Though it had been much easier than she initially thought it would be -- in fact, she had been recruited rather than having to do much searching herself -- Envy was finally a part of a pack that had no remnants of her abandoned family. This would be a fair place to start and make a home for herself, she supposed, but it was an ill-conceived plan in the end. She was an enduring type, except the things that she had to endure were products of her own malformed creation.
An antagonist mostly, it would come to little surprise that all fights she had ever been in where her own fault. She had not even yet lived enough life to know true strife, and if licking her wounds clean were the extent of her troubles, then she was presently willing to engage at almost all times. It showed now, even in the simple way she explored Ouroboros Spine.
The lowly ranked wolf traipsed around as if it were her scent that marred the borders; her steps were impertinently confident, with her stubby tail struck high and her nose was pressed low as she took in what smells there were to know about her new home. The day was getting late with a slow-falling sun, and she had only covered about half of what there was to see. But Envy had the reserves of energy to finish her indirect searching through the night if that was what it took.
Ouroboros Spine was a quiet place, Lotan had found; and for that reason, he was spending more and more time outside of its borders. He was well on his way to acquiring the official title of outrider, and each trip brought him closer to that goal. But, though he enjoyed letting his paws freely roam the wilds, he knew that it was important he tend to the pack and its territory, as well. He was in the midst of stocking a cache with a plump hare that he had caught earlier in the day, when motion in his periphery caught his attention.
The Epsilon looked up, his gaze settling on a very petite she-wolf. At first glance, she appeared to be perfectly ordinary -- a tawny pelt, crisscrossed with agouti patterning, much like his own. But he quickly noticed her shortened tail and the missing tip of her ear, and his curiosity was piqued. "You new here?" he called out, swiping a mound of dirt over top of the hole he had dug and straightening.
Chipped ear turned in the direction of the male's voice, quickly followed by her sharp head. The girl's body turned about fully and she bounded over with similar enthusiasm to a horse just finding its legs. Coming to a curt, graceful stop before him -- which had at first seemed impossible by the way she was coming -- Envy tipped her head up as her tail wriggled slowly back and forth. "Brand spankin'," she assured him confidently. "Just got me a fresh coat of Cara all over -- check me out," she goaded, lifting her right foreleg as if to expose her armpit to him. But without the genuine expectation that he would sniff her there, she quickly put her leg back down after the inclination was made.
"I'm Envy, by the way. What you got goin' on here?" she fired off rapidly (if only because she was nervous), and she took a claw to his freshly covered hole and unearthed the rabbit buried there. "That's weasel business you're doin' here -- holdin' off on the pack like that. Tsk, tsk." In her family pack they didn't have caches; they were all too dumb to think like that and they just devoured and moved around as much as they could, probably losing more wolves than they had to in the process.
Envy simply wasn't familiar with the concept of preserving food sources. She was merely used to getting what she could, when she could. The dead rabbit at her feet served to remind her of her hunger as well, but she was also been raised in a system where hierarchy was tantamount to almost anything else. She wasn't so uncouth to take it without asking. "So... you're not gonna eat that?" was her way of asking.
The girl turned and rapidly began to make her way towards him, speaking almost as quickly as she moved. Her words and actions were animated and enthusiastic, which pleasantly surprised him. The other packmates he knew tended to be a bit more reserved, like Sitri and Cara. He couldn't help but allow his tail to wave amiably as she introduced herself and then questioned what he was doing with the cache.
"Nice to meet you, Envy. I'm Lotan," he said, tilting his head quizzically at her. She seemed to be genuinely confused as to why he had covered up the food, so he answered honestly and without any sarcasm. "I'm saving it for later," he replied, then added, "There are other holes around the territory where food is stored, and then any Spine wolf can dig it up and eat it when they're hungry." He wondered what sort of background she came from, to not have experience with meat storage, but didn't ask -- he didn't want to seem rude.
He didn't have to wonder with a wolf like Envy. She was an open book, always ready to talk about every facet of the subject at hand until it is entirely explored. She didn't often need to prove this, but it had been surreptitiously done before. And she did it automatically; because though she herself came off very one-sided, she often showed a keen sense for detecting underlying questions (without the ability to ignore them) and a certain emotional intellect, though she didn't always share such deep sentiment.
"Oh we eat everything we get our paws on back home -- no savin' up there -- a real every wolf for itself type deal, you know? But like, only if your talkin' small grabs like this," she gestured abnormally close to rabbit, longingly... suggestively; she pulled her foot back. "Pack kills we ate by rank -- you lot do that too.. or not?" She blinked up at the copper-eyed male curiously, stub tail twitching back and forth like a curious rabbit. (Word to the deceased.)
She didn't hesitate to reply, and he found that he liked her method of speaking. Her words came quickly, and she was frank and honest. "Gotcha," he replied readily, finding that, although it sounded as though her family followed a different set of rules, he could understand why they would go ahead and eat the food rather than saving it. Either way, the pack was left with full bellies.
Lotan nodded his head in response to her next query. "Yeah, Alphas first and then the next highest ranked wolf and so on," he agreed; Cara and Kaname had been first to eat after the pack hunt, and since Lotan's position was near the top of the subordinate ranks, he had been given the privilege to sate his hunger not long after them.
His gaze shifted to her shortened tail, and he couldn't help but indulge a bit of word vomit and ask, rather bluntly, "What happened to her tail?" It seemed that with her open and outgoing personality, she would be unabashed when responding to such a presumptuous question.
"A carnivorous deer," she answered immediately. This was her favorite lie to tell about her tail, among other ones that starred being maimed by rabbits, being hung by her tail by eagles, having it trampled off by a herd of moose, etc. "He got a hold of me just as I was gettin' a hold on him." But because this was her pack, Envy didn't feel inclined to keep the lie going for more than its introduction; though she could easily go on with a lie for forever if she so wished.
"I'm kidding, Lo -- can I call you Lo? Lotan's too much mouth work --" she asked him, like her mouth wasn't running a million miles an hour already; "but seriously, you ever heard of a bear trap? My pops told me that's what it was, but all I know is that I sat down one time and SNAP! This dead thing, harder and colder than a rock had teeth and my tail was caught in its jaws. I couldn't get away, so... I had to chew my own tail off, for god's sake!"
She rarely told the truth about her tail, if only because she found the truth particularly boring. What was cool about sitting down one day and having to chew through your own tail? "I kept it as a souvenir for a while, but it got all old and stinky so I had to bury it back home." She blinked at him and smiled cheekily. "Needless to say, I always watch where I put my butt now."
She paused, with a small breath and then: "You wanna know the truth about my ear too, or a fun story? I got both!"
Edit 4/16: I'm going to wrap this one up because I'm pulling Lotan out of the game. :)
His brows raised in surprise at her initial response -- a carnivorous deer?
Really? Did that even exist? She did such a convincing job of telling her story that he did believe her for a moment or two, at least until she admitted that she was kidding. Almost without taking a breath, she asked if she could shorten his name and then plunged ahead with the real story. Lotan only had time to offer a nod in response to being called "Lo," and then he became riveted with her tale -- about her tail.
"Holy crap," he replied when she was finished. He had never encountered a bear trap himself, but it sounded vicious -- especially if it was powerful enough to clamp down relentlessly on a wolf's tail. He couldn't imagine having to chew off his own appendage, and decided that Envy had more gumption than he did; although he supposed that adrenaline could do strange things.
He shifted his gaze to her ear, which had also incurred some damage in her short lifetime, and nodded before settling back onto his haunches.
"Yeah, tell me about your ear, too -- funny story first," he prompted, preparing himself for another onslaught of words.
... A short while later, Envy had regaled Lotan with a variety of entertaining stories. By the end of their conversation, he was comfortable enough to call her a friend, and they parted with shouts to hang out again soon.