Wolf RPG

It was raining lightly that mid-afternoon when Red decided she needed to go exploring again. Her Coyote blood made her restless, and the urge to move was a constant. She still had no memory of her life before the Teekon Wilds, but that didn’t matter so much to her anymore. All she knew now was that, so far, she was enjoying her life here more than she had previously thought possible. Slowly, she was becoming braver and more likely to step up to a wolf, rather than running from them. This was a good thing. She was building up her courage to join a pack, and she already had a feeling she knew which pack to choose. Kodokuna had been kind to her, as well as the alpha male. They had fed her, and she felt tied to them somehow. Maybe she was just being dramatic, but she didn’t care. She knew she needed to find a pack to live in one way or the other. Why not choose the pack with wolves you already knew, and who had been nice to you? That seemed like a smarter option than traipsing all over the place waiting to stumble on more packs that might not be so friendly.

She was thinking about all of this as she made her way to her destination. She had seen Mount Apikuni from a distance and decided that morning that she needed to conquer it. She would be the greatest explorer ever, which would later come in handy when she pursued the Outrider Trade. The muscle she was gaining in her legs was traveling to her shoulders as well, so that now she was still small, but also lithe and strong - like a jungle cat, only not.

As she approached the mountain, she noticed that only one-half of it seemed to be thriving. The other half, the northern face, was a dark canvas of sheer rock that looked broken. And small, hardly noticeable pokes of green were coming up from the soil. Something odd had happened on this side that hadn’t happened to the rest of the mountain. It had been years since the landslide and fire, so the clues leftover were few and far between. There was no ash to cue Red to the forest fire, and the rocks and boulders from the landslide had long ago been swallowed by the earth where they’d settled at the bottom of the mountain. Now it looked as though Apikuni had always been this weirdly deformed formation sprouting from the ground.

But the coywolf who stood at its base knew something had happened, and with a determined air began the trek up to the darkest part of the northern face, where the tiny saplings of trees were beginning to grow back after months of nothing but ash.

Red was only a few feet up the side of the mountain when suddenly her trek was interrupted by a howl. It sounded close by, which frightened her at first, until she realized that it was only Kodokuna - the chimera wolf who had caught her a fish the other day. She turned to look downwards and wagged her tail happily as she saw her friend begin the hike up to meet her. She barked a greeting and began picking her way carefully down to meet her. As she approached her friend, the coywolf smelled the faint tinge of deer on her pelt, and her mouth watered automatically. She looked around for the culprit of the smell but didn’t see any deer nearby.

Red leaned in toward Kodo and attempted to sniff at her questioningly, to say, “You smell like deer. Where is it?”

Red listened as Kodokuna told her that the buck had gone east. She tried searching for the creature with her eyes, but he must have disappeared around the side of the mountain, for she did not see him now. She supposed she was lucky she wasn’t hungry, or the mention of a big, juicy deer would probably have driven her crazy. She had hunted a few times before getting here, so she was fine now. Though she could hear the longing in her friend’s voice. She was about to suggest they go hunt the creature down, but then she saw Kodo sniffing the ground all around her.

“Why were you going up the mountain?” her friend asked. “It’s dangerous.”

The coywolf barked excitedly, wagging her tail. She bounded up a few feet above her friend, and then looked down at her, gesturing with her head to the rest of the mountain. That was her way of saying, “I wanted to explore! I’m excited! Come with me!” She took a few more steps upwards, and then stopped and waited to see if Kodo would follow. She wanted adventure! She wanted a story to tell later. She hoped her new friend would come, because all great adventurers need good friends at their side.

“Do you know where you want to go?”

The question instilled in Red a sense of proper adventure. Suddenly, she felt her paws had wings, and that she was destined to use them to explore the entirety of the Teekon Wilds. She needed to. Her Coyote blood called her to explore — to learn — to be courageous! And she felt the instinct to follow that calling.

She raced past her friend and charged ahead up the mountain, towards the heart of the area that had new growth. She barked excitedly over her shoulder, ears forward, tail wagging, body wriggling. It meant, “I want to go everywhere! Anywhere the wind takes me! Follow me!” She put her nose to the ground to pick up on any interesting scents here, but all she smelled was new growth, soil, and - faintly - death.

Something tragic had happened on this mountain long ago. She looked back at Kodo and whined, pawing at the ground to ask, “Will you help me solve this mystery? Something happened here.” She looked around the mountain, and back at Kodo: “Can’t you feel it in the air?”

Red’s ears flattened against her head in worry when Kodo mentioned the mountain possibly being haunted. If that was the case, she would not want to stick around after dark. She didn’t want ghost wolves pushing her off the mountain for disturbing their slumber (though how the coywolf knew what ghosts were is a mystery). Still, the call of this mountain and its past were too strong to ignore. If need be, she — and Kodo, if she wanted — could simply return the next day to finish her exploration.

She began sniffing around, and looking at the formation of the mountain. This side, with its dark, almost burnt-looking scar caused her to pause… It [did] look like sort of like a big burn mark, [didn’t] it? And all the new growth… So there had been a fire here. She turned and told Kodo of her discovery through a series of whines and barks.

Then she turned once more and looked at the upper portion of the mountain. Something else seemed off about this place, though. Why did the mountain look as though it was only half-formed? There were jagged edges all over the place in places where there should have been smooth ground. What was that about? She looked to Kodo with wide, inquisitive eyes that said, “Can you figure this out?”

Red could have kicked herself for taking her friend’s jest so seriously. She really should have known better, and felt her ears go back in embarrassment. She soon forgot about her embarrassment, however, as Kodo studied the mountain to try and figure out why it looked so odd.

Eventually, the chimera said, “The rocks. They must have fallen, crushing the mountain.”

At first, this made no sense to Red. How could simple rocks crush a mountain? That would be the same as a flea crushing a wolf. But… maybe Kodo was on to something. The coywolf turned to face the mountain again, and climbed upwards a little more. She studied the formations, trying to discern where the odd lines in the mountain started. They seemed to begin about halfway up its side, so she squinted to get a better look around that area.

She turned and looked down at the ground. It seemed… lumpy, somewhat. Like something big had been buried under a mound of dirt. Quickly, she slipped and skidded down to investigate, woofing over her shoulder for Kodo to look, too.

And finally, it clicked. There had been a landslide. Of course! That would explain why this side of the mountain looked so odd! She excitedly told Kodo of her finding through excited barking and tail-wagging. “Why hadn’t we seen this sooner?” she asked, laughing at herself.

Red was just beginning to feel that it was time to leave. She felt they had done enough exploring for today. However, Kodo seemed to have other plans. She padded softly over to a spot not but a few feet away, and began pawing at the ground and sniffing all around that area. She looked up at Red, waiting for her to come over.

The coywolf tilted her head out of curiosity. What had Kodo found? As she approached the object just barely sticking up out of the blackened earth, she saw that it was an off-white color. Her curiosity would not be sated, she knew, until she dug it up, so she immediately set to work. As it turns out, it didn’t take long at all to get to the object.

It was a skull. A wolf skull. Red yelped when she finally realized what she was looking at. She crouched low to the ground, her ears splayed flat on her head. “How awful!” her body language said. She looked up at Kodo, backing away down the mountain carefully. She barked. It was a high, sharp sound full of urgency. It meant, “Come! We must tell Ferdie!”

With that, she turned and carefully picked her way down the mountain to its base, and headed off southward, back towards Sunspire.