This takes place in Ankyra Sound. Nereides desired but all welcome!
It turned out that establishing a claim was arduously time-consuming work. It involved round-the-clock patrols and hours upon hours marking the territory and defending it from curious visitors. Junior stayed busy as the Nereides attempted to solidify their stake and make their presence known at the sound. Not to mention that she was trying to immerse herself in their lifestyle and learn all she could about the sisterhood. It left Junior with very little opportunity to go out and explore or do much of anything else, yet she was too preoccupied building her new life to notice much.
When she found herself with some free time on her hands for the first time in nearly two weeks, Junior blanked on what to do. She roamed the shore a while, breathing in the bracing, salty air. For the first time in her life, there was a bite to the wind. She sensed winter, even if she had yet to experience it for herself. Junior found she enjoyed the crisp breeze that tousled her sea salt-crusted nape and sank into the marrow of her bones. The summer sun had been brutal at times, the air thick with humidity. She would welcome winter and its cooler, drier and possibly forbidding climate.
Ankyra Sound, for the most part, was unexplored by the wastrel -- and today, of all days, she had elected to pursue familiarizing herself with every niche and corner it had to offer.
For the most part, the sound was replete with things all bays and salt-water corridors were endowed with; brine, marsh, raucous callings of birds. The occasional sideways scuttle of some disturbed and irate crab. Even the occasional flotsam expelled from the heaving spume held little anomaly or interest to the dark-helmeted poltroon. But the sound did have something no other sound did - her 'kin' -- and somewhat reluctantly, she set out to meet them.
She had already met the scarce few that habituated the sound -- and while she knew most from passing glance and could scry a name to a face, by and large the small populace was foreign to her. She was slightly allayed then when she saw Junior pace the shoreline -- in a way, Caiaphas was relieved of her investigating -- and with a stringy trot she set out towards the dark youth. She noted that the female seemed to be testing the wind -- wind of which Caiaphas was most unhappy to admit had a sharpness to it she remembered all too clearly. With a sigh to announce she was close, she stepped towards her -- an almost rueful smile besieging her muzzle.
"Fancy seeing you here." She ventured slyly, as if the cards had been flipped and it was not Junior who had led her here but someone else. She was not sure how the youth would take her advancement -- or if she would even appreciate the dry humor behind it -- and complacently, the girl stared somewhat dully at the brisk and choppy sea until Junior replied.
Much as she enjoyed the chilly breeze, Junior could not bring herself to jump into the water when the thought crossed her mind. Rather, she paced closer to the surf and let it rush over her toes. She shuddered at the thought of letting this cold water wash over her warm shoulders. She would content herself with walking in the shallows. Already, her feet felt partially frozen.
A voice caused Junior to turn sharply, her eyes narrowing when they clapped upon the familiar figure of Caiaphas. Her lips pressed together and she deliberated over a rejoinder as she stared mistrustfully at the other she-wolf. It was her own fault Caiaphas was here; she could be considered Junior's first successful recruit. Junior couldn't decide whether or not she was disappointed that the Sisters had decided to let her stay.
"What do you want?" she asked morosely after a long pause. She didn't have to feign the apathetic indifference in her voice.
Out of the corner of her eyes she watched Junior wade the biting water -- much like the dark furred female, Caiaphas had no interest in letting the algid water overtake her -- and unlike Junior. Caiaphas was not brave enough to sacrifice the comfort of her toes in the froth-frought shallows.
Junior wheeled quite quickly, and Caiaphas' eyes fell full upon her, though there remained no sense of challenge or cheekiness in her gaze. Sulkily she noticed the cutting apathy in her words. Hyperborean in the same manner as the grey spume. She shifted, gaze adverting.
"Do you not want company?"
She saw Caiaphas's face fall, which surprised her. The other she-wolf had struck her as impish and uncaring, yet it appeared Junior's words had actually affected her. The youth's brow furrowed uncertainly, her tongue slipping out to run lightly over her salty lips as she considered her comrade's sulky question.
"Not particularly," she answered coolly. It was the truth too and not some fib manufactured to hurt her pack mate's feelings. "But it looks like I don't have a choice," she added, swinging her weight around to face Caiaphas directly. She shrewdly eyed the other wolf. She was as unique-looking as she was unpredictable and impossible to read.
Slyly, the coywolf watched, breath half abaited to see if her charade had worked. Junior's resolve seemed to slightly dissipate -- and while she answered quite coldly, she had not given Caiaphas an outright dismissal. Her tone seemed even, and Caiaphas wondered for a moment if she was sincere in her admittance.
Junior then pivoted to face her, and Caiaphas stifled the urge to stiffen, though her slender muzzle straightened slightly as she studiously watched the female in a somewhat suspicious manner.
"We all have choices. Well, I guess not if you're a consort." She added with an unruly giggle, her wicked little eyes focused on the frigid strand. "What have you been up to?" As unbalanced as she was, she was genuine in her question -- and admittedly, did not mind the company of the younger wolf.
Caiaphas's astute quip was met with a quiet blink. Without being aware of it, Junior chewed on her lower lip. Part of her balked at the Nereides' treatment of males while another rejoiced in the sense of superiority. She had been a bully as a pup and was still rather domineering by nature. She still needed to figure out how to carve her niche within that dynamic, however.
"Marking, patrolling and exploring," Junior answered flatly. "Trying to find my footing in the pack," she admitted. "Why? What have you been up to?" she questioned in a subtly querulous tone.
The shrewd creature watched Junior as she responded, perhaps inadvertently, to Caiaphas' digging comment -- a reaction that was in itself quite revealing. Caiaphas, true to her restive self, instantly latched onto that quiet struggle -- her eyes hard and sharp as she assessed the dark wolf. She often did things like this -- read the inadvertent body language of her peers so she could best figure out how to disarm them and make them feel like she was a comrade and not an outcast.
"Oh, much the same as you. Traveling, exploring." She answered airily, though she leaned closer as she devised how to calculatingly place her deliberate charge. "I have to say, it takes some getting used to." She frowned, diligent to charade she was playing -- and the way she knit her brow was quite convincing.
"I just keep forgetting that males aren't our equals.. Why, the other day Atlas followed me to these islands to protect me! It was so... strange." She finished with a fretful expression, though inwardly the devious coywolf wondered if Junior would take the bait.
Caiaphas claimed to have been doing much of the same, though she mentioned travelling and Junior couldn't resist the urge to counter, "I haven't traveled at all. I've barely left the sound since we got here. There's too much to do." There was both an accusation and a touch of jealousy in her tone. Junior hadn't felt like an Outrider in a while, nor a Warrior, and those were supposed to be her callings.
You'll be an Amazon in time, she reminded herself, then shifted her weight and flicked an ear in response to the other female's observations about the pack's gender-based dichotomy. She sensed something false about Caiaphas's demeanor, though she didn't intuit a trap or anything of that sort. After all, they were only talking, much as Junior didn't really feel like conversing with the unpredictable hybrid.
"Yeah, he follows me too. None of them seem to mind the dynamic. The consorts, I mean. If they did, they would leave, right?" the youth said, giving voice to a thought that had been floating through her head. "I mean, why do they stay here and put up with it? If it was the other way around, I could never let anybody treat me that way."
The female grew silent as Junior proffered a quick and repudiating reply. Her rawboned muzzle drew back in a silent frown, her gaze falling somewhere ambiguous and purposeless.
It occurred to her that their age, as close as it was, provided the two of them with a sense of competition. Even if she were to engage in the sense of contention, it was painfully aware to her that she lacked the loyalty and solicitude that Junior had. She smiled in reply, and said nothing.
The conversation switched back to the consorts, and this was an exchange in which the flippant coywolf felt comfortable partaking in. "Nah." She said, her tone without malice. "They stay here because they know of no other way. This makes them either stupid or complacent." Though, in her opinion, the two traits were often parallel and if one was demonstrated, it was likely the other was too.
"Me neither. But that's because I'm smarter." She said dismissively -- a statement that to some was debatable.
Junior looked sharply at Caiaphas when she responded, her look calculating. Was that true? Did they simply not know better? She looked away just as sharply, her mismatched eyes focusing on the foamy, churning surf. She'd sort of convinced herself that they liked it, much as she couldn't wrap her mind around that. But if they just didn't know any better... Junior felt a little disturbed by this possibility.
"Does that mean they're brainwashed?" she asked quietly, gaze still cast out to sea. She knew from experience that the Nereides were powerfully persuasive.
As Junior stared out to see Caiaphas wondered to, what their obliging nature made them. Clay? Spineless males, eunichs - jellyfish without ambition or clause? She shrugged her shoulders indifferently - what they were or if they were brainwashed meant little to her.
"No, I don't think so. They are capable of thoughts, and capable of drawing up their own actions. They just choose not to." Unlike Junior, Caiaphas did not worry about the males not knowing better -- it did not bother her at all. They were fed and housed and treated, for the most part, decently.
As far as Caiaphas thought, it could be worse.
Junior didn't look at Caiaphas this time, though she absorbed her response and turned it over in her head even as she continued staring out at the ocean. Why would anyone choose the life of a consort? Junior supposed it took all kinds to make up a wolfish society, yet she'd never come across this dynamic anywhere else in her nearly six months.
"There's still a lot to do," Junior said somewhat abruptly, turning to face Caiaphas without really looking at her. "I'm going to do some more marking and patrolling." Perhaps it would've been the sisterly thing to do to invite her pack mate along, yet Junior extended no such offer. She dipped her slender black muzzle to the other she-wolf, then trotted away from the seaside with a decidedly pensive expression writ into her youthful features.
thank you for the thread, kat :) if you are ever bored........ and want to write... hit me up!!
The youth's reluctance to look at Caiaphas directly, coupled with the sudden change of topic, made the female suspicious. She said nothing to placate the sudden tension she felt -- and no sooner had her tongue wrought forth small and un-uttered words did the dark youth spin on her heels and trot off down the sound.
Somewhat offput by this (and highly offended one would elect to quit her lovely company) Caiaphas rolled her shoulders and threw back her head in a gurgling howl -- a howl which struck clearly a note of possession -- and eagerly she flicked an ear to hear the rejoin of any nearby packmates before she too trotted down the strand after Junior, her head bent to tend to scents and mark here and there the stamp of the Nereides.