Wolf RPG

For two full days following her declaration that Reek give up his title and leave the maplewood, Saena had locked herself away. On that first day, she returned to their joint den only long enough to retrieve the green pheasant feather Tavi had gifted her with—which she then dropped into the mud and stamped down with a paw as she remembered that Tavi was the other half of the formula for ruining her life—and she found another place to hide, which was Arion's abandoned den. By now, she was certain her friend's scarcity correlated with his departure from the pack, and he was certain to leave now that Reek was gone anyway, so she borrowed his den for two entire days, where she alternated between sobbing uncontrollably and burning with barely contained anger. She left only for bathroom breaks and otherwise wallowed, just her and her unborn pups.

The morning of the third day she emerged, disheveled and feeling like she was starving to death. The pups in her stomach were clearly stressed by the 48 hour fast and moved restlessly, and Saena herself was too exhausted to cry or fume any longer. She dragged herself into the sun, blinking with eyelids puffy from crying, and headed on autopilot toward a half-hollow log in the north half of the woods that the pack frequently used for a cache.

Ah what dramatic curiosities had sprung up in recent days. Shreya's grandson and Alpha, the kind and successful bastard called @Reek, had mated with a female other than his own pregnant mate, and in doing so had earned the wrath of the scorned. Saena had thrown him out of Phoenix Maplewood. Reek had told his grandmother all this before his departure, and she had given him a nice and non-judgemental goodbye. They would meet again. Shreya was not tempted to go with him — for as much as she liked the scraggly boy, Phoenix Maplewood was her retirement. She wasn't going to up shop and go out on the cold road with a lone wolf who didn't yet have a solid plan.

The fact that she wasn't judgemental didn't mean she approved of what Reek had done. She hadn't stated that it was weak and irresponsible of him to give in to childish temptations, because she knew he was already aware of this. Furthermore, it didn't really effect her emotionally very much. Shreya was not an emotional sort, and too aware of the bigger picture to get sucked into the albeit-valid pains of individual lovers and dreamers. Indeed, it wasn't really on her mind as she walked from the food cache with a fresh-ish leg of deer in her old jaws. And then she saw Saena.

She knew it was Saena because she knew her scent, and for some reason thought it poetically apt (i.e. the way of life) that someone so pretty should have picked her dull-faced descendent as a husband. The girl did not look well, and Shreya didn't blame her. She stood silently for a couple of seconds (though her body was automatically submissive), then, despite being very hungry herself, decided to move a few step forwards and place the deer leg before Saena. For you, Alpha, she said. You look hungry.

And other things too.

Her steps were heavy and she did nothing to mask them. It was next to impossible to move quietly with a belly of pups, and whether she liked it or not, Saena was bound to run into her pack mates sooner or later. She would prefer later, but that wasn't how being an alpha female worked, and now she was a solo alpha to boot. There would be a lot of work to do, and somewhere in there she had to take time off to give birth to her pups and ensure they survived.

She barely noticed the increase in her breathing, or the fact she was bordering on panicked hyperventilation, when she first spotted Shreya. She hadn't really formally met Reek's grandmother, which made her doubly surprised to see the elder wolf was still around. She'd expected the woman to go with her grandson, and wasn't sure exactly whether she was glad or upset that Shreya had stayed. Probably a little of both, because she could use the older wolf's expertise and experience but she was also loathe to cling to anything that remained of Reek.

Still, when the woman dropped a haunch of deer in front of her, Saena decided she was more glad than anything. Though she was ravenous, she shook her head lightly and said, "it's yours, you eat it. If there's any left I can eat that." In the height of autumn was the only time Saena would necessarily guard or take food from others, when all wolves were most active and most aggressive. With spring around the corner, she was back to being genuinely gentle, if not completely depressed. "'m not very hungry anyway," she lied, even though Shreya could probably see right through it.

A characterfully honest creature in every way, Shreya had never had to suffer ramifications for such things, because she was elderly and had been the Alpha at her one and only pack. But she wasn't the Alpha any more. In fact, she was speaking to one. So there could be ramifications, and she didn't have her grandson around to protect her — she didn't know Saena, and this meant there was every chance there could be ramifications if she spoke her mind the way she normally did. And so she made a note to bite her tongue if anything too risqué sprang to mind.

She didn't believe that this skinny girl, who was as slim as a dryad despite her pregnancy, wasn't hungry in the physical sense, though she could believe that she'd convinced herself of it. Why? Depression, confusion, distraction, punishment...

How about we both eat, she suggested with a note of genuine warmth to her whistley voice. There's enough for the two of us.

Shreya didn't try to push the point, for which Saena was grateful. She didn't know the older wolf very well, but she had expected something different, like insisting that she eat for the health of her children, or questioning about the situation with Reek. Shreya did neither of those things. Instead, the elderly female offered to share her deer haunch, suggesting both of them could eat, and even though Saena tried to refuse again, a gurgle in her stomach betrayed here.

"Okay," Saena acquiesced quietly, with a sheepish smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. It would be some time before she could smile that genuinely again. "But you get the first pick," she insisted, lowering her haunches carefully to the ground to give the woman time to pick the best parts of the leg. A leg was really just meaty muscle all the way through, but the best parts were near the haunch, and the alpha female did expect Shreya to take from there.

"Not going to lie," she said idly in a tone that was verging on glum, "I didn't think you would stay here." There was an unspoken question there, but out of fear she would drive the kindly, resourceful Shreya away from her and from the pack, Saena didn't voice it.

Given how little she knew Saena, she did not know at this stage why she was claiming not to be hungry, nor indeed why she told Shreya to take the first bite. But her educated guess was that it was all in the name of a harmless kind of stubbornness that worked very well considering her high rank. The girl was perhaps trying to regain control of things, given how much Reek had shaken up her life without so much as a sniff of her permission. Well, if this was the case Shreya was fine with that. And so she obliged, moving forward to tear off a strip of venison, then moving back again to leave the remainder at Saena's pretty paws.

The old woman chewed as Saena made a fair comment. The two females hadn't had a chance to talk while Reek had still been here, and so Shreya hadn't explained her reasons for joining this pack. Mh I don't blame you, given how much it might seem like I joined the Maplewood because of my grandson. But I didn't, she revealed, licking a stray bit of meat from her maw. I chose this pack because it's where my paws slowed, and because I liked the smell of the trees, and because of the Phoenix in its name. And I stayed because you let me. Though Saena would have been well within her rights to throw her out. Not doing so was a bit like cutting down an apple tree and leaving one apple behind.

Saena's keen eye followed the elder wolf's movements, and only when Shreya stepped away did she draw near to pull off her own morsel. It was hardly enough to keep her sated for the day but it would serve for now and she munched on it readily. By evening it was likely her appetite would disappear completely and a lack of food then wouldn't matter. Pregnancy had that effect.

Panning her gaze around the clearing, Saena briefly lost focus but was pulled back to herself as Shreya began to speak. The woman wasn't wrong to infer that Saena's assumption had everything to do with Reek. It made sense for a grandmother to join her grandson's pack and support him, not only biological sense but logically as well. A wolf, and indeed all animals, was most driven to aid its own relatives over others. Shreya's decision to remain therefore came as a surprise, and her reasons even moreso—a testament to the old wolf's pragmatism, and something Saena herself should strive to become.

"You are noble to do what you feel is right for you and not what your relative does," she noted, "and I would never hold you accountable for his sins. You've had a place here since the day you joined and that won't change just because of his greed." She had a lot of harsher words for what she thought of Reek, but she was too exhausted to utter them now. She'd run through them enough times in her brain. Tilting her snout, she continued picking at the piece of flesh as she asked, "you've travelled far, then?" She inferred it from the comment on paws slowing, and the interest pooling in her eyes was enough to tell she was quite interested in tales from abroad if Shreya had any.

Knowing that some wolves didn't like being watched while they ate (and that Alphas had the prerogative to do a fair bit of snapping if they were that type), Shreya looked away politely as Saena ate her snack. But the quiet chomping was oddly satisfying, as if she herself were eating. She quickly realised that this was because it was a relief to see the self-starved mother-to-be take care of herself more than she had been. She got the impression from her personality alone that Saena was a very independent young thing who certainly could take care of herself... but that didn't mean she was impervious to a lack of success in that area. The skinny body proved that well enough.

She appreciated being called noble, and didn't deny it. Shreya was lacking in self-deprication, and while her desire to spread her knowledge throughout the Maplewood was very much her own, there was some selflessness to it too. Thank you, said the elder with a little dip of her head. I never travelled in my youth, but yes I travelled far to come here. It struck her then that some stories of the road might prove a welcome distraction to the Alpha if accepted. Want me to tell you a little about it?

Shreya's travelling seemed to be the result of a want to get somewhere rather than curiosity about the world, from what the woman said. Saena could both appreciate and failed to understand that sentiment. She liked to travel, not because she loved being away from home but because it soothed a part of her she hardly understood. Many of the recent generation DeMontes had lost their wanderlust, but not Saena, who didn't even understand she was part of that sprawling family and couldn't trace her desire to walk miles and miles back to anyone.

Perhaps Hawkeye, but they were unrelated. Perhaps Kisu, but she suspected his travels were a result of wanting to escape responsibility, something Saena did not believe of herself, whether it was true or not.

"I'm a scout myself," Saena shared, and left out her suspicion that it wouldn't be for much longer. "I'd love to hear your stories." The world beyond the Teekon Wilds was mostly a mystery to her. She'd left but once and only for a short while.

There were some things about Phoenix Maplewood that were classic and familiar, but other things still that were a far cry from what she'd known in her own pack. The Alpha being a scout, for instance, traversing lands around the territory instead of spending all her time within it like Shreya had. She could see sundry benefits to the pack's leader exploring the lands and meeting strangers on the horizon, and it was curious consider how her old pack might've been different if she'd done the same.

Deciding pointedly that she would oblige Saena not for the sake of it or for the joy of telling stories, but for a much-needed distraction for the girl. Clearly the Alpha been cooped up inside with only herself and her adulterous husband's unborn children for company, perhaps tormented by her own emotions. Shreya theorised that distraction was a form of emotional support in such a case, acting much like a gulp of fresh water when all she'd been drinking was sand.

Once upon a time, she began half-ironically, making her bad posture lower and more comfortable, I met a goat with a stutter. She lived on a mountain, and this was late last year so it was a very snowy mountain. She told me and my two companions that she'd lived her whole life wishing her coat was as white as the snow. 'W-w-why', she said. 'Why c-can't I gleam like the snow'. Not only that, but she knew another goat. And that goat had the whitest coat she'd ever seen. So the stuttering goat started a plot to take it as her own...

As a light wind rustles the leaves and casts glimmering shadows over the two wolves, Saena settles herself to listen to Shreya's story. It starts in the usual way but takes a quick turn for unusual the moment the elder wolf launches into it. Saena has never spoken with an animal that isn't a wolf and doesn't even know if she can understand them. Must be a skill developed over time, she thinks, but she's doubtful and regards Shreya as a wolf with a special gift. Not unlike her own, in fact. Saena hasn't seen a ghost for a while, but she knows they're still there, and thinks to herself that perhaps Shreya's gift is like that.

Placing it in the back of her mind to ask about another time, the expectant mother shifts in place, responding to an uncomfortable sensation of needing to pee as one of the unborns kick, and she pricks her ears expectantly when Shreya begins to tell her about the stuttering goat's plot. "I thought goats were docile," muses Saena, who assumes perhaps wrongly that the goat in the story intended to kill her rival and steal her pelt. It's something she likely would do if she was an envious goat.

They are indeed, she agreed with the young listener. Goats were docile, but all goats were different just as all wolves were different. But the stuttering goat was special, so distracted by her vanity that she didn't even care that she was telling her story to me, a predator. Albeit a particularly old and creaky predator, one who definitely couldn't take the goat down on her own.

Seeing that Saena was relatively hooked, Shreya did not hesitate to continue. She felt a warm satisfaction in knowing this might be the first time in days Saena had thought of anything other than what tormented her.

Or, at least, it was the first time she'd thought of a stuttering goat.

Anyway, among the great crags and glaciers of the snowy mountain, the stuttering goat put her plan into action. She tried to creep up on the sheer-white goat, but the goat saw her, and they faced each other and began to charge. They picked up speed, heading for each other faster and faster...

Saena hasn't even given much thought to the personalities and lives of prey animals. Indeed, she rarely thinks about other animals in general. A vain goat who plots and schemes and speaks with wolves is difficult to imagine, but Saena knows of vanity and scheming in her own way and is able to apply the story to her experiences. Curling her forepaws under her chest, the woman tilts her neck and brings her head nearer to Shreya, hanging on to the story now in a way she hasn't done since she was a pup.

Shreya's voice builds as she describes the charging goats, and with it, so does Saena's inexplicable excitement. Anticipation seizes her chest and her ears press forward, and she quietly asks, "does one fall off the cliff?" She flinches almost immediately afterward, a sheepish look on her face—she's acting like a pup!—but indeed she wishes to know how the story ends, how the vain goat got her wish or was thwarted, perhaps because she wonders if she herself should ever get her wishes or be thwarted.

Good guess, but no, she replied smoothly, with a slightly-dramatic shake of her head. Shreya purposefully directed herself so she wasn't telling this story as if to a child, but she was doing it with a bit of drama and gusto, in an effort to transport Saena into the story and let her escape real life for a little while.

And quite the story it was: a whole new landscape, a whole different species, and a whole lot of silly nonsense.

Not that it wasn't a true story.

The stuttering goat ran faster and faster at her adversary... and crashed into a wall of ice. For she hadn't been looking at another goat. All this time, she'd been looking at herself, reflected in the highly-polished side of a glacier. She wanted the whitest coat in all the land, but she'd had it all along. She couldn't see her own beauty, and jealousy drove her to distraction.

Only once Shreya was satisfied with her audience's response did she allow for the post-credit sequence:

Anyway, the goat had knocked herself cold on that glacier, so I enjoyed quite a delicious and easy feast that evening.

Shreya denies the conclusion Saena's guessed at and the Alpha female pulls her brows together in thought. Just as she's about to voice another guess, the elder wolf ends the suspenseful silence and concludes the story in an altogether unexpected manner. Saena's lips part into a soft 'O' when Shreya reveals the moral of the story, and she can't help drawing some conclusions from it herself, sparking the beginnings of a realization about the dangers of jealousy and vengeful thinking.

But what hooks Saena and causes her jaw to unhinge is the true conclusion of the story: Shreya's easy meal. "You ate her?" she repeated, aghast, but then a giggle blossoms in her throat and she chuckles heartily. "I can't believe you ate her after she told you a story!" A hunter through and through, Saena knows the value of an easy meal, but can't say for certain whether she has the gall and balls to eat a talking prey animal.

As was evident to most who beheld her, Shreya wasn't exactly a cuddly type of old grandmother, spouting morals and flurries of heart-tingling warmth. She told stories that imparted knowledge and wisdom. And though this story didn't do much of either, it had a more important purpose — to help Saena step out of her lull and remember that there was wonder, nonsense and laughter in the world. And so when she heard that little giggle, unsuited to a noble lady like this one but well-suited to her youth, Shreya smiled honestly.

Mhm, she confirmed the twist in the tale with a nod. I think I still have one of her blinding-white hairs stuck in my teeth... she mused (mostly joking), running her tongue thoughtfully over her gnashers.

Saena's giggles began anew. The whitest goat in all the world, potentially, had become the meal of a wolf just like any other goat. She supposed it made sense—a white-haired goat was no less edible than any other goat, and was made all the more conspicuous for being unique. Her tongue pressed over her teeth sympathetically in search of lingering hair, but unlike Shreya, Saena had not eaten a shaggy goat in her life.

Her giggles died down when a sudden oompf of movement put pressure on her bladder. The pups were over being told stories in the womb, it seemed, and Saena was to be the victim of their kicking for a time. "Pardon me, Shreya," Saena said with a light wince and a smile. "It's time I go for a walk and relieve myself, these pups are demanding it." A walk, a potty break, and then maybe she would attempt to be productive so as not to lapse back into complete misery. "Thank you for the story," she said earnestly, but then another kick to the bladder made her nearly pee herself, and the Alpha scurried away to find a place to let it go.

The giggles were warming for a number of reasons. For a start , only one so young could produce such sweetness, and youth was just nice to be around, and for another it meant her story had been effective. It had taken Saena's mind off things, or so it seemed, and in this Shreya was most satisfied. She was grateful, too. For while it was her way to aid the young, a youth as important as this one was not easily aided.

Any time, she said with a smile, and respectfully waited until her Alpha had gone before she too turned her back, chuckling lightly at Saena's honesty. I like her, she decided to herself, and tottered off with the stripped bone of their shared snack.