Wolf RPG

The family was wholly focused on Wildfire, and rightfully so.  Raven felt no resentment toward her recovering sister over it; in fact, she was grateful for the lack of attention on herself, as it allowed her to have the space she needed to work through the trauma of what she'd seen and experienced.  She didn't have much appetite or interest in anything right now, and there was a dark, haunted cast in her golden eyes.  She felt sick and cold inside -- more than anything, empty -- except when her father came around.  When he was near, she would either cling to her mother or slink away altogether and avoid him completely.  She couldn't look at him.  Over and over again, the scene repeated itself in her head...

Her father standing over the mangled, bloodied corpse of his own daughter -- her sister, if only for a few fleeting seconds -- with her severed head held aloft in his gore-stained jaws.  She saw the grisly strings of meat and pulp hanging, the white of the bone protruding from the broken body.  She had been black, just like Raven.  She looked like me.

Raven had been dozing in the sun outside the entrance to the badger den where the family was staying temporarily when her father's scent, strong on the summer breeze, sent a lance of some cold and unpleasant emotion running through her.  Quickly she sat up, aware that he was returning from some errand.  Before he could see her, she stole away into a nearby copse of trees, found a little stream, and followed it down a sparsely-wooded hill.  Paying no attention to how far she wandered or where she went, she walked by herself for a while and enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine that filtered down through the leafy treetops and the fragrance of flowers that hung in the air.  

The recent events had startled Pantaleimon, too. Pan had not been there when it all unfolded, had luckily not even seen the corpse, but her stomach twirled when she thought of what had occurred. What would Reek say, were he ever to find out? Surely he would be angry and he would try to drag Pan away from the Caldera even more. And what about the things he had said; the question he had posed towards Pan? He wanted her to leave the Caldera... And Perry.

While she aimlessly wandered, Pantaleimon saw a dark figure in the distance. Upon approach it turned out to be one of Fox and Peregrine's children. "Hey," Pantaleimon called out softly from a distance, not wanting to startle the child with a sudden approach. The large white male halted and waited for Raven to see her. Pan wasn't very good at handling children nor traumatic experiences, but she would do her best in case Raven needed comforting about Wildfire's injury.

As she walked, her eyes followed the movement of her paws.  Jet-black and shiny, perfect little toes each with a tiny claw poking out at the end.  She watched how the joints moved, how the soft, subtle muscles beneath her fur shifted...and found herself wondering what her toes looked like on the inside.  She'd seen the inside of someone's head.  The red, dripping strings of flesh that hung out...did she have those inside her feet?  If someone were to tear her paws open, would she see glints of white bone peeking out from beneath the gore?

As if to extinguish the macabre thoughts that ran rampant through her mind, she plunged her toes into the tiny stream she followed, splashing and kicking water with each step.  Sunlight glittered on each cascading droplet and for a moment, she imagined they were stars.  It almost brought a smile to her face.  

She caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the water that trickled around her ankles and she stared for a long moment.  The face that looked back at her was much older...was it her in the future?  But the eyes were wrong.  Her parents had told her that her eyes were yellow.  The eyes that gazed back at her were blue like the afternoon sky.  There was something familiar about it...she almost felt as if she'd seen that face before.  She blinked, though, and the image was gone.  She stood there, confused, until a soft voice broke the silence and she looked up to see Pantaleimon standing nearby.

Although she didn't know Pan all that well, she liked him.  There was something about his quiet, sensitive personality that Raven was drawn to, so when she saw that it was Pan who had greeted her, Raven smiled and wagged her tail.  "Hi! she called back, resuming her splashing in the brook.

It was good to see Raven splashing about in the water; any day of happiness was good when such terrible things happened in the life of a child. Pantaleimon smiled momentarily when the child called back to her, and she trotted down towards the water. She wasn't sure what was best to do; ask the child how she was doing, or just play along with thing being all happy and not mention at all that things might not be alright.

"Can I splash too?" Pantaleimon asked Raven, one ear perking forward. Pan waited at the edge of the brook, not going in before she got permission from Raven. It wasn't much, perhaps, but it would hopefully help make Raven feel the slightest bit better, if only for a little bit.

For the briefest moment, Raven looked at Pan's pretty white face and wondered if his head would look the same as Junior's did if it were disconnected from his body and tossed on the ground.  The only physical manifestation of this gruesome thought was a fleeting look of confusion on her face, but it was quickly replaced by a smile when Pan asked if he could come play too.  Beneath all the ugliness that oozed like black tar inside of her, she was still a child.  Splashing and games were still enough to make her forget what was bothering her, if only for a time.

"Sure! she exclaimed, and quickly leaped toward Pan and splashed water at him before he could even join her.

Pantaleimon noticed the fleeting look of confusion on Raven's face, but couldn't fathom what could be bothering her. Playing with and chatting with female puppies was a new experience for Pantaleimon anyway, for he had mostly tended to the Consorts back home. Female puppies had, at most, given her dirty looks or told her to do stuff for them. Beside her own sisters, there had only been one or two female pups who'd liked Pan, and even then, she'd had to be formal with them and not let herself get too comfortable.

Her train of thoughts was interrupted by a splash of water. "Blurgh!" Pan blurted out when water was splashed in her face, and she closed her eyes a moment to avoid the water splashing in her eyes.

Pantaleimon wasn't very good at games where she would try to or pretend to try to catch puppies, so instead of doing so, she just splashed around in the water. Pan tried to get close enough to Raven so that she could splash her back, although she only tried to splash little tiny droplets towards Raven, barely enough to get her wet. Playing with female puppies that did not give commands remained a strange and new experience that Pan gingerly explored.

She was delighted when Pan joined her, and she frolicked and shimmied in his gentle splashing.  For several moments, everything seemed so...normal.  It felt good to play and laugh and get dirty again, the latter of which was something Raven had always been especially fond of doing.  She loved being dirty and muddy and wet.  She vigorously splashed back at Pan several times, getting his legs thoroughly wet.  In spite of how tiny the stream was, there was plenty of water to toss around!

After a few moments of this, Raven sat down, plopping her little butt right in the trickling water.  She looked up at Pan and asked abruptly, "Wanna know a secret?

Pantaleimon enjoyed splashing about, too, and forgetting about all the fickle situations that surrounded her life right now. Splashing about with Raven, although they had rarely spent time one-on-one at all, seemed so nice. It reminded Pan of how she used to splash around with her sisters, and suddenly she missed Psykhe and Sao -- or rather, their puppy selves, not the Sirens they grew into while Pan remained a lowly Consort -- and playing around with them in the salty water and the tidepools of Sirensong Cove.

The stream of thoughts was interupted by Raven, who stopped the splashing and sat down in the stream. When asked if she wanted to know a secret, Pantaleimon smiled softly. She wasn't a particularly curious creature when it came to other wolves' secrets, but she could not help but feel flattered to have a pup's secret offered to her like that. "Only if you want to share it," said Pantaleimon, an open smile on her face while she looked at Raven. Though Raven seemed willing to share to get it off her chest, Pan only wanted her to share it if she was absolutely sure that she wanted to tell the secret to Pan.

The cool water felt good as it trickled around her flanks.  Though it was only a couple inches deep, Raven had managed to get thoroughly soaked in the few moments they had spent splashing about.  She looked a little comical and crazy, with spikes of black fur sticking out in every direction.  Pan replied somewhat ambiguously, inviting Raven to share her secret only if she wanted to.  A strangely haunted mixture of emotions came over her face -- some combination of horror, morbid fascination, and childlike innocence -- as she looked up at Pan and said in a hushed voice, "That girl that hurt Wifi...I saw inside her head..."  Almost involuntarily, the little blackbird's right paw came up as if to touch her head.  It hung there in midair as she continued, almost trancelike, "Dud said that was my sisser."

Pantaleimon's ears perked forward towards the comical portrait of soaked Raven, but the expression on her face was serious and gentle. She watched as Raven's face was wrought into emotion, and she wondered what sort of horrible secret it could be. Pantaleimon's heart sank to her paws when Raven said that she saw inside the head of the girl that had attacked Wildfire. Why had they torn her apart in front of the pups? It almost made Pantaleimon angry when she thought of it. The next words did not help: why on earth would Peregrine, after tearing her apart in front of her, tell Raven that the wolf was her sister?

With a worried frown on her face, Pantaleimon curtly nudged the bridge of Raven's nose before withdrawing again and looking at Raven's face. Pan wasn't sure what to say; what could she say? Pan had never been a wordsmith. "She... she w-was a bad wolf, Raven. I... I'm sorry you had to see that, though, you shouldn't have had to see the inside of - of anyone's head." Pantaleimon's face was wrought in apology, even though she had nothing to actually apologise for; but someone had to be apologetic for what had happened to Raven, and her heart went out to the darkest of Peregrine's children.

Despite Pan's understandable shortage of comforting words, Raven found an odd sort of solace in the simple act of sharing her experience with him.  She still couldn't figure out how she really felt about everything that had happened.  She felt revulsion, horror, indifference, and fascination all at the same time, and it all came together in a very confusing state of inner turmoil for her.  One thing stood out above everything else, though, and it was possibly the biggest reason why she could barely stand to be anywhere near her father:  

If he could do that to one of his other children, could he do that to her too?

This thought ran through Raven's mind several times, and her face was troubled as she considered it.  She looked at Pan again and asked, "Will...will I be bad too?"  Her logic was still very innocent and childlike, and reasoning didn't work the same way for her that it did for an older, more matured wolf.  "I look jus' like her...maybe we're the same..."

Pantaleimon wished she could offer better comfort to the pup. When Raven asked if she would be bad, Pan did not understand at first. With a confused frown on her face, she asked, with hesitance in her voice, "Uhm... Why would you be bad?" But soon the answer presented itself, when Raven explained she looked just like her half-sister and that maybe she was the same because of that.

A sympathetic frown creased Pantaleimon's face while she quickly shook her head, searching for the right words to explain to Raven that she was completely wrong. "What? No... No, that's not how it works at all." Pan wished she was a bit closer to the pups, so that she would feel more comfortable, and they would too, talking about something difficult like this. "Your color's the same, but it - it doesn't make you like her. Y-your father's black too, right? And he's great, isn't he..?" Pan hoped Raven looked up to her father enough to realise that she was a lot alike him too, and that he wouldn't do anything bad either. She sincerely hoped Raven wouldn't bring up the fact her dad had brought Junior into the pack in the first place, but that was just a mistake, not bad intent.

Raven listened, motionless and intent, as Pan spoke.  What the white wolf said should have calmed her heart and made her feel better, but it really didn't.  Junior had been black, and she'd attempted to rip her sister's head off.  Y-your father's black too, right? And he's great, isn't he..?"  Pan asked.  Yes, Dud was black...and he had ripped her sister's (Junior's) head off.  Was she gonna rip off someone's head too?  

She didn't know how to voice these thoughts, though, and truthfully she was kind of ashamed of them.  She didn't want anyone else to think she was like that.  She didn't want anyone to judge her or be afraid of her.  So she shrugged in response to Pan's last question and mumbled a soft, uncertain, "Yeah..." and turned her attention back to the water in which she sat.  She swirled her paw in the shallow, trickling stream and, in an obvious effort to change the subject, asked, "Wanna sp'ash s'more?"

Raven did not look that convinced, although Pantaleimon imagined she had to be worried about Wildfire as well as confused about this whole ordeal. Pan smiled awkwardly while she told Raven: "Want to know my secret?" She didn't really think it would do much to calm Raven's spirits -- hoped it would offer some distraction, perhaps -- and maybe part of her secret-sharing came from more selfish origins than Pan wanted to believe. She just really wanted to tell someone. "When I was young, uhm... I always felt like I was more of a girl, until I found out that I was actually a boy. A lot of the time, I still k-kinda feel like I should've been a girl." As soon as she had shared it, Pan felt kind of dumb; not only did Raven have very difficult things to occupy her mind with, would she even understood what Pan was trying to tell her? Pan added hastily, "But it's a secret, no one knows that I wish I was a girl." While she didn't literally ask Raven not to tell on her, Pantaleimon hoped that her intent was clear, that she didn't want her to tell anyone. Especially not Perry.

The subject had been changed from the one Raven did not want to discuss any more, but now it was Pan's turn to turn away from hers. After a moment of silence, she suggested: "Let's splash some more." And awkwardly put one of her front paws down into the water to create a tiny splash.