Wolf RPG

Even with moonlight unobscured in the night sky, very little light actually penetrated the depths of the overgrown wood. Still, Mordecai moved through the winding paths out of muscle memory. Partially curious as to whether or not he would encounter the seaside siren he had met once before, and partially to lurk in the shadows. The air could have been accurately described as frosty and a creature with more vivid imagination than the Ostrega would have thought the fog was curling around him to ensnare him and hold him still.

But such wasn't the case, at least not tonight. Mordecai found the easiest route back towards the Spine through the dense wood was to take the paths that they had taken when they had left the mountain. Somewhere overheard, in the distance, its peak would have glittered with fresh snow at its tip. Below on varied terra firma, the snow didn't grace them yet. It had frosted a few times, of that he was certain, but the temperatures fluctuated between extremes depending on the time of day. Quick to heat, quick to cool. This wasn't his first seasonal roll in a climate different from Sedona, but it was more extreme there, he thought.

His pace slowed as he worked his way through a mess of tangled and rotting wood, but something gave him pause. Ears stood sharp and instinctively he curled his tail skyward. The territory wasn't his, no, but the urge to defend a land that formerly been an extension of their claim came naturally. In the end, it turned out to be nothing at all, just something in the shadows that had either gone to rest or moved on. But he watched the dense wood all the same, as though the shadows would morph. Perhaps the loa Lecter had spoken of existed strongly in that wood, but Mordecai had no real concept of them now.

ooc: aww... thank you! :)

It happened rarely that Osprey stayed out of the plateau during the night. No matter, how long her wanderings during the day were, she always returned home by the end of the day. However, this time her hike had been longer than usual, she had fallen asleep and, when she awoke, she realized that Sister Night had caught up with her. It was totally dark, except for some rays of moonlight, which had managed to break through the thick canopy of leaves.

Osprey got to her feet, stretched and looked around, trying to plan her next move. She had no sense of direction and therefore had no idea of where the plateau was, which also meant that she was totally lost and would probably have to spend the rest of the night here. She sat down, lifted her head and sniffed the air, while her ears tried to catch the slightest sound that would indicate any danger. All seemed calm for a while, when suddenly she caught the sound of distant footfalls.

She froze on the spot and barely breathed, her mind racing. Then an idea sprang to her mind, she took time to calm down and then spoke in a level voice: "Beware, for you are about to meet the most dangerous being of this forest."

When nothing morphed out of the dark, dense wood, Mordecai began to move on. But he didn't get too much further before a voice spoke out from those depths. He bristled instinctively, ears falling flat against the curve of his head as he picked clean through the wood. He found her shape etched against distinct foliage, though it really obscured her as well. He couldn't tell what exactly he had found other than the fact it was canine; his instinct slid into the notion of survival.

Letting his lips pull back from his teeth, he wordlessly warned her over her choice of words, and did not move to come closer. Nor did he back down either, even if she was really the most dangerous thing of the forest he was going to encounter, there was a particular headstrong trait in all Ostregas. “You may want to choose your next words carefully then,” he spoke, but gently. Maybe she was simply a mythic being conjured up by forces unknown, but those beings were things Mordecai did not have a grasp of knowing. If they existed, anyway.

Damn it, Osprey, now you did it! A tiny accusing voice spoke in her head, making the grey she-wolf ashamed and a little afraid for her sudden choice of the words. Why was it so hard sometimes to find the distinction between the real world and the imagination land, where this phrase, spoken aloud, worked really well to fend off fear and enemies. Why couldn't the real life beings play along and at least try to feel intimidated and not provoked? None of these musings actually gave her answer to the more pressing matter - what was she going to do now? Because had she thought a little more before opening her mouth and speaking aloud, very daringly so to say, she wouldn't find herself in the trouble she was in now.

"Very well, careful they will be," she said, moving a little out of her hiding spot to have a better look at the one person, who she was speaking to. Looking in the eye of the potential enemy was one way of finding out, what awaited her in near future. "Who are you and where are you heading?" she asked, scolding herself again for the choice of words.

What emerged from the cover of the shadows was not a wolf of a darker persuasion. She was a rather silvery sylph, if not for the dark cloak that settled at her shoulders. Beyond that he couldn't tell much about her, but he didn't need much more than that. Her earthy gaze suggested that she was as curious about him as he was of her, but it was primarily masked beneath the terseness of their words.

“Shouldn't you introduce yourself first?” For all he knew, she was not so much as sylph as she were a rogue. Perhaps not a very good rogue though, as she could have followed him to find where he was heading. “You are the one who stopped me, after all. I know these lands aren't yours.” But then again, he could have been vastly wrong on that front too. A lot had changed since his arrival in the wilds. To what extent they had, well, he wasn't really very privy to it. The Spine kept them quartered off and tucked away from the world, and perhaps that was for the better.

ooc: I am so sorry for delay.

While the stranger spoke, Osprey used her time to examine him from head to toes and gain as much information about him as possible. It was hard to tell anything about his coat color or his facial features in the dark, therefore, even though her instinct didn't yell at her to run for her life, she still kept her distance and felt a little wary of the big wolf. Had it been a female, she would have been a bit more confident.

He was quick to toss the ball at her side of the field and after a brief moment of confusion, which flickered in her eyes, she yawned and then cracked a cheeky grin. "I am the hag of the forest," she explained to him - her voice didn't waver a second, she was sure of what she was speaking, even if it was not true. "So, while the land bears no scent of a pack - it belongs to me from the roots of the trees to the highest branches, which reach to the sky," she said smiling. "Therefore I ask you again - who are you and where are you going?"

Hag of the forest? Mordecai tried to feign interest, but to say it wasn't piqued by that line would have been a straight up lie. Still, he stay closed to the notion that it was for show. There was simply no way she could lay claim to the entire forest, especially if she didn't have a place to call a home of her own. One wolf did not make a pack, and maybe it was safe to say that the notion of a hag was lost on him entirely. Though he had his smarts, Mordecai was not entirely absent of his father's density over literal meaning.

“Why should I tell you? Are you looking for a home, another place to be the hag of?” His words came across to him harsher than he meant, but the evasiveness felt just as warranted. Mordecai had witnessed his fair share of questionable mental states, and one of those questionable mental states just happened to be trying to lead in the Spine. Though in Kaname's case, Mordecai hadn't seen him talking with himself for quite a long time, but the memory resurfaced in passing with the mystery hag of the dense wood.

ooc: the same is so true about me.

"Have you come to get rid of me?" Osprey asked, genuinely curious and a little bit amused at the same time. The seriousness of the situation hadn't changed one bit, yet she cracked a grin, because it was getting ridiculous. Rather than getting straight to the necessary introductions, she was prolonging a one-sided game. The stranger here, probably had begun to doubt her mental state and Osprey didn't blame him for that. Had she been in his positions, she would have done the same.

"All right, you had me pinned right from the beginning," Osprey metaphorically took off the pointed hat, the black cloak and put her broomstick aside. "I do not live here, in fact, I live quite a distance away and got lost here. Name's Osprey - what about you? The big bad wolf, I presume?" she added with a hint of good humor.

Her guise seemed to crack when she smiled, and the beat of silence that proceeded her revealing who she really was seemed fitting. Mordecai eased considerably as she explained that she was no hag of the wood, but in fact just lost. He huffed, amused, shaking his head at his own temperament of being gruff with her. It had been par for course when it came to a fair bunch of the females he had encountered in the Wilds; they all seemed to have some playful exuberance beneath whatever persona they wanted to adopt. It was amusing, and one he often played with himself in their company.

So to her question, he smiled wanly. “Naturally,” because in some regard, he probably could have made a decent big bad wolf. “I'm Mordecai, and I live near here. But I'm not coming through to get rid of you at least.” He hoped in a small way that she would take that as his reasoning for being less than polite towards her, though it didn't seemed she fussed over his initial responses.

"Mordecai - the big bad wolf himself - what a pleasure," Osprey briefly returned to her playful hag-self and dipped her head to show respect, when actually it was hard to keep back laughter. However, her gaze still held a bit of wariness of the stranger and she was ready to fight or flee, in case everything suddenly turned out badly. "That's nice to know," she acknowledge the fact that he had no intention of harming her with a sigh of relief.

"So... where is near here?" she asked, casting her glance at some point behind Mordecai's shoulders, as if expecting that this "term" would show itself, because she had asked. His scent was foreign and she was quite sure that she had never met a wolf with this particular scent before.

When she visible relaxed, he found the same point of cadence to follow. Most times it probably wasn't worth the stress of being on edge, but he found that it came far too easy now than it had in days past. Perhaps a homage to all the things that they had endured in the Spine, where the tensions continued to run high. In a way, he hated that it had become his go-to feeling. It should have been a warning sign, but it had yet to turn out that way for him, however unknowingly that was.

“Through the forest behind you a ways. Once you've worked your way through most of this… overgrown forest, there's a nice little valley that we laid claim to.” The end of his statement seemed a bit pointed, but he couldn't avoid the mention. The Spine was claimed, and strongly so by its inhabitants. Inhabitants, which for the most part he knew didn't enjoy visitors all that much. “What about you? You don't live here, do you?” His curiosity budded at the thought that perhaps she was on her own. Who knew how long she had been kicking around in this forest?

ooc: as I agreed with you in your last post - I too go from having massive amounts of time for roleplaying to none at all. So don't worry - a good thread is always worth to enjoy for a long time. :)

"Ahaa..." Osprey replied, picking up the underlying meaning of the last word. The fellow was protective of his land - which was a good thing - but unlike other strangers she had met here, he didn't put forth the invitation to visit. Some did this right after the introductions. Most of the time they were very proud of their home and wanted to share the glory with strangers (and show off too). Mordecai didn't, which could mean that he didn't care, what others thought of his lands. A proud one, eh?

"Well... I considered this, but came to a conclusion that this place is too big for me," she let her gaze travel around the surrounding landscape. The forest was nice and offered a lot of opportunities, but... this didn't feel like a home for her. Being too big was one thing. The other - she had this uncomfortable feeling that this place didn't welcome her. Had she known that a pack had lived here once, she would have thought about the "echoes of the past", who didn't want their peace and sorrow for the better times disturbed by strangers.

"I live on the opposite size - you cross wast plains and find another forest. Can't miss it, because there are quite a lot of us there," someone with a "skilled nose" could tell their location by a long distance. "So... do you believe in ghosts?"

It seemed like she had somewhere that she belonged, which by all accounts he was fine with. Though Mordecai couldn't help but look for ready and able recruits to the Spine, he accepted that there were many wolves who had already found their place for the oncoming winter. Some of them he knew would be long term residents of the Wilds, though how long was beyond him. It was a thought that did not have to occur to him as a realization; it simple was. No place he had been had truly been devoid of history.


While the exact details of where she had come from eluded him, he could garnish from her talk that it was far enough away not to be a direct threat to the survival of the Spine. Somewhere beyond the flatlands, across the vast and flat plains to where the earth turned marshy in places due to the river boundary. Too far to be in his purview, it was discarded in favor of her query. “Ghosts? Do you mean like the loa?” The words left his tongue before he could catch them, though he did not direct answer her question. Mordecai, for the most part, was undecided about the existence of the supernatural. It seemed unlikely, but he never outruled the possibility that they could exist.

Lecter and Jinx had certainly believed in them, anyway.

"I have no idea, what loa is, but tell me if you know," Osprey told Mordecai. The way he had spoken out this word told that there was more knowledge to that than it initally appeared. "What I meant were spirits, lost souls, howling ghouls in the dead of the night..." at that moment a fox howled in the distance and it's voice sounded as if someone was skinning it alive. If you had missed the very basics in the survival school's sound lessons, then you could easily believe that this - in fact - was some malicious supernatural being.

"Like that one, but more horrible," she smiled and shrugged. "And then there are the big, dark growling ghosts with eyes so bright that they can blind your sight. Ever heard of them?" the more she spoke, the more excited she grew. Her eyes were alight and her tail was moving in quick swipes.

When it came to the supernatural, Mordecai had never been accosted by them. He had no idea what to make of them, had no real point on a compass as to say whether or not they did or did not exist. But he was open about the idea, because after all, just because he couldn't see it didn't mean that someone else couldn't. Yet in truth the only wolves he had ever encountered that claimed to see spirits from another realm beyond their own had been less than stable. The bits and pieces of the loa that Lecter had explained to him had made much more sense than ethereal beings haunting vistas.

As the chilling call of the fox rang out through the thick forest, Mordecai tried to decipher it's call. It was hard to say if it had come out of pain or just to make sound; for all he knew, it could have been the call of a mother summoning her young. Foxes, for what few he had seen scattered in the Wilds, were elusive in spite of ther vibrant, bright pelts. His experiences with them overall were far and few between, and probably for good reason. Letting Osprey finish her talk of otherworldly beings, Mordecai allowed his attention to settle back on her sterling face.

“I can't say that I have heard of those,” he said, rolling his shoulders in a shrug. “I've never encountered ghosts, to be honest. But to answer your question, the loa are the little ghosts, or beings, that live in everything. Or are supposed to live in everything. I don't know much about them either, I was told by another of them.” He left out that Lecter had a religion of sorts that surrounded them too, because he really didn't know anything of what the shaman had done. For all intensive purposes, Mordecai was not a very pious believer.

From what Mordecai told her, these "loas" actually sounded like very nice creatures. In some ways it reminded her the Nomad pack she had met during her one last journey few months ago. They believed that anything living had a soul - from a little plant to the prey they hunted - therefore, whenever you did harm or had to take the life, you always had to pay your respect first. It had seemed odd to Osprey, who came from a background that didn't care much for complicated things, but it had made sense over time. The very idea that a tree - for example - could see, hear and feel the same way she did - was exciting. Magical even.

"Sounds great - did the one, who told you about loas, told you something else too? I mean - related to these little spirits?" she had a knack of sensing an opportunity to hear a good story and this already sounded very promising.

As his luck would have it, she desired to know about the loa. Mordecai could not help but falter momentarily, not entirely sure how to put it that he unfortunately didn't know anything much beyond that. Lecter had only explained the gist to him, and only then did he wish that he had learned more from the often bloodied shaman. Perhaps if things had gone differently, Mordecai could have even learned more of them from Jinx. But alas, the past was well into the past now, and not even he could summon talk from the dead.

“Just that there were good ones and bad ones, in a sense. I really don't know very much about them at all, the wolf who spoke of them… he passed away.” Growing quiet at the end of his statement, he hoped his lack of enthusiasm would steer them elsewhere. The details of Lecter's death had not escaped him, though he hadn't chosen to pay his respects with the majority of the pack. “We never really had the chance to speak about them at length.” Offering Osprey a faint smile, he rolled his furry shoulders in a shrug.

"Oh... I am sorry," Osprey apologized, when she saw, how her request had upset Mordecai. This was not the first time, when her thirst for knowledge had unknowingly trespassed the territory, which contained deeply personal stuff. It sounded as if the person, who had known everything about these spirits and probably beyond them too, had been important in her companion's life and that this person's death hadn't been an easy thing to handle. She knew from experience, how badly it hurt, if someone you knew, passed away.

"That's a common mistake we make with people we have around us - we believe them to live forever and when they don't... it sucks," she sympathized with Mordecai. "My mom died early this year and even now I have so many questions I could have asked her, but didn't and now that knowledge is gone forever," sometimes she wished that she could speak with March Owl or Aether, hear their voices or at least feel their presence. It was easy to make up a story about the loved ones, who always watched over you, but it was a lot harder to make you believe that.

When it came to death, Mordecai found he was largely indifferent about it. It was an inevitably, as stated so often and at length by his mother. He knew there would come a time when all who lived in that present moment would cease to exist. For some of them, it would be today, tomorrow, or somewhere down the road. The interesting part in it was that they would never know exactly when, unless of course they were the ones taking matters into their own hands. Lecter had known he was going to die. That was something which had become common knowledge to Mordecai the longer he had known him. The way he spoke. The way others spoke.

It didn't mean that it hadn't affected him any less, but it was just as safe to say that the rebound period for Mordecai was not as long as it would have been for others. He had yet to lose something in such a way that would make his heart ache at length; even then, who knew how long he would really mourn anything of that accord. “I have a feeling that's how it always goes,” he answered, a bit more upbeat than previously. Mirthful, even. “Same with questions you feel you should have asked before a lengthy period when you don't see someone either, like a parent or a sibling.” Even now, he found he had existing questions that he wished he could have asked some of the living.

Mordecai turned out to be experienced in the terms of losing someone and his reasoning was very reasonable. If Osprey had begun their conversation as means to smooth out their rather odd way of meeting each other here, that now she began to really enjoy his company and his knowledge about various subjects. The saying "never judge someone from appearance" proved true once again and she was now quite glad that they had decided to stop and talk, before walking off and probably never meeting each other again.

"In my former pack we had one very old pack-mate and when I was little and while I was a yearling I sincerely believed that he was somehow immortal. Because everyone I asked couldn't remember, when he had joined the ranks - he had simply always been there," she shared a bit of her history. "I have played with the idea of immortality - what do you think of it? Would you - given a choice - want to be immortal?" she asked.

“He sounded like a rather dedicated individual,” Mordecai murmured as she spoke of the old wolf. He was able to understand her reasoning, that feeling that someone who had always been there was in fact, immortal. In a way, he supposed he may have felt that way about his parents, though logically he knew there would also come a day when neither of them ceased to exist in the living sense. Just as there would one day be a time when he too, no longer ceased to breathe and walk across the earth.

But when it came to immortality, he had to pause for a moment to raise his own thoughts about it. It was a tempting thing, if it were to very be an offer. But there were obvious pros and cons to it, and from there it seemed as though one could almost go on limitless before reaching a juncture that would have been a thorough decision process. “I don't know, to be honest. I don't really think about death at all, though I suppose it is an inevitability. Do you think life would be easier if we were immortal? Sometimes the life we have now is difficult, and if it were to always be difficult, I can't say that I'd want to be immortal.” He shrugged his shoulders then, not entirely sure he wanted to delve into every philosophical point.

“Would you want immortality?”

"All of the difficulties make us cherish the moments, when we have been happy and content," Osprey mused out loud, trying to imagine herself being an immortal being. Living with the knowledge that you would continue to exist before and after several lifetimes of others. What would it be like to be 1000 years old? Depressing? Interesting? Boring? With all the life experience one could get in those years - would she view her life differently? It was hard to tell. Yet one idea did occur to her right at the moment, when Mordecai tossed the question back at her.

"I think it would make life kind of pointless," she admitted. "I mean - knowing that we will all die at some point in life... gives motivation to do more, enjoy thoroughly every single moment of the present time," she said, eyeing her companion with the corner of her eyes. "I want to leave a mark on this world before I die. Do something important. Don't you think that's the whole point of death? Realizing, how very precious is the time that we have got?"

Her summary was swift and poignant, true to the fact that she had indeed put thought into this immortality business. He had not, and suddenly found himself thinking of all the things that could have been, or could be, with such power. It did not tempt him either because she brought up a very good point, one that he nodded with agreeably. Life would lose that meaning, those special moments that made it worthwhile when things were bad would have absolutely little to no meaning whatsoever. And that sounded like a very boring, miserable existence, to have seen everything once and be condemned to repeat it endlessly.

Yet it was another avenue of her speech that opened up curiosity for Mordecai, who left her questions wordlessly answered in his agreement. “I reckon life is precious, though I suppose death could be an inspiration to do more. What kind of a mark are you wanting to leave on the world?” He had not gone out into the world searching to leave his own mark. He had not gone out there to find a place to found his own legacies or lack thereof. Mordecai had simply gone out into the world to see what it had to offer, and now it had effectively trapped him in there, in this little patch of wilderness. He hadn't wanted to settle down, not so readily, but the hand he had been dealt decided to be played another way.

"Well... as a little kid I had a dream of saving the world," Osprey said with a smile, remembering her childish-self, who so solemnly believed that it was a task anyone could do. "But then I grew up and found out... that the world keeps going without me interfering. In other words - it does not need saving," she went on, adding a little chuckle to the statement. The realization of this had come gradually to her - it hadn't been like a "cold hard truth" that had crashed on her head one day.

"So... then I found out that I love to hear good stories just as much as making them myself," some people explored the world, Osprey explored the vast land of imagination, always finding something new, never having enough, never reaching the end of it. "Therefore - my quest is to make the world a better place... with stories," she side-glanced at Mordecai.

"I know it sounds silly and childish, but sometimes a good story does a lot to lift up one's mood. I like to think that stories are like stars - warm, twinkling, pleasant to have around," somehow she had got deep in the personal matters. "And if I can give such a star - on of a kind - to that person and make them happy - isn't it worth the effort? Every happy moment counts, after all."

As she talked, Mordecai found himself taking a liking to her very easily. There was simply something about her that warmed his spirits, and he considered that to be quite a good thing. It was a feeling he hoped would begin to stir anew as things slowly pieced themselves back together at the Spine, provided that they didn't go skirting off the rails any where in the near future.

Still, the premise of a storyteller certainly had its benefits. It was a morale booster for those who were willing to sit and listen, which was something that Mordecai had always been good for. As if to punctuate such, he found himself reclining to his haunches, the weariness of standing still seeping into him. A break would be nice, and perfect for the questions that bubbled forth to his salmon-colored tongue.

“What's your favorite story, then?” He had agreed with her wholeheartedly through her opinion, and now prompted her for one of those stories. Mordecai could not miss the desire of wanting a good story in his glided gaze, but it also went with the enjoyment of the company he found himself in. Yes, he too was glad that their meeting had taken a turn for the better after all.