Whitewater Gorge No Deliverence

Backdated a couple days - he found Chaska's remains

Grayday was further from the plateau than he might normally be, but with all that had been going on lately, he felt a great need to check around further and further from his home. There'd been an influx of trouble around lately, and he hoped that - by widening his patrols - he could head off further disaster.

But that day, he found something he could never have predicted. He was saved from seeing the gore by his lack of eyesight, but a thorough investigation revealed more than enough. Chaska had been killed, his body defiled, and his head taken. "Oh, Chaska," Grayday murmured, taking a moment to pity his old friend. Then he turned his attention to the scent of his attacker - fading, now, but still more than enough that Grayday would be able to identify him if they ever met again.

The male laid down and rolled aorund in the attacker's scent, intent on taking it home to share with his family. If they ever met the man, they would know to be cautious.

Skwol did not take the same pride in scavenging as he did in a successful hunt, but he was not above the practice especially as a lone wolf in winter. Death sustaining life was a law as old as time. But it did not take him long to catch other scents with that blood, and the picture that his nose was revealing to him as he drew nearer was one that stiffened the hairs along his nape and spine, and caused his eyes and ears to swivel in anxious surveillance of his surroundings. His kind had fought here.

The white wolf was utterly appalled at what he saw. He frowned deeply, rumbled with palpable upset, and folded his ears as his gold eyes stared at the juncture where a neck should have met a head. He had never seen such unnatural and hideous disrespect, and he immediately suspected the gray male that was scent rolling in the mess of tracks and defiled snow and briefly curled his lip in his direction. But he quickly noted the other wolf's clean fur and stayed his knee-jerk fear and anger.

"What happened?" He asked as he smoothed his fur and shifted himself to a neutrally calm stance. He did not know the killed wolf but this was a crime against his entire being, against the principles he had been raised on. He hoped the death had been deserving — but even if it had been, the blatant disregard for life that was brazen on the state of the corpse greatly bothered him.

Grayday was nearly finished with his rolling when the sound of another's approach had him leaping to his paws. His blind head turned in the direction of the other, lips already curling back to show his yellowing fangs. It took a moment for the words to cut through the haze of defensive anger and suspicion, but when they did, Grayday trusted the male no more than he had before.

"He was killed," said Grayday, thinking that much ought to be obvious to the man. He didn't know whether the beheading had been part of the murder, or had happened after, and he wasn't about to start bouncing ideas off the interloper. It was clear by the other's scent that he had not been the one to kill Chaska, and thus, Grayday had no quarrel with him - and no reason to continue conversing, either.

Leaving the other to scavange the corpse, Grayday turned and began to trot away. One ear was turned back toward the other, not wanting to be caught on unawares if he decided to attack.

Skwol snorted and twitched his ears. He did not spare the discourteous male a second thought after that. He took a few moments to investigate the scents and tracks the more forthcoming snow offered him, and then turn and left at a brisk lope in the opposite direction.