Wolf RPG

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merrick was consumed by boredom.
ursus' stability had been won by a great many fights. it seemed the skirmishes were endless, yet donovan still roamed free, and easthollow prevailed.
a mind, then, to depart ursus and hunt down for the head the ones who had wronged them. he scrambled to his feet and dashed into the forest with its carpet of soft chestnut needles, now rotting beneath the autumn's offering of scattered leaves. merrick need not call for @Astara; the corvid's scent was wrapped near and far in every part of the valley by now.
he inched along the path her silken pads had laid, etching up each mark like a demented stitch-remover, and when he found the raven queen, the boy king crowed his delight and pounced at her.
astara heard the rook's crow before she saw him. bent over a morel (how the sight of it brought the memory of phoebe to the surface), the blackbird turned a slim ear behind her before she pivoted in place with forelimbs extended in a crude playbow.

she met her rook with a light buffet of her head, disentangling herself from his limbs to sniff curiously along the musk of his pelt. he bore proudly the heavy scent of ursus - of their children, of the pines and the valley, of the very stones which fortified their home.
merrick purred against the feral scent of her, the way it caught in the back of his throat and burned him to a thousand pieces. she had all of him, every part enviable and not. he too inspected each guard hair and proud hillock of shoulder beneath the featherblack coat.
all his; all hers; the both of them had broken bread and lain as one and shed blood together time and again. merrick could think of no bond that would be more tightly knit than their own, and he lay his muzzle over her shoulders for a brief lingering moment of near-complete peace.
they were more than killbrother and sister now.

they had labored under each other's bodies, and produced fruit for the bear. a pair of gorgeous, feral cubs that possessed both of their parents' hunger. astara could not glance upon either without thinking of her bear -- the rook which had her life and heart entire.

she closed her eyes against merrick, breathing in that shortly lived tranquility.

these days, peace was rare -- and ursus had many enemies.
many enemies but none within ursus. they had been purged.
merrick gathered her close with a playful nip, danced in the fallen leaves with some prances of his long legs, and then turned his muzzle not toward easthollow but in a northerly direction.
arbiter and her legion.
ursus was well-protected and well-cached. those who would threaten them stood high and many, and yet he wished for a raid upon them, to redefine a tenuous boundary and reinforce that merrick had grown so powerful.
astara admired the fine view of her rook and his slender legs, of the way he stirred the autumn leaves. when his pointed muzzle turned first to easthollow, her heart hardened -- but when he pointedly looked several degrees past their enemy's gates, astara tilted her head to the side in confusion.

she did not know of legion, and so, could not parse from his silent language his intentions -- but she understood her rook enough to know he was attempting to convey something of great importance.
"there, over there," merrick breathed, "is a pack led by someone i knew. she — she has to go." like laurel. like any reminder of the place indra had abandoned him, and sickeningly the boy recalled that the hollow was not far away from ursus — not enough to justify how she had left him.
"plus, we haven't been on a hunt in a long time," lover in his remaining eye as merrick came to kiss the curve of one ear.
a pack outside of their borders. another enemy gate to fell.

astara thought of easthollow. of how they persisted, in spite of all ursus did to claw survival right out from their throats.

she'd been cooped up in the bear's valley for months now. her children were near their adult height, gradually turning from infantile to delicately trained mercenaries. a hunt sounded like a lovely thing.

she tilted her ear into the heat of merrick's breath, a smile unfurling from her dark muzzle. let us hunt.
merrick knew truly that she would accept the wildblood ways of his whirlwind heart —
did not the same beat in her own chest?
for a moment he felt as if they must take others with them; he cursed the notion, for it had only arisen during his time in leadership;
spare, and spare, and turn away — he licked her shoulder and directed them both toward the borders, in the direction of the fox-glade and beyond.
if ever there were kindred spirits that roamed this earth, astara liked to believe she had found hers in merrick.

that was about as romantic a notion as the blackbird would ever have -- the rest of her heart was occupied by horrific and unsettling things.

she set in a lope after her rook, towards the fox glade where their claim opened up into bare meadow. the grass here was fragile and cut down by the cold -- astara walked for a time along the goldenwheat foxtails, inhaling deep for any scent of their future quarry.
here were barren scents of legion. merrick was willing to be distracted from his crusade by an easier kill rather than the simple search for weaknesses their journey might terminate. but they were two against the wolves arbiter had gathered for herself.
on a whim, the bearwitch nipped primly at her shoulder and then dashed off in an arch that carried him toward a stand of silverpine and tall birch. from there he might urge them both closer to their hunting grounds;
or perhaps he would allow his head to be turned by the jetblack pull of his lover's lithe flanks, the all-seeing glint of her indigo stare.
along the threadbare snow the duo prowled. astara's eyes turned eastward towards easthollow. just stones and ghosts there now, she thought smugly.

another testament to their dominion of the wilds.

unprovoked, merrick's teeth grazed her flank. astara spun around after him with a throaty growl. any visions of a hunt transferred to a different kind of hunt: she loped after her rook, teeth glinting between a wide and playfully hungry grin.