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+---- Thread: Moonspear there's no one to bother me, except (/showthread.php?tid=66394)
there's no one to bother me, except - Katmai - October 04, 2025
Current or new recruits welcome! But maybe @Cosmo, if you have time & muse?
Katmai had been thrilled to reunite with his uncle cousin Kindle. They'd been keeping up with each other with nightly duets, but it was still good to be able to embrace the other man once more. They'd spent a long while catching up before differing schedules forced them apart. Kindle was headed to bed for the night, while Katmai was just getting up to enjoy the sunlit hours.He was marking the mountain's borders, making note of @Treepie's scent when he ran into it. Each time, his tail wagged as a little thrill shot through him. They were really doing this, apparently. It was what he wanted, but it was just a little frightening, too.
He stopped by a babbling creek to take a long drink — there was, after all, quite a bit more territory to mark.
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Cosmo - October 05, 2025
Cosmo had been going through an active process of learning to be more cautious with his “dog” status around other wolves, so when Kindle had finally reunited with the Katmai he’d heard much about – and of – he gave them space to reconnect.
It was when he was training his nose on his own, practicing differentiating all the different scents he could pick up on from the ground, that he noticed Katmai separated from Kindle, and wow, were they separate in more ways than one, with how dark this wolf’s fur was compared to his… cousin? Brother? What were they again? Some sort of family, which was interesting to Cosmo, considering all of his family looked almost exactly like him. Big, white balls of fluff, maybe with some variations of a slight dusting of tan. Still, similar enough that they were frequently mixed up by humans who couldn’t differentiate by scent.
“Hello!” Cosmo greeted him, trotting up to where he drank at the creek. “I’m Cosmo! I’ve been traveling with Kindle. Katmai, right? I’ve howled with you!”
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Katmai - October 06, 2025
Katmai had gotten a bit of a rundown on The Dog, but he was still shocked when he finally laid eyes on the creature. It was the fluff, mainly. For a moment, the sheer amount of it caused him to overlook how small the other canine was — and then they were face to face, and Katmai marveled at that, too.
The dog's body language was very friendly, but very forward, too. Katmai couldn't help but stiffen, even as his flagging tail gave a friendly wave.
"Yes — hello, Cosmo," he said, instead of, your voice matches your face or, so that is what a dog looks like. He tried to see something of his mother in the dog, but aside from the slightly boxy shape they shared, the two were very little alike. "Welcome to Dawnspear — it is nice to finally meet you face to face."
And he meant it, despite the slight sense of uncanny valley the dog gave him. Giving him a good circle and sniff helped a little. The dog carried a strange smell, but not one that triggered either predatory or defensive instincts in him. It was a very calm, decidedly neutral scent. Familial, when mixed with Kindle's.
"Are you starting to feel like a wolf, yet?" he asked, still not quite sure how to talk to him.
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Cosmo - October 10, 2025
After meeting Kindle and Haedwig, Cosmo was starting to get a feeling for the range of wolf emotion compared to dogs. Kindle was easy enough to read, helping him learn especially the more happy cues of a wolf, which were very familiar to him, if not mellowed out. (He'd learned that his own energy tended to come across as a lot.)
In comparison, Haedwig showed him a more reserved, almost grumpy approach. For some reason, she didn't seem to like him that much, but that was alright. While not becoming afraid of her, Cosmo just learned to keep his distance, doing his best to be polite.
Katmai seemed to be more on the reserved side, but he didn't think there was any grumpyness there. Still, Cosmo practiced what he was attempting to learn, and did his best to dial his own energy back a bit, physically giving him more space as he did so. As the other wolf sniffed him, he couldn't help but sniff back, wagging his tail all the while.
“Oh, yeah!” Cosmo paused, lowering his voice. “Oh, yeah. Sorry, I'm trying not to be so loud! Kindle's been teaching me a whole bunch of things. I caught a turkey! I didn't even know what a turkey was!” He shifted his weight from paw to paw, full of an excited energy from meeting a new friend that just wanted to come out in full on zoomies. “Are you the lead wolf of the team? Or are you and Kindle both lead wolves? I'm still learning about how this works!”
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Katmai - October 16, 2025
Katmai almost wanted to roll his eyes — of course Kindle would speak so highly of someone who seemed to think so highly of him. He loved his uncle cousin, but sometimes Kindle could be a bit overbearing.
Which made the question the dog asked feel a little complex.
"That's alright, Cosmo," he assured the dog, still faintly baffled by the creature. "I don't mind loud if we aren't hunting. Perhaps we will sing together sometime, since we can do more than howl, now."
His tail spun at the thought. In stories, dogs had special skills. Kindle had already claimed that Cosmo's was "pulling things", but Katmai suspected this was some sort of joke. Surely there must be something more clever to the dog. Perhaps it was a magical voice.
"I suppose there isn't a team quite yet," he said to the little animal, moving along from the river to continue on his border-marking with a new friend in town. "Wolves usually live just in families — we call them villages or packs. I hope that we will call ourselves a village, soon. And if we do, I will be the village leader."
But he was uncertain about this, in truth. Kindle and Treepie were older than him, and obviously, so was Alaric. It was one of the things that had made him so hesitant to try and claim Moonspear.
"But that's really up to the rest of the villagers, don't you think?" he said frankly, looking back to Cosmo. "I have to be someone worth following."
Cosmo had come here with Kindle, after all. Perhaps he would rather follow him.
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Cosmo - October 17, 2025
"I'd like to sing sometime! Me and my brothers used to sing when we weren't working!”
As Katmai started to walk along the creek, Cosmo followed with a hop in his step.
“I guess my team was my village, then!” Cosmo said, tilting his head in thought. “Maybe it could be similar? Because, um, oh! Here's how it worked!” Even if he wanted to, Cosmo was powerless to stop the dump of information that was about to spill out of him.
“We worked together to pull a big sled, but you don’t know what a sled is, so a sled helps you carry a lot of things. Like, if you caught a ton of rabbits or something big, you could use the sled to move it long distances!”
“So, you have lead dogs, in the front. That's where I usually was! Lead dogs are usually fast, and they follow the instructions of the musher – that's a human riding the sled – for where to go! But lead dogs also are the first to spot obstacles and stuff, so it's their responsibility to keep everyone safe and avoid danger, and to not get the team lost.” Cosmo briefly became distracted by a passing bird, before continuing.
“Next are swing dogs, which if I wasn't in the lead, that's where I'd be, too. They're right behind the lead, and they're usually like me, where they're normally lead dogs, or they're training to be lead dogs, learning the commands and seeing what the lead dogs do! But also, swing dogs help the team get around corners, y'know, like the name, they swing around ‘em and stuff!”
“And then, if you had a big team, there'd be the team dogs, which is what it sounds like. But ours wasn't big, so next are the wheel dogs. They're right next to the sled, and they're usually big and strong, since they pull the most weight.”
Cosmo stopped to catch his breath, realizing how long he'd been talking without interruption, and suddenly became sheepish. “Um, sorry! I like talking about it, since I'm not in a team anymore, but I promise I had a point!” He sped up to catch up with Katmai before he got too far behind him.
“The point is, well, I was technically a leader, but it wasn't all up to me! The musher told me where to lead everyone, but I couldn't have led everyone without the wheel dogs pulling all that weight, and neither of us could have maneuvered the sled without the swing dogs. And the musher couldn't move the sled at all without the team.”
Noticing he was beginning to get further ahead than Katmai, he stopped, turning his head back to look at him. “So, we can't do what we do without a leader, but everything isn't all on you, either! All of us will have a part in keeping everything moving. And as long as you have a goal to lead us to, big or small, we'll keep moving! Someone that keeps us moving is a good leader, I think!”
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Katmai - October 22, 2025
Here's something strange: Katmai didn't have a strong concept of what a "corner" was. He knew what it meant to be cornered, and he knew that wolves liked to say they came from this corner or that corner of the wilds. But that was just another way to say that one lived out of the way. What a corner was, that could be swung around, was a little less clear to him.
He had seen few enough walls in his lifetime. None of them had been quite so structured as to have a corner.
Katmai found himself confused by much of what Cosmo shared. Musher was a new word as well, and he did not know what one might look like. His idea of a sled was skewed as well, leaving him to imagine humans as much smaller than they were. Something that might ride on a wolf's back as easily as on a sled, the way that his father had told him the water hunters bore their water-sniffing birds in the desert.
But the overarching theme was not lost on him. Though his expression remained slightly slack in his fascination, he gave an agreeable nod by the end.
"Our goals are simple enough," he said, a bright smile on his face. "The same as any animal's, I expect. And you're right, Cosmo — it takes a whole village to be a village. The village chief is not any more important than the rest."
He slowed his pace to sniff at a moss-covered rock. The faint trace of some long-gone traveler reached his nose, and Katmai moved at once to lift his leg on the offending scent.
"I suppose you don't mark borders as much when your home is a sled," he commented, wanting to learn more about the specifics of Cosmo's life. "Or did you keep a territory as well?"
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Cosmo - October 24, 2025
Cosmo watched curiously as Katmai marked their territory. He felt as though he innately understood the concept, but he'd been trained as a pup that humans didn't like it much when you did that in places that weren't outside.
“Well, we weren't supposed to mark the sled itself, or our human would get upset. We had a cabin, but yeah, if it was something a human made, they didn't like it getting marked.” Cosmo paused. “Oh, right! Uh, so, a cabin is a house – oh, it's like, a den that humans live in! I guess the cabin was our territory? But we weren't there a lot, so we didn't really have a habit of marking it like territory. So, this is kinda new to me!”
Cosmo realized he should probably be helping establish their borders, so as they continued, he started to try and sniff out areas that could use attention. “You aren't from here, either, right? What kinda place are you from?”
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Katmai - October 24, 2025
Not marking the sled made plenty of sense to Katmai. He was familiar enough with the concept of a cabin, too — though what he imagined was the "lodge" (as the seal hunters had called them) that he'd spent some of his earliest months in.
"My father was nomadic for many years before I was born," he informed the dog, drawing as many points of connection between their two realities as he could. It was difficult to contextualize the things that the dog told him, but Katmai fancied that he was doing rather well.
They came through a break in the trees, soon enough, and looked out over Silverlight Terrace. Katmai pointed his nose toward the distant, unseen shoreline and the plateau that lay nestled there on the coast.
"I was born a few days' journey in that direction," he said, a sad smile on his face. "In a forest by the sea. I grew up in a village called Moontide, and at that time, the place we are now was called Moonspear. We were sister villages — us, and also Moonglow," he nodded then to Ouroborus Spine, which was much more easily spotted. "The moon wolves are a kind of kin to me, and this is a place of moon wolves. And morning wolves, too — that's me and Kindle."
It did not feel like a foreign place to him. There were not far from the place where he'd been born, and the wolves around him were familiar in ways that he found homey and comforting.
"What are sled teams like?" he asked, ever curious. "They are kin to you?"
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Cosmo - November 02, 2025
Cosmo listened in fascination as he walked alongside Katmai, looking off to where he pointed to try and imagine what his home might have looked like – mixed in with interrupting thoughts of a bunch of wolves living on the actual moon in the sky, which he knew wasn't the case, since he pointed to the ground, and mentioned the sea, which didn't seem like something the moon would have, but he'd never been, so he couldn't say for sure –
“Oh, sorry, you asked something! What did you ask? No, don't tell me, I've got it!” Cosmo paused, squeezing his eyes shut, ears twitching in concentration. Suddenly, he blurted out, “Right! Sled teams! Well, mine were all my brothers, and sometimes we had more, especially if we were teaching someone new, and they weren't related to us.”
Cosmo resumed walking, looking off in the distance as he reminisced on his team. “I'm the smallest of ‘em, but not by a whole lot. We all look pretty similar. There was me and my five brothers, Nova, Comet, Mars, Sol, and Astro. We worked together real well! Even if things went wrong, I always felt safe with them, like everything was gonna be okay, and like we could do anything!” Cosmo paused, feeling a pang in his chest when thinking about them for too long. “I miss ‘em. I hope they're okay.”
All of a sudden, he looked back at Katmai, and his voice was as chipper as ever. “Did you pick the ‘morning wolf’ name, or did someone else? Did you always wake up super early?”
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Katmai - November 05, 2025
A sled team sounded less like a pack to Katmai, and more like a hunting or a roving party. He thought uneasily of the band of older cousins he'd gone out exploring with earlier that year, wondering if Cosmo had also heard the distasteful (but fascinating) discussions that went on in such gatherings.
"I hope you will see them again," he offered, because this was his wish for anyone estranged from their family.
At the question, he let out a little laugh.
"No — well — "
He paused to scratch a strange scent away, momentarily distracted.
"I'm nocturnal, actually," he explained, though in truth, it'd been quite some time since he'd kept to any one schedule. "So morning is when I go to bed. Usually. Morningside is my family name, and it goes back to my great-grandfather, Grayday Morningside — or Grayday Corten, rather. He took his wife's name. But not before founding a pack at Morningside Cuesta. The family has kept the name ever since, though no more Morning wolves live at Morningside Cuesta. Many are wanderers, in fact, and don't live anywhere at all."
He tilted his head at Cosmo.
"Do you have a surname?" he asked.
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Cosmo - November 10, 2025
“Oh, okay. I guess that makes sense – I mean, at a certain point, nighttime is also the morning, right?” Cosmo replied sagely, as if this were a profound thought to have. “Sometimes we'd go to places where it was always night, or always day, so it was hard to tell when you were supposed to be sleepy, and when you should be awake.”
As if forgetting something, Cosmo looked off to the side, tail pausing in its wagging in order to focus, before he suddenly remembered that he'd forgotten to answer Katmai's question. “Oh, right! I don't have a surname, but me and my brothers are all named after things in the sky! My human liked looking at the sky and stars and stuff – oh, have you seen when it's nighttime and there's this weird smudgy wavy thing in the sky?” Despite knowing the origins of his team names, he had no chance of knowing he was talking about the northern lights.
RE: there's no one to bother me, except - Katmai - November 19, 2025
The night and the morning were distinct in his mind. One was a time period and one was an event, in his mind. Even so, Katmai thought that this was a fair enough assessment, though not a very useful one. Still. Food for thought.
"I have seen these things in the Land of Long Nights," he agreed, his tail wagging in recognition. "That is Kindle hails from." A moon wolf in his own right. Or a star wolf, perhaps, since the moon was not always in his dark skies.
He paused then to look up at the sky, contemplative.
"I wonder if they think of us," he said, looking back down at the dog. "We tell stories about them, and we use them to navigate, and we look up and wish upon them at night. I wonder if we are as significant in their lives."
If stars had lives. Katmai thought that they must, even as unknowable as they were. Why else should they be so fascinating to the eyes that lived down below.