Wolf RPG

After meeting with Reek, Ditty had set himself upon discovering more of the valley, and in the back of his mind he reminded himself that he was also looking for potential recruits. Surely Reek would promote him sooner if he was useful to the pack. At first, having only two other wolves had seemed like a terrible thing, but then Ditty realised that that made him the number three of the to-be-formed pack and he'd quickly decided that was a pretty good place to be. If he would gather some followers, maybe he would even have a chance at the Beta spot!

The skies looked cloudy but spring was clearly in the air. Anyone could smell its quick approach. Feeling free and enticed by the soft spring scent that surrounded him in the meadow, Ditty galloped around it around noon, then rolled in some flowers with a contented smile on his face. Then Ditty sniffed around some to find hidden or not-so-hidden treasure. "Oh boy!" he shouted loudly when he happened upon a funny-shaped large bone fragment, and he proudly picked the bone fragment in his narrow maw and started to carry it to a hill with a crooked tree on it, where Ditty began to dig a hole with the bone fragment still in his mouth.

A flash of red fur caught Drag's attention from where she sat near the foot of the burnt rise. She sat up straighter and squinted, watching the figure cross the plain and climb a small hillock with a crooked tree—an Ulmus americana, she noted absently—at its pinnacle. The she-wolf rose and loped in that direction, her leggy gait carrying her swiftly up the same gentle slope until she stood only yards behind the other animal.

"Hola, Vulpes vulpes," she barked, only to catch the other's scent. Her face wrinkled in confusion. "You are not a Vulpes vulpes," Dragyn amended, her tone somewhat accusatory. Mismatched eyes narrowed, she leaned in and sniffed. "Oh." Her lips began to curve into a smile. "You are a wolf. I cannot tell which kind." Drag said this in a tone of displeasure, her features screwing up thoughtfully, before both expression and voice lightened again. "But you are part Canis latrans also?"

Ditty was so engulfed in his digging that he didn't even notice that someone else was there until she started to speak. With a surprised "Whoa, where'd you come from!" Ditty dropped his bone, only to quickly dash towards it and pick it in his mouth again in a sort of mine, finders keepers gesture. He then put the piece of bone down at his own feet to make sure she wasn't getting any of it and looked at the female while she called him a bunch of names.

None of the names came familiar to Ditty and he blinked with confused eyes that betrayed that he wasn't so sure if she was insulting him or praising him, or if she just thought he was someone he wasn't. "No, I ain't a vulpes thingymajig," he confirmed. When she went on to ramble, seeming almost annoyed that she couldn't pinpoint the origins that were written all over his big floppy ears and narrow nose Ditty was quick to tell her: "I dunno what a canis lagoobymaboob is, but I'm a Ditty Roux-Abhren." He grinned and tilted his head, intrigued by this creature and her weird way of speaking, sorta, he thought. Oh! Hey! Maybe she was looking for a home, too! This could be his first step on the ladder towards Beta-ship of Reek's of yet miniature pack-to-be. Ditty felt instantly excited, but he waited for her to introduce herself, first (or maybe splutter out some more weird words) before he'd chase her off with his forward recruitment attempts.

"A Ditty rhouxabhren?" she repeated with several loud blinks. She had never heard of either the genus nor the species, yet Drag didn't doubt it—despite her scent identification—so much as file this information away in an already teeming cabinet in the back of her mind.

Seizing on something else he'd said, Dragyn took a breath, then informed him, "A Canis latrans"—she enunciated clearly, since he had very badly butchered it—"is a coyote. A Vulpes vulpes is a red fox." She blinked placidly, then smiled. She enjoyed imparting information on others.

"What is that?" the scrawny she-wolf asked in the next beat, eyeballing the bone he was in the midst of burying. Perhaps she could ID that too, though Dragyn was not nearly as adept at identifying remains. She had studied a corpse or two in her day, even taking them apart to see how everything worked, but she was much more experienced with living, breathing identifications.

Ditty couldn't suppress a bout of laughter when she moulded his name into a thing, or name, or whatever it was that she was doing. He still wasn't too sure what it was that she was doing. "No, that's my name, silly!" he said, cheerfully so. He looked a little sour when she reminded him of his coyote blood, betraying that she was correct in her assumptions.

She looked at the bone then, and asked what it was. " 's Mine!" Ditty answered, 'cause obviously he hadn't a clue what it was. He hadn't actually given it much of a good look. It was a large bone-like thing, and he wanted to bury it for later. Then again, if he buried it right here, right now, she could always just unearth it later. Maybe he ought to bring it back to the grotto. But, he sourly reminded himself, at the grotto there was mostly just a whole lotta stones and stuff. Not nearly enough great digging places, most likely. "Do you want to analyse this, too? Is there anything you don't analyse? What's your name?" Ditty hadn't meant to throw out all of his questions all at once, but somehow they all came pouring forth. "Do you have a pack?" he asked, 'cause if she didn't, well, he had a great one (he hoped) to sell on her and maybe if he convinced her, he'd get the cookie bonus points to get the coveted Beta spot in the new pack!

She blinked curiously when he claimed ownership of the bone, not really seeing what difference that made when it came to her question. Before Drag could ask, he teased her about analyzing things. Her head canted, mouthing the word analyze silently to herself. What did it mean? What did he mean?

Then she was asked a question she did understand, so Dragyn replied, "Drag." And when asked about her pack, her head bobbed. "Yes, I am from Shiprock. The pack is not mine, it is my parents'," the scrawny yearling clarified. "It is far from here," she shared.

"Look," she said in the next breath, sharp muzzle suddenly pointing toward the bottom of the hill, opposite from where she had climbed, "a Marmota olympus! It is a female," Drag guessed, based on the size. "Males are much larger," she explained to Ditty, glancing at him before her mismatched eyes fixed on the overgrown rodent again. "She is awake early," she observed. "They do not usually come out of hibernation until late spring."

She looked at him with a weird look on her face, and Ditty wondered if it was 'cause she was mocking him or something. His face scrunched into a weird expression that betrayed that he wasn't really sure what he was thinking or feeling. 'cause he didn't. He didn't really understand what she was doing, not realising that she didn't understand him either.

Drag. That was pretty cool. A pretty cool name. This looked promising. Oh, she had a pack, shoot! Oh, but it was far away, great! And it was parents' pack, anyway. Ditty knew exactly how he was gonna sell Larksong Grotto on her. Exactly. He'd come from his mom's pack too, after all, so he knew what it was like to be out on the road and then settle somewhere else rather than going back home! Of course, it'd been his plan from the start to not return anytime soon, but well, that didn't change things.

"Hey, that's sooo funny, I'm from my mom's pack, too!" Well, maybe not so funny, as most wolves came from their parents' pack. "It's far away too! And then I came here, and I found this uh-may-zing pack, and it's like, right close to here!" Was he laying it on too thick? "So anyway, I was thinking —" He noticed that she was totally distracted then and when she asked him to look, he followed her gaze to some rodent skittering about.

"Yes, that's nice, anyway, as I was saying —" Oh, it was a female marmot thing, yes, nice. "— You should totally —" Oh, didn't they? Ditty didn't know much about the hibernation of marmot things. "Wow, really? I didn't know that. You know so much about stuff!" Ditty said, deciding to show at least some interest in Drag's weirdo hobbies. "So I was thinking that maybe you could totally come crash at my new pack! We could use someone who's super smart like you." Ditty grinned at her with an enthusiastic smile on his face, hoping to draw her in with his charm (though in his experience brainy chicks were a lot harder to charm than dumb ones). He just hoped she'd say yes. Bonus points with Reek. Weirdo but smart female to add to pack.

When Ditty complimented her knowledge, Drag smiled to herself. She kept looking at the marmot, her mouth beginning to water. She thought about hunting it but before she could, her new acquaintance distracted her with another compliment. He also mentioned something about crashing, which made her frown thoughtfully. Then she was smiling again when she realized the word reminded her of her sister.

"I do not want to crash into any pack," she stated, over-sized ears pinning backward a bit before cupping forward again. "Do you want to hunt the marmot with me?" Dragyn asked without missing a beat, the recruitment effort going right over her head.

Ditty didn't really care about the marmot, having eaten earlier, and was focussed on recruiting her into his new pack. She said she didn't want to crash into packs, which he thought was kind of weird, 'cause she'd just totally misinterpreted what he said and who didn't understand what crashing at somewhere meant in the first place? "No no no, I mean, you should join my pack. I'd like you to join my pack." Gosh, he hated when things weren't going his way and he had to explain things super detailed like. Hopefully she'd understand this time.

She asked if he wanted to hunt the marmot thing, and he looked at it as it halted somewhere to nibble at things it held in its little paws. "Sure," said Ditty, though he'd much rather just get on with recruiting her into the pack.

He momentarily distracted her by clarifying his earlier statement. Drag blinked her two-toned eyes at him and replied, "Oh." This encounter was beginning to remind her of the one with Reek and she remained oblivious to the fact that they were both, in fact, trying to recruit her into the same pack. "No, I am from Shiprock," she reminded Ditty with a small smile at his evident forgetfulness.

She faced the marmot again, glad that Ditty had agreed to assist her. "How should we hunt it?" she asked. "Perhaps—" But before she could get out another word, the large rodent suddenly disappeared. Drag blinked hard and leaned forward, squinting as she tried to figure out where it had gone. "Its colony must be under the hill," she decided after a moment, sharp, bony body sagging a little in disappointment.

"But that's super far away and and and you're old enough to strike out on your own now, right?" he asked, and he realised that his tone had become pleading. Darn it. He was trying to sell this pack, not beg her into please joining. He needed to play hard to get, but somehow he had an inkling that wouldn't exactly work on this peculiar girl. "It doesn't have to be forever. But, you know, just see how you like it. I've been in lots of packs since leaving my mother's pack. Some day you just sort of have to get out there and see the world, and find your own place, away from your parents." She looked about his age, and so Ditty thought it strange she was so eager to return to her own pack.

Attention shifted back to the marmot again, and Ditty heaved a tiny sigh at the realisation that they would hunt it first. Maybe he could further try to convince her after the hunt. He had to convince her. He had nothing yet, and he really needed to get some credits with his new leaders! Absently he listened to her questions about hunting it. He barely noticed the marmot disappearing, until Drag went to look for it. "Oh no, now we can't hunt it," Ditty said in faux disappointment. "That's too bad, I mean, we'll never get to it, probably is far too deep to dig out." But they could certainly talk more about her staying here and all.

In fact, Drag slowly flopped to the ground, biting back a sigh as her eyes lingered wistfully on the place where she had last spotted the marmot. She was very, very hungry. She hadn't eaten a square meal since leaving home. Fortunately, she knew of many edible plants, so she wasn't in immediate danger of starvation. Still, she craved meat.

She rolled her head to look up at Ditty. He seemed to really want her to join his pack, despite her allegiance to Shiprock. Perhaps if she agreed, he would feed her. That was the benefit of a pack, she knew. But Drag didn't want to join his pack, even with the promise of free food. She gazed away, into the distance, thinking. Her parents would probably not mind if she checked out packs besides theirs, so she didn't worry about betrayal. She just wasn't interested.

"No thank you," she declared after a time, shifting her weight onto her opposite hip to look at Ditty more directly once more. "Where is your pack? What is it like?" she asked in the next beat, the sudden and burning curiosity in her voice quite possibly confusing Ditty in the wake of her rejection.

Shoot darn it, she declined his offer to join. Was she really so attached to her parents' pack? Why was she even here if she was going to return there, anyway? Ditty kept his cool though, because he wasn't going to be upset. If she wanted to be in another pack, or return to a far away place, that was fine — they could just become friends then. Ditty had always been the kind of all over the place wolf himself, so in a way, he understood. While he no longer had a home base, having cut himself loose from there, Ditty had been in lots of packs and he hadn't been the type to stick around one for an extended period of time himself.

Yet she asked about his pack, which lighted a shimmer of hope in Ditty's icy blue eyes once more. He was back to being salesman Ditty, ready to sell Larksong Grotto on others. "Well, it's got lots of marmots," he lied, 'cause this was pretty much the first marmot he had seen, "Got nice wolves and lots of food and shelter." He wasn't really sure about that, but it'd better have all that, otherwise he was looking for a new home, too. "Reek and Tavi are the leaders, they're nice folk from what I've learned so far, and they're just starting the whole pack up." Though with Drag on board they would have nearly enough to call themselves a proper pack, in Ditty's opinion. More good reasons to recruit her.

Drag's eyes glittered at the mention of marmots, absently licking her chops again. His pack sounded nice enough, though the details did not change her mind. Just as soon as she was finished exploring the area, she intended to return to New Mexico. Otherwise, her family might miss her too much. Her head cocked as she considered this.

The mention of Reek's name caused her attention to snap back to Ditty's face. "Reek? I know Reek." As a matter of fact, Reek had already tried to get her to join his pack, so Dragyn said as much. "He asked me to join too." Her lips quirked in amusement at the coincidence. "He is nice. You are nice. The pack sounds nice." She paused. "But... I belong in Shiprock," she finished with a decisive nod.

"But I am going to explore first," she announced, suddenly on all fours and readying to gallop down the gentle slope. Her black tail snapped to and fro as she cocked her head at Ditty. "Adios," Dragyn said simply before her nimble white paws began carrying her downhill, headed in the general direction of the distant mountains.

Ditty didn't understand what her deal was, but he wasn't going to argue since she seemed to have her mind so very firmly set. "Well, okay," he said, feeling disappointed, but not wanting to further push it. He just didn't get it, and somehow he didn't really imagine it was just him who didn't get this girl.

"Uh, bye," said Ditty and he was left glabbergasted, not really sure what to think of her. Mostly he was disappointed that his selling attempts hadn't gone over too well, but with a sigh he pushed a smile back on his face and decided to keep on going with a spring in his step, towards his next recruitment attempt.