Blacktail Deer Plateau The hunger games

Correct me if I'm wrong but pups can be left unsupervised at a rendezvous site because it's huge and stuff. :D I'm powerplaying "a wolf" dropping food there for them.

It had been only one day since the cubs had been let loose in the enormous rendezvous site Peregrine had picked for them, and already Saēna had found her own personal hiding place. It was within a hollowed out log, and she was just small enough to fit comfortably into it. That was where the young mottled pup was now, curled up and peering out of the end of the log at her litter mates and cousins across the clearing.

Although she was still very young and didn't know the concept of size particularly well, she was somewhat confident that they couldn't reach her in here. It was a double edged sword, for while they couldn't reach her, Saēna also couldn't reach the juicy piece of deer haunch that was suddenly dropped by an adult at the edge of the clearing. Her eyes widened and her little tummy growled, and she squirmed forward in the log, but her eyes instinctively darted left and right, searching for the oppressive Osprey Jr.

When the coast seemed clear, the smallest pup made a break for it, dashing across the clearing toward the still-warm meat as though her very life was on the line.

For Pura, fights with Junior had become a natural part of the day - no more or less pleasant than taking a dump or having a pee (unless she was being particularly aggressive, of course, in which case there was a comparison to be made with violent diarrhea).

The difference between his experience of the feisty little queen and Saēna's was that Pura occasionally won those fights. His sister, still the daintiest of the bunch, didn't have much to offer by way of brawn.

A flash of cream caught Pura's attention as he lounged at the center of the clearing, having spent a good hour drinking excessive amounts of water and peeing. He had seen an adult purposefully mark the borders of their play-pen and, without any understanding of why it was being done, had proceeded to copy. Excessively.

"Nana?" he called, rolling onto his belly and getting to all four comically large paws. A few seconds of deep thought (and some hard squinting to emphasize exactly how sleuth-like he was being) allowed Pura to deduce that his sister had sprouted out of the ground in the vicinity of a nearby log. She had become adept at eluding the other three, disappearing and reappearing again with such suddenness that Pura was beginning to wonder if she was part wolf, part air.

With a quick glance his sister, who would have reached the meat by now, he padded over to her precious log to inspect. Maybe other air/wolf hybrids would sprout out of the ground and play.

The sound of her brother's voice made Saena halt and throw back her ears, crouching to the ground with the expectation that she would be thoroughly thrashed for her insolence. Her tail wagged pathetically as she turned to seek the blue-grey male, but when he vision fell on him, he was moving away from her. This was... Odd. The smallest, youngest pup had come to expect being reprimanded so much that she had thought her own brother would take a leaf out of the bully's book and flex his muscles, but she had been wrong.

Without a second thought about what he was doing, Saena turned back to the meat, which was still thankfully unguarded. She flung herself at it ravenously, but rather than feeding in place, she plunged her sharp little teeth into it and began to arduously haul it back toward her log. It was very slow going, and when she looked up to gauge her progress, she saw Pura investigating her hiding place.

Feeling as though her secret hideaway was going to be revealed to Junior, who would proceed to smash it to pieces with her big bully hammer, Saena panicked. “Poo-wah NO!” she screamed furiously in an attempt to get him away from her log.

Saēna rage fell on him like a rain storm. Pura pressed flat against the ground, tail curling around his left hind leg and ears wilting pathetically. "P-..ple..pla-yee?" he asked this time, looking between the now 8000 times more alluring log and his angry sibling's face. Most days, Saēna was just as shouty as Junior, but that was born of the need to defend herself constantly against the elder pup's bullying (an occurrence that soon decrease in frequency, but not yet). Pura had a fairly neutral relationship with his cousins, though he preferred Junior's rowdy company to Ty's wailing. Saēna was.. tricky. He found himself desperately craving her approval, but two pups quickly became a cluster within the borders of the rendezvous site, and that cluster had a high chance of including the pups' little queen.

A change of tactics was in order. Pura gathered his limbs beneath him and crouched like a cat. "Sss..su-seeee...seeee-crit?" the boy whispered, making shifty eyes at a particularly suspicious-looking shrub. Its leaves were in quite a state of disrepair, which suggested mafia involvement.

Baaaw I'm sorry for sucking so hard.

Pura's sudden fall in posture was enough to stun Saēna into baffled silence. Normally he was so rowdy, and tussled endlessly with the queen bee of the puppies. Ordinarily she thought it was to gain control of them, but usually Junior put him in his place. That he would respond with what appeared to be submission to her own voice was a shocking development, one that left her slack-jawed and staring.

She cocked her head slightly when he began to sputter out a request. She had yet to notice that Pura struggled with speaking, and merely thought he spoke that way because he thought it was funny. She thought it was funny, and frequently grinned foolishly whenever her brother began to stumble over his syllables. Little did she know how rude she was being.

Before she could respond to his invitation to play, he was hissing out another word, this time exchanging glances with her and the place where she had previously hidden. When what he was trying to say finally translated into understanding, Saēna nodded vigorously, large ears flapping on her head. “Yeah, seeecret,” she said slyly. She looked around herself, then crept closer to her brother and said, “Faaar-eeee kin-dome.” Of course there was a fairy world hidden in there that she hadn't seen or acknowledged up until that very point.

I am even more sorry. >_< Let me know if you want to conclude and archive (even though it's not 10+)

"Yeah, seeecret," Saēna agreed, and she earned a vigorous nod from Pura when she suggested that theirs would be the Fairy Kingdom pack - whatever that meant. The eldest son of Pied and Kisu - only, really, if you discounted the dead completely - rarely understood what was going on in the world of words, and had discovered that simply nodding was often enough to convince everyone else that he had understood.

"A-aaa...affa?" It was an offer; it was Saēna's log, which meant that she should be the leader of their fairy kingdom.

It's cool by me! Short threads are sometimes the most effective!

Though she hadn't misunderstood Pura's offer, Saēna displayed a rare moment of sisterly devotion by moving toward him and nudging his shoulder gently. Maybe it was some sort of born-in traditionalism, but somehow, she thought that the males should be the Alphas, at least at this tender young age. That was why Peregrine was an Alpha and Hawkeye wasn't... Right?

“You th'Affa,” she insisted, nudging him gently to coax him to move forth and address his new subjects. She would happily stay back and observe, or join him if he so wished... But, eventually, both pups would tire of their new "pack" and return to the care and attention of their guardians.