? And Phox is missing too. He could be a hostage, for all we know."

He could see it clearly now; the anger and disappointment etched into her furrowed brow and displeased scowl. In ran the length of her body in waves. Down the length of her spine and through the rest of her youthful form. Whip stopped eating now and he regarded her with an odd fondness. A fondness reserved for the few and far between. Perhaps she, like Junior before Ferret, like Ferret before Whip, shared the same curse passed down in their birthright. Perhaps it was too early to tell, but Whip saw beauty in it.

"No," he answered. Whip did not know the fate of his brother, nor did he even know that he had been here in the first place. "Maybe they ran," he offered, thinking it was the most likely of all possible scenarios. The call of war was not a siren song to all. Some ran away scared, leaving nothing behind but disappointment. Whip knew this. Whip lived this. It was shameful, but honor leads only to an early grave.

"It's okay to be angry," he told her, stepping over the corpse. "I feel it too."

"Maybe they ran." She almost jumped to correct him, fill him in on the last known whereabouts of Titmouse and Gannet, but Towhee's tongue remained still a moment. She did have the niggling suspicion that Phox had done just that. It was why she hadn't gone running to Blackfeather Woods directly. Doing that would be a suicide mission anyway, though there was part of Towhee that sensed—no, that somehow knew—that she wouldn't find her brother there at all.

"Gannet's at Moonspear, hurt enough that he can't come home until he's better. And it's all because Tit apparently murdered one of their pups," Towhee eventually said, expression dull to match her voice as she relayed these facts to Whip. "I am angry," she continued, shooting Whip a strange sort of look, as if a mutual understanding seemed to pass between them, "but I'm... discombobulated too. I don't know what to think or how to feel." She paused, scuffing a paw in the snow. "I just want to kill something... someone."

Whip stopped a few paces away to look upon Towhee absently. News of his littermate, Gannet, gave him pause. Having left in the winter during Gannet's first sleepaway adventure from the Caldera, Whip wrongly assumed his brother to be among the nameless dead. Culled by the unforgiving frost. It pleased him to know that Gannet survived. Albeit as an injured prisoner held against his will. And yet, Whip was oddly unconcerned with his brother's injuries. If Gannet was strong enough -- he would return to the Caldera just as Whip had returned from the Nereides.  

However, the memories Whip could recall of his wayward brother did not conjure images of strength or triumph. He was too kind. Too soft and prone to attachment. These trappings would weigh him down, but Whip could sense no such weights on Towhee. She would be stronger for it, he supposed. If she didn't know what to think or feel, Whip would tell her what she needed to be. "Be angry," he told her. "Embrace it." She thought like him, after all. It wouldn't be a hard stretch. "Make it your center. Your strength."

"You've killed before, haven't you?" he asked. It wasn't something one came to lightly.

Whip seemed utterly unmoved by the news of their siblings. He looked at her speculatively and Towhee returned his gaze steadily. "Be angry," he told her. "Embrace it." She didn't feel as though she had a choice in the matter. She had never possessed a sunny disposition, yet she wasn't a particularly angry individual either. But lately...

His next question caused her to blink. She was a predator, so of course she'd killed. But she understood what Whip was asking. -Yeah,- she signed, then remembered to say it aloud as well: "Yeah, I have. Have you?"

Not only would she learn the answer to her question, she would walk away from this encounter knowing a lot more about her older brother as well. Towhee wasn't entirely certain what she made of it—he was rather darker at his core than she had expected—although once they parted ways, she made a note to follow up after the war and dig even deeper into the wolf known as Whip.