Stavanger Bay caterpillars

Anyone is welcome to join this thread (also non-family pack members)! :-) Set just outside Ragnar & Thistle's den.

Although his tantrums had calmed down — if not only because Charon had noticed that they changed nothing about his situation — Charon was still a pretty unhappy boy, missing his parents and brother. He got everything he needed provided to him by Ragnar and Thistle Cloud, but not everything he wanted. On the outside, the six weeks old boy might look like he was doing better — although quiet and contemplative, no longer did he sputter objections and throw tantrums like on his first day here — but on the inside, a lot more was going on than meets the eye.

As he sat just outside the den, for he wasn't allowed to wander very far yet, Charon looked over his shoulder, at the den's entrance. He got to his feet and started to walk away from the den. Small grey-tipped ears perked up as he spotted a caterpillar. "Oooo," Charon cooed at the furry critter, splashed in bright toxic colours. He watched as it moved up the trunk of a tree, ever-slowly retracting and stretching itself, with deep interest.

Onyx was wandering along the beach at a slow walk. Her long legs stretched on each step to make it large so she could travel a bit further each step. Onyx saw a small white thing outside a den of some sort. She headed towards the wolf, who she realized was small when she got close. He had a splattering of freckles on his muzzle. She looked over his shoulder to see what he was looking at. She let out a small gasp, then she smiled. "It's pretty." She said as she stared at the caterpillar's bright vibrant colors.

Charon wondered if he should try to touch the caterpillar. He wasn't sure if it was friendly, because he hadn't ever seen anything like it, nor was he sure if it was a sentient sort of thing at all. It sure didn't talk to him like Ragnar and Thistle did, and like Verrine and Julooke had... Completely enveloped in his thoughts, Charon didn't even notice when someone else approached the clearing the den was in; not until the wolf spoke to him.

Startled, Charon literally jumped back a little. Then he stared at the black wolf that had joined him, head upright and ears erect in the wolf's direction, realising that the wolf had said that the caterpillar was pretty.

Hesitant, Charon took a tiny step closer again. He looked at the toxic-coloured caterpillar, then at the black wolf. She was coloured like Liyaní, all the way down to the white toes, except that her eyes were a different shade. "Pretty," Charon mimicked without looking at the object of prettiness — the caterpillar was momentarily forgotten — and he looked at the black wolf, waiting for some form of approvel of disapproval. "'m Charon," he said, having been taught it was polite to offer his name. Charon craned his neck and tilted his head inquisitively, waiting for the black wolf to share her name, too.

She hadn't meant to scare him, and felt bad that he had jumped a little. But he recovered quickly, and offered his name. "Nice to meet you Charon. I'm Onyx." She said, he name slipping off her tongue quietly. She liked it and again she wondered what it meant. Her mama had never told her, even though Onyx had learned what her mother's name meant. She had told Onyx that a raven was a pretty, shiny, black bird. Onyx had seen one once and she liked it.

Charon looked at Onyx as she mimicked his name. His little tail wagged excitedly as she repeated his name, glad for the recognition of who he was. She then said her name — Onyx — and Charon smiled excitedly. "Hoooo-nix!" he repeated as best he could. He wanted to say something friendly and courteous, but couldn't think of a thing, so left it at simply copying her name.

His attention was soon captured once more by the caterpillar, which had moved a couple of centimeters upwards along the tree. "No!" Charon told the caterpillar as it tried to escape his clutch, and he pawed at the furry creature. When he pawed at the tree just above the caterpillar, the brightly coloured thing fell down into the autumn leaves gathered below. Charon jumped backward as this happened, then looked expectantly at Onyx to see what she would do.

She nodded with a smile when he repeated her name, at least best he could. The caterpillar was knocked into the leaves by his paws. Onyx gasped. I hope it's ok. Onyx bent down and delicately placed it on her paw. It seemed okay. She lifted it and held it next to the tree. The critter began to climb onto the tree and off her paw. She slowly put her paw down and the caterpillar clung to the tree. "There." Onyx said quietly. She was glad it could continue its progression.

Onyx didn't seem pleased that Charon had bested the caterpillar at all. He was waiting to see if she'd see his accomplishment as an accomplishment, or if she would say that it was a bad thing he did, or if she would simply not care at all. It wasn't really any of the above though, in the way she reacted, and Charon tilted his head as Onyx, seemingly caring about the caterpillar, found it and lifted it back onto the tree.

Charon did not really see the logic in any of these actions, and he wrinkled his nose in wonder as he queried, "Why?" while looking up at Onyx with his big blue eyes.

He seemed a little confused that she hadn't reacted somehow else, and he asked why. "It might of been hurt, and it was probably going somewhere," she said as she watched it crawl up the tree trunk. "It doesn't deserve to die or get taken away from its home." She said. She didn't like death, and she had seen and known too many who had fallen into its clutches, for her young age. She also had too many relatives she never knew because of it. It was the reason she was an orphan, also sibling-less and aunt-less and uncle-less, except for Bear, whose condition was unknown. She missed Mama the most out of all of them.

Charon did not really understand why Onyx was making such a big fuss over such a tiny creature. He didn't really think that the caterpillar deserved anything. It was just a thing in his eyes, not like him and other wolves. "Oh," he said, though it was clear from the intonation in his voice that he did not understand at all, and that his question wasn't really answered.

"Whaddumbout, um..." Charon searched for the right words, and when he found it, his face lit up as he added, "... bits 'nstuff?" He meant the hoppy critters with the long ears; he was brought dead animals sometimes, and he wondered, if this caterpillarthing deserved to not-die-or-taken-away, if the same counted for rabbits.

"'Bits n'stuff?" She repeated, as a different question. She thought hard for a moment what he might be talking about. Bits... Bits... She just didn't know what he had said. "What are 'bits?" She asked him. She tilted her head in confusion and continued to think.

Onyx did not seem to understand what Charon was getting at, and he wrinkled his nose as he tried to think of how else to describe the floppy bunnies that he'd seen, dead and alive, a couple of times. Charon wasn't sure what the proper word for them was — he thought that it was something along the lines of bits — so maybe he'd have to describe them, as best as he could.

'Food' would have been a term he could've thought of were he older, but he hadn't yet eaten much from rabbits except in the form of regurgitated meat, so saw it as playthings if anything. "Um, big ears 'n hoppy 'n stuff," Charon said, and he looked at Onyx' face to see if she showed any recognition of the animal he was trying to describe.

Her eyes lit up and you could almost see the lightbulb go on above her head. "Oh, rabbits!" She said, and grinned at the explanation Charon gave for what they were like. "Yeah, them too. All stuff matters. It all does something important for other stuff." She said. She was quoting almost directly from a word of wisdom from Raven. Her eyes glazed over as she had one of her common flashbacks.

"Onyx, all creatures and everything matters. It all plays an important role in the Earth for other creatures and things." Raven told Onyx gently. She wanted Onyx to understand this and hold love for all forms of life, as Raven did...

Onyx came back to present time with a visible shiver. Her hackles raised and her eyes looked sad as she thought of her kind, brave, loving mother. Onyx would never be able to forget that she was an orphan and an only child.

Charon was confused when Onyx said that even rabbits mattered and should not be harmed. It seemed kind of like a challenge to eat them without hurting them! Instantly and aloud Charon wondered, with an indignant tone in his voice, "But we killum!" All of this was very confusing, and Charon sure hoped that Onyx would be able to provide a satisfactory explanation about all of this. Maybe he should ask Ragnar, Thistle or Gunnar about it later.

Caterpillars and rabbits didn't really seem comparable either, but Charon decided not to tread on that path. He was confused enough as it was about the rabbits-deserve-to-live thing anyway, so he didn't need any additional questionmarks above his head for now.

She understood his confusion, as at first once upon a time she had been confused too. "I know. But we kill them for a reason, to eat them. So we can stay alive. And they eat berries, which are alive, so that they can stay alive. We are allowed to kill them as prey, but if we're already full, we shouldn't hunt them for sport. It'd be a killing waste, so that the rabbit died for nothing. Do you get it or no?" She asked. It was still a little confusing to Onyx herself but Raven was not here to explain it to her.

this is my last post. :) thanks for the thread :D

The child listened quietly to Onyx' story and explanation, trying to grasp what she was trying to teach him. He still didn't really understand all of it, but it was slowly starting to get there. From her whole story, there was one thing that stuck, though. "Berries're alive?!" Charon gasped out in confusion when Onyx finished talking. He didn't know that. He always thought that things that didn't move on their own were therefore not alive.

"Oh," added Charon when he realised that he hadn't properly responded to Onyx' explanation yet. He still looked - and felt - a little confused, but it would come in time. "Um I hafta go," said Charon and he looked over his shoulder as though someone had called him. He wanted some alone time to think all of this over. "G'bye!" he called over his shoulder before running back to Ragnar and Thistle's den and vanishing into its darkness to be alone in quiet contemplation and mull over all of the things Onyx had taught him.