Jinx trotted down from the higher reaches of Silvertip Mountain, descending with alarming speed thanks to running on a decline. Firmly gripped between her molars was a worn stick, roughly two feet long and thick enough to prop her mouth open. Ropes of her saliva wrapped around the stick and flecked from the sides of her lips, and flakes of the old bark fell onto her tongue, but she gave no indication of noticing. Although the Alpha looked ridiculous carrying it, she strode with a mighty purpose that erased any humour from it.
Soon, the Night of the Hare would come, and soon after that, the Moth Offering. Jinx wanted to get an early start on her offering for the moths, which she intended to be this stick covered in all manner of wild flowers, but to do so, she needed a tree that copiously bled sap to rub the stick against. The flowers would not stick to the wood of their own accord, but sap was sticky enough to hold them, and eventually would solidify into an almost permanent hold. She chose not to think about how the sap would inevitably end up all over her, as well.
Neverwinter Forest had been her first thought, since she remembered the towering conifers from her brief time there as well as her walk with Chakra. Half an hour of searching yielded one conifer that had a gaping wound in its bark, where liquid beads collected to signal the leeching of sap. Jinx eagerly approached the tree, chomped once or twice on the stick to readjust it somewhat, then rubbed her entire face against the tree's bark, hoping that the stick would contact the beads.
What Jinx didn't know was that the beads were an oily resin, not sap, which would almost instantly harden into a sticky polymer (rather than slowly like sap did) all over the side of her stick and her ear, which had contacted it as well.
Tyrande had ventured to Neverwinter to find more ideas for new colors are what to paint her latest creation with. It was not long into her search for new colors wen she heard another wolf struggling with something. Setting down her clay-made bucket, Tyrande inhaled to find the scent of her alpha in her nose. She quickened her pace to find her leader stuck to the side o a tree.
Despite herself trying to keep a straight face, and the fact that she would probably be snapped at, she couldn't help but snorting and letting out a small giggle.
"D-Do you n-need any h-help, Miss?" The yearling asked, trying hard not to fall over laughing.
The Kesuk managed to pull the stick away from the tree, but before she could investigate whether she had collected any "sap" on it, her ear snagged on the tree's bark. Instinctual growls poured from her lips as she twisted her head, trying to free her ear, but little did she know that it was the rapidly drying resin holding her hostage. No amount of twisting and turning could free Jinx. Nothing but the sheer willpower to tear out the fur on her sensitive ear would release her from the tree's hold.
She was distracted by the sound of chortling behind her. The Alpha female attempted to whip her head around to affix an accusatory glare on whoever was snickering at her, but the resin kept her from being able to see who it was. Her lips peeled over her teeth and a vicious snarl bubbled from her throat, aimed at the tree but equally effective to whoever was laughing at her.
The voice gave Tyrande away, however, as Jinx recalled her from the cavern exploration. She let the stick roll out of her jaws, though the proximity to the tree's trunk caused it to fall awkwardly and strike her breast on its way down. Wincing, the female lashed her tail in agitation and grumbled out a, "Fool! Do not laugh at me!"
Tyrande stopped most of her giggles, "Sorry, Miss, but from this point of view, it's hard not to laugh" She was still smiling. She brought herself around into Jinx's vision. Putting her bucket down and pokintilting her head, studying the situation quietly.
"Miss, the only way your gonna' get out of that resin is to tear yourself out." She spoke almost wisely, "It's gonna' be a bit painful, so it's best to just tear it straight off, to minimize the pain. It'll be a lot less effort and pain then slowly pulling it out. We should probably go see someone after this, because I don't know a thing about how to handle raw skin..."
She looked down at Jinx's stick. She looked back up, confused. "Pardon me, but... May I ask what you were doing, Miss?"
"Resin?" queried the Alpha female aloud, giving away the fact that she was quite unfamiliar with the term. Both sap and resin dried quickly and bled from trees, so it was an easy mistake to make. She hadn't known resin was more oily and dried significantly faster in the muggy atmosphere of the Wilds than the sugary stuff from the deciduous trees she was accustomed to. "The hell is resin?" the female growled as she tugged away from the tree, but her fur held fast to it, sending a painful twinge through her ear and into her scalp.
Butting her shoulder against the bark in a frustrated manner, the Alpha pinned her tongue between her teeth in an irritated scowl and craned her neck. Thankfully, the Epsilon had stepped into Jinx's sights, and found herself fixed with a venomous glare. "Is there a less painful way?" she wondered, cursing her luck that it was Tyrande and not Lecter who found her in this position. Lecter would have known what magic could undo this binding.
Tyrande asked what she was doing with it in the first place. Gritting her molars together, the female tried another tug, to no avail. "I was going to use it to stick petals to the stick," she rumbled, frowning when she realized the stick was now soiled with... Well, soil. "For the Moth Offering." On that, she didn't elaborate further.
Tyrande shook her head. "Unless you want it to sit there and let it dry until it's flaky enough to rub off on the bark, the best way to do it is rip it out, and then maybe take a trip to the salt springs to get the rest of it out of your fur, though that may take awhile too, considering it doesn't come off well in water, either."
She sniffed, smelling the strong scent beginning to take effect. "As for what resin is... All I know is that it's much stickier than sap, and dries a lot quicker. It usually comes from trees such as pine. It's a hassle to get the stain out of light-colored fur, and the smell will stay for days."
She looked down at the stick, pondering. "You Teekon wolves have the strangest ceremonies. What's a Moth Offering?"
"How long would it take?" the Alpha pressed, no doubt seeming completely ludicrous for considering the possibility of standing there long enough for the resin to dry completely. To her, it made sense that the mere seconds it took for the resin to become tacky in her fur was indicative of its overall drying time, which she couldn't have been more wrong about.
Tyrande seemed to have some knowledge of plants, for she was able to identify the difference between resin and sap, and confirmed for Jinx what she had feared: that there was no sap to be found in Neverwinter at all. Though the female wished to purse her lips and show her teeth and stomp her feet and be frustrated, the woman's quick response had made her think of something else, which she chose to address in a moment. "Teekon wolves? You are mistaken. These Teekon wolves are nothing but heretics. We who follow the Light of Atka and fear the Dark of Sos are Shearwater Bay wolves. We who follow the old ways. The Moth Offering is one of our traditions, to summon the fledgling moths to the coast."
"Do you know a lot about plants?" she abruptly asked, wincing as her jaw movement tugged her ear against the resin-laden scar in the bark.
Tyrande laughed drily. "Even under perfect conditions, it would take at least a days' time. Even longer, here. I'm not entirely sure you'd want to wait that long."
She smiled at the explanation of the Moth Offering. "Sounds great. I always loved ceremonies and holidays... They have so much depth about the religions they share..." She laughed, "As for plants, yes, I guess you could say I know a lot about them. It's one of the reasons that some wolves have added 'Nightshade' to the end of my name. I was in a similar situation that you are in once... It was when I was following a trail of deer that ate the bark during the winter. Well, I must not have noticed that a little fawn eating the lower bark, because when I got up out of my makeshift den around some particularly big roots the next morning, I found my entire right hindquarters glued to the side of the tree!"
She winced, remembering thoughtfully. "I hadn't realized what kind of tree it was until I had ripped my fur out trying to get away..."
Well, shit, thought Jinx, whose cursing of the entire forest was confined to her mental voice. She dare not unleash her rage upon Tyrande, not because she knew the woman and considered her a friend, but because she strove to make Silvertip Mountain the family that her other packs had failed to be. Swiftcurrent had come the closest, but there had been no room for growth there once she reached the rank of Beta, and her ambitions were higher than being second best.
Though there was no other way to free herself, Jinx still hesitated to rip free from the tree. She regarded Tyrande carefully as the Epsilon told her tale. At one point, she interrupted: “Isn't nightshade toxic?” A toxicologist could be incredibly useful alongside the witch of the mountain. As of yet, the Alpha bitch was completely unaware of her husband's ties to the ash-marked female, so it seemed a wholly logical thing to reply with, “You should meet with my mate, Lecter. He is an accomplished shaman and could teach you much about plants and poisons alike. It would do us well to have someone skilled in antidotes and poisons.”
She knew only a few poisons, and employed them very rarely. White oak was her favourite. Though it wasn't a strict poison in the sense of the word, it nevertheless caused wounds to fester... When chewed, but not swallowed, it made even the weakest wolf's bite potent and fearsome.
Tyrande perked up her ears, answering the question. "Several types of them are, yes, but some them are actually edible... She grinned "My brother gave me the name himself actually, saying that my 'Pretty looks hide venomous intellect".
Her smile faltered when her alpha mentioned Lecter. "The shaman, eh? I should probably tell you that I've already become, ah, acquainted with him... He was the one who 'accepted' me into Swiftcurrent Creek." She tried to hide the slight annoyance in her voice, not wanting to offend her alpha or her mate...
“Excellent,” Jinx replied, tugging against the tree that still held her fast and wincing again. “Then you should have no qualms learning from him.” Though Tyrande placed emphasis on some words, Jinx wasn't smart enough to cotton on to the wolf's dislike for Lecter. Even if she had noticed it, it wasn't likely the Alpha would care all too much. She had met precious few wolves who liked the shaman, but most of them begrudgingly respected him, and that was enough for her.
“I think I'm done courting this tree,” she announced, flipping her ears back as the anxiety of the coming pain flooded her. “What would you say is the best method of pulling away? Counting to three? Having you bowl me over unexpectedly?” Normally, the warrior female would never have opened up hitting her as an option to any wolf, but somehow she suspected she would have a hard time doing this herself.
She chuckled. "Quite a way with words."
She examined the situation. "I could do that, yeah, but I always think that doing things like this on your own helps build a tolerance for pain, which can help in the long run. Up to you though. I you want me to knock you over, I can try."
Thanks for the thread!
A tolerance for pain? Jinx often forgot that her fur was plush enough to cover her scars, or else she would have scoffed. She scarcely needed a tolerance, having already built it up over her years of training with her family and then with Swiftcurrent Creek. It was an intolerance for self-inflicted pain that Jinx had, and she wasn't about to begin ripping open her own flesh to build up her tolerance. Being a wolf, her primary concern was her own well-being.
“That's okay,” she huffed, abruptly changing her mind when a moment of confidence swept over her. To allow Tyrande to charge into her would, as oft happened with wolves, most certainly place doubts in the black female's head about her qualifications to lead, and Jinx would have none of that. Bracing herself, the Alpha female flexed her toes, silently counted to two, and then shoved herself away from the tree as hard as she dared... Uttering a hiss of pain as her fur tore out and left a raw spot on the side of her neck.
“Son of a bitch,” the Alpha swore, pacing away from the tree and grinding her teeth together as the initial shock wore off.
“Thank you for your advice, Tyrande. I... Think I am going to go see Lecter now and have this taken care of.” Without waiting for a response, the peeved, pained bitch began to lope away, favouring the side she hadn't just torn a fistful of her fur out of. The resin-covered stick was forgotten.