In the raptor’s sleep he kept dreaming that someone was tugging at his back paw to get him to wake up, though he suspected it was Gale or Whimsy …or both. Typical of most teenage boys the raptor didn’t wake up early ever and if he was forced too for whatever reason he was usually dead to the world until about early to mid-afternoon. As it was, there was nothing tugging at his back paw, his den was horrendously devoid of any creature except himself (making it a tad bit lonely) and he kicked out in his restless sleep, pressing against the earthen wall that which in his dreams had taken the form of one of his slate grey colored sisters. “Stop it Whims,” He muttered out loud, “I don’t want to get up.” He mumbled against his paw, a small amount of drool lazily falling out of his half open mouth, the cool splash of the sticky substance enough to jerk him awake out of his light sleep. His head rose quickly, glimpsing around him, disoriented for a few moments until he realized he was all alone and Whimsy had just been a figment of his conscious actually missing her. “Gross,” The raptor muttered, wiping his muzzle clean of his sleep drool on his paw, though if his gross had been because of the drool of missing Whimsy (and Gale) he really didn’t know.

He peeked out of the mouth of the den which he slept near because he could hear the sounds of life coming from Peregrine and Hawkeye’s den &mash; of to which he denned near too at his uncle’s insistence. It was a soothing sound to the pre-teen who had been used to denning with multiples of his family at any given time and apparently wasn’t handling the lack of presence all too well. The sun was not at it’s peak in the sky, so it was still about mid morning. He almost decided to get a few more hours of shut eye before he remembered his promise to Peregrine — that he would pull his fair share of weight — and forced his body to slide out into the sun kissed morning a large yawn overtaking him as he braved the world outside of his den before mid-afternoon. He snuffled once, stretched, leaned his head back to scratch at his ear before he sniffed around a copse of trees looking for a place to relieve himself of bodily wastes. He flung clumps of dirt over it and then rose his leg to urinate on the nearest tree trunk and then focused on the things he could be doing.

As it was, he was eager to get to work on the Outrider trade, or apprenticeship in his case but wasn’t sure if Peregrine would want him going out on long trips without asking permission first, and it probably was a good idea to hang around territories close to the Plateau until he learned them a bit better. He shuffled through the nearest cache consumed a rabbit from it — figuring he would refill it a little later when he was more focused because he was definitely in his ‘dead to the world’ stage currently. He began to make his way through the territory his goal being the borders figuring a patrol was useful and would help to wake him up.

If Grimlock had been prowling loudly, he hadn’t realized it — though how he managed to avoid slamming head first into a tree trunk was miracle enough because he really wasn’t paying much attention to anything around him being zombie-like — and kept marching on in that lumbering, ‘still-way-too-sleepy-for-this-crap’ way that he had perfected over the past couple of months. As it was he paused at the nearest tree, inspected the rough bark and scratched his back on it, having had the curse of morning ‘itchies’ as the twins had called his need to scratch. At first, they had shrieked that he had fleas, but that wasn’t the case. Just because someone got a little ‘itch’ didn’t automatically mean they had fleas — which he didn’t as his mother had, had a mini heart attack and inspected his fur all over, very forcefully. The chuff sent his way caused the raptor to freeze momentarily, looking around himself, perplexed until his eyes fell upon an ebony creature in the distance. At first glance he thought maybe she was Hawkeye, his aunt through marriage, but then realized that she smelled different than Hawkeye and upon closer inspection, looked different, too.

There were too many dark colored wolves around the Plateau for Grimlock’s tastes who though had a few dark marking on him had otherwise taken after March Owl’s percentage of the genetics, of which the raptor was thankful for. There were too many dark colored wolves in their family period, with the random oddball here and there, like himself. Irises that flitted between light blue and light green inspected her for a moment, attempting to put a name to a face but coming up utterly empty handed. So, he didn’t know her, that was pretty obvious. “Mornin’?” Grimlock yawned mid-word and then offered her a sheepish smile once it passed. “I’m Grimlock DiSarinno,” Yep, another one. “Welll technically there should probably be a ‘Redleaf’ in there somewhere,” He added, as an afterthought but for some reason he had never included it when introducing himself. “But uh you can call me Grim, or Lock…I pretty much answer to any variation of ’Grimlock’ you can come up with.” As it was, ’Grim’ and ‘Lock’ were the most obvious. He didn’t even bother to add ‘Raptor’ in there because no one called him that anyway, unless he was in trouble and it was tacked on after ‘Grimlock’.

Not sure what else to say or do he just kind of grinned at her boyishly, his smile still laced with the laziness that accompanied waking up.

Grimlock’s eyes closed for a few seconds as he scratched his back on the rough bark of the tree, enjoying the scrape of it against his skin and the tug and pull at his fur; besides being a sufficient back scratcher it was also useful for pulling any loose fur out so it didn’t clump unsightly. Grimlock was hardly what anyone would consider prim and prissy but it wasn’t a crime for him to care about his outward appearance. It would be one of the things that would serve to help him find a mate someday, if his dashing personality wasn’t enough, that was. Not that he was anywhere near being old enough to think about having a mate or any of that gooey, romantic crap but it wasn’t like he didn’t think about it sometimes. Blue Willow’s chuckle reminded him of the fact that he was not alone and his eyes opened as he pushed himself away from the tree, giving his coat a firm shake to dispel any of the loose fur.

She introduced herself as Blue Willow and promptly after her name followed her title: Beta. Peregrine had probably mentioned her at some point but his attention span wasn’t exactly at it’s top condition yet and if conversations seemed to get long he began to get lost (which had probably fortified that Grimlock had made a journey he hadn’t, despite his protests and assurances, exactly been ready to make). For a moment the raptor hesitated unsure if he should submit to her or not and then kind of did this awkward little bow thing that was probably more comical than it was submission. He wasn’t exactly used to strict hierarchies and since most of the Falcons had been family, it hadn’t really been ‘submit to your lord leader child or die’ sort of thing. Except when Tyrannus had taken over and Grimlock could have sworn Tyrannus was going to eat him. “You mean to Sarg?” ‘Sarg’ had been what Grimlock had taken to calling Peregrine in affection derived from the military rank ‘Sergeant’. “I’m his nephew. Son of Sveinx and Marigold, little brother of the pain in the ass twins, Gale and Whimsy.” It was probably way more information that Blue Willow needed but he wanted to clarify just in case she knew of their vast family and wondered deeper. Plus, he just wanted to call Gale and Whimsy ‘pains in the assess’ and be able to get away with it finally. “As you can see I boast the finer traits of our founding Matriarch, March Owl,” Except for the stripe of smoky black on his muzzle and the soot colored curves under his eyes but that was neither here nor there.

They were weird markings but made him unique from the monochrome blandness that Redleaf-DiSarinno’s had sort of made (in his opinion).

The woman — Blue Willow (I almost typed Black Widow, eep my mind is on Avengers LOL) — AKA the Beta chuckled to herself. It was a quiet sound as if she were remembering something that was politely amusing and while Grimlock found it kind of strange he decided not to comment upon it, but mostly this was because he was bordering the fence of being concerned that she was laughing at him and the fact that her lips had twitched at his awkward sort of bow thing that it meant she was well not impressed. Not that he blamed her. He wouldn’t have been impressed with him, either. He was just a gangly hoodlum and his connection to the important people here wouldn’t save his ass from anything. Grimlock understood this so well he expected it to be so. For a moment the raptor simply stared at Blue Willow unable to decide if he thought she was a nice person or not. As it was, his perception skills were rather rusty but the fact that she was …well quiet left him unnerved and he wasn’t sure how to perceive her.

“Yeah,” He responded to her question wondering why she named all of them. They were a big enough family as it was and to go through and list them all tended to make him breathless. Hell, naming just the ones that resided on the Plateau made Grimlock wonder if she had paused to draw in a breath between their names or not. “Don’t worry about it, we’re too big of a family to know us all,” Grimlock shrugged off her apology finding it odd that she had apologized. She wasn’t apart of their family so she didn’t have to know everyone. “So, uhm. I was just heading to the borders to, uh patrol.” Because he didn’t want her to think he was slacking off or anything. He had made a big promise to Peregrine that he intended to keep because he didn’t want to have to haul ass back to Flightless Falcons. Ever, if he could help it.

If Grimlock would have known that she had thought he was sensitive he would have been quick to correct her with a scowl that he wasn’t sensitive. It was just that Grimlock didn’t really know how to deal with wolves outside of his family. Flightless Falcons had more than just Redleaf-DiSarinno’s of course but they made up the majority of it’s ranks and so family was what the raptor was inherently used to dealing with. In a way, it had sort of made the teen socially well…inept. “Oh,” Grimlock let out puffing out his cheeks with air and letting the world spill forth on his exhale. Blue Willow seemed to have stumbled on calling this mystery girl her adopted daughter but caught herself in the middle of ‘daughter’ and switched it to ward. It was a quick moment but not quick enough for it to go unnoticed by Grimlock who pursed his lips tersely, frowned and then shrugged in an ‘eh’ manner. This mystery girl: Amelie and the Beta’s relationship whatever kind it was wasn’t any of the raptor’s business. It was curious and he would have been lying if he said he didn’t want to call her out on it but he wasn’t so rude. Normally.

Besides he was still in ‘Dead To The World’ mode and in said zombie-like mode he wasn’t up for detangling complicated things. The simpler the task, the better.

“Pfffttt,” Grimlock let out the noise without even thinking of it before he bust out laughing at the idea of him missing his family, especially Whimsy and Gale. In truth, he was finding — damn it all — that he did miss the twins (not that anyone was ever going to get him to admit it) but he liked being the tough, rebellious guy. “I don’t miss them.” It was a lie but he said it with such a forceful conviction that he might have believed it himself if he didn’t know better. Blue Willow’s talk of food, as if her words about ‘eating’ was an unknown cue card his stomach let out a loud rumble. “Shit,” He dropped in his head in an exasperated manner that was a resemblance of a human hitting their forehead with their palm. “Food. Only like the most important thing ever and I forgot.” He probably would have even continued on with his patrols if he had not met here and wouldn’t have even realized he was hungry until he began to wake up out of his zombie-like stupor.

The words that ushered forth from Blue Willow’s lips leant the raptor some thing to consider and he did, in turn, consider it. It sounded as if she didn’t believe him which she was well within her rights to do both as an individual and because Grimlock was partially telling the truth. It wasn’t a blatant lie, but it wasn’t the full truth either. There was another angle to it, as well, Grimlock realized. He could miss his immediate family but what was the use in it? He had deigned to go off on his own, ready to experience the world and be apart of it as a grown up; besides that he had family right in the Plateau. So, in essence, how could he miss something he already had here? “Well baby birds can’t stay in the nest forever,” He spoke with a casual, dismissive shrug. Some wolves never left the nest, the raptor supposed, but the raptor had some of the DeMonte wanderlust, merely he channeled it into exploring instead of being flighty with his more permanent locations.

Her eyes seemed to go wide every time he uttered a explicit word and the boy snickered slightly. Not because he was trying to be rude but because it was hilarious to meet an adult who got hot under the collar (not in the carnal way, but as bothered) because he used swear words. He had grown up in a family that was pretty divided between being crass and refined. It just happened that Grimlock took after March Owl — he had made it hard on his parents to reprimand him for it when half of his family let explicit words fly without a regard for the youthful ears that heard them. His gaze followed to where she mentioned to the upheaval of fresh dirt but pursed his lips tersely and shook his head. “Nah, I’ll save it for someone who needs it. I’ll just catch myself something.” He personally didn’t like taking from caches unless it was a dire emergency.

Considering his stomach did not feel like it was eating a hole in itself he did not pin his hunger as being ‘dire’. “Thanks though,” He told her with a small smile, not wanting her to think he didn’t appreciate her helpful direction towards the nearest cache. It would be useful information should he ever decide to aid in filling it.