Redhawk Caldera A greatness at the cost of goodness

It probably went without saying (or perhaps it didn't) that Peregrine no longer felt anger toward Dante. Nor did he blame him. He understood now that the silver Alpha had been trying to protect Junior, to save her life. All of his anger and misgivings about the plateau fell away. He would love them from afar and think of them often. But he would stay away from the plateau wolves. They were better off without him. He was finally taking full responsibility for the destruction his actions had wrought. Sole responsibility too; he didn't blame Fox or anyone else. Just himself.

Sighing softly under his breath, the Alpha male tried to remain focused on the only thing that mattered now, his only chance at redemption: he would renew his recent vow to be a better Alpha, mate and father to the caldera wolves. Surely he would still make mistakes but Peregrine was bound and determined to forget that anything and anyone existed beyond Redhawk Caldera. He would dedicate himself to them completely, take all of this guilt and pain and make it into something good. He would make diamonds out of coal. Somehow.

A rabbit flicked unexpectedly across his path, having popped out of some brush near the mountain's base. Taking advantage of this opportunity to do some good for his pack, Peregrine gave chase, his paws thumping dully on the snowy earth.

Well, two of our threads just finished up, so here I am! :)

Fox had been squabbling with a large turkey of all things. It was a big one (perhaps twenty-five pounds) and Fox wasn't even sure she necessarily wanted to eat it. But dodging its beak and then snapping at it with her ivory whites was good fun, so she kept at it, herding it this way and that way for a good thirty minutes now. It gobbled and squawked at her, clearly angry about the situation, but that only made it more amusing. It reminded Fox of her time spent at Duck Lake, chasing the fowl that lived there. They were much different beasts, being waterfowl, but she had always had fun running them off whenever she got the chance.

If turkeys were a common occurrence in Redhawk Caldera, she imagined that she would end up chasing them around quite often, too. A noise behind her caused Fox to pause and look away, leaving the turkey to peck wildly at her shoulder. “Hey!” she yelped, snapping her teeth close to the ugly bird's head. She barked, chasing it off and then running in the other direction, toward Peregrine, so that the turkey wouldn't be able to put its pointy beak on her any longer.

She managed to catch up to him mid-chase, and continued alongside him, flashing him a quick glance to let him know she was up for the hunt as well.

I hyperventilated earlier when we had no active threads.

Right at the penultimate moment, someone yelled, "Hey!" and Peregrine's lost his focus for all of two seconds. In the meantime, the rabbit zigzagged out of reach. He glanced back at the retreating cottontail with a frown on his lips, though he turned when his mate flanked him and offered her a nudge and a shrug.

"Lost cause," he said simply, then eyed the angrily gobbling turkey she'd been heckling. "I like that we were simultaneously pestering the native wildlife. Did you really let him beat you up?" Peregrine teased, noting the ruffled fur on her shoulder. "Want me to make him pay, pretty lady?"

IKR?

Peregrine referred to the rabbit and the turkey as "native wildlife," and Fox wondered if that made her and Peregrine unnative wildlife. They were wolves, but they weren't from this particular mountain... so did that mean they weren't actually natives here. The thought perplexed her for a moment, but soon enough, Peregrine was asking if he should exact revenge on the bird who had been taunting her (or was it the other way around?).

“Let him?” she echoed, “You can try your luck with that damn thing, but it’s tough, man.” Fox glanced to where the turkey was pecking at the ground in all its ugly glory. She had never been much for aesthetics, but even she could admit when she saw something as sore on the eyes as that thing. “What were you after?” she inquired, glancing in the direction where Perry had been bounding off to.

"I know, I've hunted a few turkeys in my day. They're as mean as they are ugly," Peregrine replied. "Rabbit," he added. "Definitely not as interesting nor as challenging as this hideous motherfucker."

He kept his distance for the moment, watching the turkey, then glanced sideways at Fox. He managed a soft smile for her. Of course, he'd told her all about Blue Willow's emotionally-charged visit and how he (and everyone at the plateau, for that matter) held himself responsible for Junior's suicide attempt. She had been his light in the dark, to use a cheesy metaphor. And she, more than anyone else, was the central focus of his renewed dedication. She and their babies.

Blinking his dusky eyes, he snapped back into focus and leveled his gaze on the ugly bird again. He stalked forward in a rather leonine fashion, the tip of his tail switching back and forth. There was no cover, no element of surprise, as he approached the turkey. Accordingly, it thrust out its great fatty breast and rustled its tail fathers, trying to look large and intimidating. It scratched at the cold ground with its claws and clicked its beak, calling attention to its natural weapons.

"Can't daunt the dauntless," Peregrine muttered under his breath, crouching low as he prepared to pounce and glancing over his shoulder to wink at Fox, his not-actually-a-damsel-in-distress.

Fox gave her swarthy husband a toothy grin as he commented on the bird's lack of beauty. In some ways, Fox could identify. She had never been a particularly beautiful creature, nor had she aspired to become one. She was small, rugged, and packed a punch. Her coat was likely the only thing that really stood out aside from her petite size. Even her eyes were a dull grey that barely reflected the light. Not that she was complaining, of course. Fox had never been interested in being the most physically attractive wolf out there. She just wanted to be the most badass wolf out there.

She licked her wounded lip when Peregrine dug his claws into the dirt and launched himself at the large fowl. Her eyes lit up, and she straightened her posture to watch him from where she stood. At the very least, this was bound to be entertaining. And if they managed to get a meal out of it, she'd be perfectly happy with that outcome.

Before turning back to face his feathered foe, Peregrine stage-whispered to Fox, "Isn't it weird that they have a ballsack-vagina coming out of their faces...?" Cackling, he then faced forward again. His haunches coiled beneath him and the turkey gobbled in alarm the second before he sprang forward.

He closed the distance between himself and the turkey even as it spread its wings and began to beat the air with them. Peregrine ignored this display, opening his jaws to seize that great big, juicy breast. Naturally, he took punishment from all sides as soon as his teeth dug into the supple flesh. The bird pecked at the bridge of his muzzle, flailed at him from either side with its wings and kicked up its claws to dig at his forelegs.

There were only two courses of action he could take: Peregrine could either release it and leap backward or... with a savage growl, he began to shake the stupid turkey. He practically broke his neck in the process—the thing had to weigh a couple dozen pounds—but he did manage to yank it off its feet. It dragged across the ground, still squawking and pumping its wings, yet he did not let go.

When one of the wings began striking him in the face, he closed his eyes, snarled again and surged forward to pin the thing to the ground, then shake it back and forth. In doing so, he partially crushed it, then ripped open its breast. Finally, he let go with a gasp. He could've gone after its scrote-throat neck, though he knew the job was finished. He backed off several paces while he waited for the turkey to bleed out and die.

In the meantime, he trotted over to his mate, his tongue darting out to lick the blood—his and the turkey's—off his scratched muzzle. "How'd I do, Mrs. Redleaf-DiSarinno?" he asked as he playfully swaggered around his tiny mate.

“Gross,” Fox muttered when Peregrine subjected her to his less than kosher thoughts on what he thought the turkey's face looked like. She scrunched up her face, even as he stalked his prey, and watched amused as he moved toward it. There was no need for an element of surprise, especially considering Fox had just been heckling the bird who weighed close to a third of her own body. When it began to peck at him on all sides, she took a quickened step forward, but stopped just as soon as she had begun. He was in no danger, and she had to admit that watching him struggle with the turkey was more amusing than worrisome. She had thought he might tear its entire head off, but he kept it intact, and the bird quickly lost consciousness due to loss of blood.

“Not too bad,” she replied, eyes immediately narrowing in on his scratched muzzle. Without asking for permission, she licked the top of it, pushing her tongue across his nose a few times to get the majority of the blood off of it. “Does this mean we match?” she asked with a goofy grin, jutting her own gashed muzzle out toward him.

Peregrine pouted at her mediocre assessment, though his tail kept waving until she stepped up to him and licked at his wounds. It fell still and he tried his hardest not to wince as her saliva stung the fresh, bleeding cuts. "I can't believe I let that walking scrote-gina leave a mark on me," he grumbled under his breath, favoring Fox with a grateful glance when she finished lapping the blood from his snout.

She asked if they matched and he bobbed his head. "You and me, we're a couple of warbirds. Firebirds," he corrected himself, thinking back on the day when Finley had introduced him to that term (or at least, he was pretty sure it had been their handy-dandy Beta). "Hey, that's what we should call them. The kids, I mean. Collectively. Maybe they'll come out with a bunch of gnarly, badass scars too," Peregrine mused, snickering at his own foolishness.

"The turkey probably didn't fancy being called a scrote-gina," Fox mused as she continued to wash away swashes of blood from his muzzle. She did not think that anybody would like being called that, let alone the creature who actually looked like it. Then again, she looked quite like a fox, and she had never been unhappy with her name. She did find it strange when others thought she actually was a fox, considering that she stood twice as high as one and lacked the black feet and ears that they did. Unobservant fools they were, she decided, and told herself that their opinions of her did not matter.

“Firebirds…” Fox repeated, testing the moniker on her tongue for good measure. It did have a good ring to it, and it would make a good reference to their lovely Beta, Finley, who had come up with the name. “I like the sound of it,” she replied, bobbing her head in easy agreement. When Peregrine quipped that their children might come out with scars as well, she realized that they would probably find another way. “My guess is that they’ll earn them,” she said, “if they’re anything like their parents.” And Fox could not imagine why they would be anything less than fierce.

His mate seemed to like the term of endearment and so it was official: he would think of them as their firebirds and refer to them as such when he spoke of them. Peregrine's tail waved as he wondered, for the billionth time, when he and his mate could hatch their little winged foxes. He couldn't wait. Although he knew it was pretty much impossible, he secretly hoped she was already pregnant from one of their many couplings and that one day she would just get fat and pop out a few adorable babies shortly thereafter.

Sighing happily, he said, "Speaking of earning things, I'd say we've earned the right to feed our faces on that walking bitch wrinkle," and motioned at the turkey. It was still twitching faintly, though he assumed it was dead by now. After giving his mate a nudge, he walked over to it and clipped one of its wingtips in his teeth, giving it a tug to be sure. The turkey flopped feebly.

"The head's all yours if you want it. I don't really have a taste for mangina. I'm a breast man," the Alpha male said, striking out a paw to pin the large bird to the ground even as he tore into the already-bleeding chest and ripped off a hunk of meat.

I'm Old Gregg!

"Peregrine the Potty-Mouth," Fox mused aloud, quite proud of herself for thinking up such a wonderful nickname for him. He certainly was one of the most vulgar wolves she had ever encountered, although it did not bother her as much as it may have others. She pranced over with him, watching as he tugged at the turkey's wing to ensure that it was actually dead. Truth be told, Fox probably would have eaten it even if it weren't dead. No remorse was given to prey, who were just food on legs that kept fresh longer than a refrigerator ever could hope to achieve.

Fox already had chunk of meat in her mouth when he referred to the thing as a mangina. Swallowing her bite of meat, she replied, "I always assumed you were more of an ass man." To test this theory, she turned herself around and wriggled her butt near his face. Grinning, Fox curved her neck around to see his reaction, licking her lips free of the blood and guts that had stained them.

:D

They each began working on their respective chunks of fresh turkey meat. Peregrine settled on the ground with his pinned between his forepaws. He would finish it in a matter of seconds and have to go back for seconds but he wanted to be comfortable while he ate.

"You're right," he said in reply to Fox's teasing, "I'm much more of a rump man when it comes to both fooding and fucking. There's nothing quite like a juicy piece of ass..." he mused, winking at her before gobbling his last few bites, accompanied with grotesque grunting and lip-smacking.

He stood quickly and moved back toward the turkey. True to his word, he now went for the animal's backside, tearing the body cavity wide open in the process. The intestines came spilling out in all their red, slippery glory. Peregrine made a noise like a kid who'd just beat open his birthday piñata and began slurping down bits of gut like spaghetti noodles.

Fox was ever-amused by Peregrine's antics. He went back to the bird, and Fox did the same, taking off a chunk here, a bite here, until there was nothing left of the turkey but a large stain of blood on the ground. The ravens and other scavengers would clean that up. Reclining, Fox rolled onto one side and let her head fall to the ground. While she wasn't entirely full, she did feel a great more nourished, and she was happy to bask in the afternoon sun. It wasn't too terribly cold, and she had a feeling that they wouldn't have too many warmish days left.

The Alpha pair made quick work of their kill. Peregrine's belly was visibly distended by the time they finished eating and he wanted to join his wife as she lay to soak in the wintry sunlight. First, though, he plucked up a spare feather, one with only a spatter of blood on it. This he tucked behind Fox's ear before reclining next to her, licking his lips and making other noises of contentment.