Redhawk Caldera It's getting harder to pack my bags

After a morning spent in Raven's company, learning the various uses of snow after having her collar and neck assessed by the medic, Fiadh retired to the rendezvous site in need of a nap. It wasn't that she found the subject of medicine boring—in fact, she liked it more than she ever thought she would—but rather, all forms of education were boring. She wanted to be out and about, doing stuff, not just listening to someone lecture her on it. Raven was hardly a lecturer, but she was just a dumb kid with nonexistent patience.

She flopped down on top of a hill in the rendezvous and sighed dramatically, stretching her legs out in front of her as if fun could materialize on the tips of her toes. Predictably, no ideas were forthcoming and she ended up rolling over onto her dark back and kicking her legs skyward, seeking answers in the clouds.

@Tegan

"yo yo yo yoooooooo," came tegan's cheery voice over the hilltop. he'd spotted fiadh and her strange neck friend from a distance and had decided that he wanted to pester her-- not necessarily about the neck friend, but just in general. "fiadh! you're gonna get fat and ugly if you lie around all day, les' go do somethin," he said in a teasing manner-- but tegan was serious, towhee had said before that lazy wolves were stupid and gross and ugly... paraphrasing, of course. 

"what about your neck friend, can it do stuff?" he then said, unable to stop himself from bringing it up... because seriously, what was that?

Fiadh lifted her head with a well-meaning groan, pressing her chin into the fluff of her chest so she could watch Tegan approach. "You'd know!" she countered, unable to hide her grin as she rolled onto her side and propped herself up on her elbows. "At least I'm not fat and ugly yet, you're just an ogre!" She didn't mean it, of course. She loved all of her siblings dearly, even stinky butt Tegan.

She gave her neck a shake and rose to her paws with a roll of her shoulders. "I dunno. It's beautiful, that's what it does!" Each Blackthorn was unique despite all of their similarities, but Fiadh recognized that there were a great deal of similarities between her and her siblings. Clover had her Cutie Mark tramp stamp butt marking to differentiate her, and Tegan was light like snow, and now Fiadh had her own distinguishing feature. She loved it. "Wanna fight a bear? It brought a bear to me once!"

this is a bit awkward -- i've assumed Eljay spent time with his baby sibs when he was staying here over the fall/winter, but not since he returned to RHC after the war. up to you if they'd remember much from back when :)

Eljay was glad that he was finally healed up, thanks to Raven. She hadn't spoken much to him, and he couldn't quite tell if Raven was happy that he was back or if she was still feeling bad that he had left in the first place. She'd seemed upset about it then, and he hadn't talked much about it with her, tiptoeing around the subject and just trying to make amends. But no matter how hard he tried, there still seemed some sort of bridge between the pair of them, no matter how hard he tried to fix things.

Lost in thoughts, he was drifting through Redhawk Caldera territory when he happened upon two of his youngest siblings. Eljay's tail wagged cheerfully at the pair of them as he approached. "Heya," he called out to them, testing the waters in his approach to see if they remembered much of playing with him in his brief time here when Wildfire'd got hurt. Meanwhile, Eljay found it hard to get over how big they were now; they'd grown so much in the time he was away. He watched the collar with some interest, though Eljay's mind was currently busier with his social anxieties of trying to fit back into Redhawk Caldera than the odd thing round his sibling's neck.

"ogre's are tight as fuck fiadh, don't think that was an insult," tegan responded with a puff of his chest. ogre's did all sorts of cool stuff-- like wreak havoc and just fuck shit up collectively. besides, it was hard to insult tegan, he gave very few damns about what others thought of him-- so long as he was out and movin' and doing whatever he wanted, who cared? 

'it's beautiful' was not a verb, and tegan thought about telling her that, but he figured fiadh wasn't worth the effort. he rolled his eyes. "you and clover care too much about how you look," he told her with a sniff, and then he stiffened up. "a bear??? where? i wanna meet a bear," tegan said with a furrowed brow. that was a lot to process, what would he say to a bear if he met one? he had some good bear jokes, he'd probably use one of those. he didn't care to fight one, though, that sounded like a lot of work. 

and then eljay appeared. tegan remembered him very vaguely from young childhood, and now from around the territory. his tail waved a little. "wassup, elray! wanna meet a bear? fiadh's neck friend is gonna bring one to us." he filled in his elder brother quickly, easily swapping out a crucial letter in his name-- as he tended to do with wolves in the older crowd.

"Uh, yeah," she retorted with a scornful snort. Clover cared more than Fiadh did, at least as far as she was aware (she wasn't), but who was keeping track? "We wanna date boys in the future that aren't stinky and fugly like you, Tegan! You should try caring too, maybe then someday you'll get a real girlfriend." Oh, but, wait... "Or you can just date a tight as fuck ogre." Cue Fiadh sticking her tongue out as she merrily plopped her hindquarters down on the slushy snow.

"Yeah, a bear! We just gotta go out to the meadow and the bear will come back..." She thought that was how it looked, but her voice trailed off as she considered the how of it. Was there a button on the collar that had to be pressed for a bear to come? Maybe the occasional beep had something to do with the bear? Did she need to be pretending to be asleep? She didn't actually know what had summoned Tynee to her but she was confident if they went back out to the meadow, she'd be able to do it again.

Before she could convince Teegan to leave the territory with her, though, someone from her vaguest memories appeared. Truth be told, Fiadh had mostly forgotten about Eljay. The wolves from the other pack had been decidedly very cool, but he'd sort of just melted into the background with them. Even when he stuck around, he wasn't really up to the "coolness" standard of her litter mates, so she hadn't taken too much notice of him. Luckily, Tegan remembered his name so she smiled and waved her tail across the ground and parroted, "hey, Elroy! We're going to go summon a bear, you coming?"

Eljay opened his mouth in a confused gesture when he was called Elray, wanting to correct Tegan but then wondering if he'd heard wrong, perhaps. Then it was repeated by Fiadh but differently, and Eljay said with a sheepish smile, "Eljay," in soft correction, not really realising that they were just messing with him.

Soon though he was distracted by their message: "Summon a bear?!" he asked distressedly and added: "That's not... Uhm, why would you want to go looking for bears?" Or worse, have bears looking for them?

it's so hard to write tegan because if i was in his spot i'd probably be crying just because i'm so gd sensitive but he isn't-- U WRITE FIADH SO WELL love her so much

"haven't you heard the stories? princess and the frog? shrek? if i'm the beast clearly i'm winning," he retorted with a roll oh his eyes. that maybe wasn't true but... well tegan wasn't gonna let it bother him. besides-- "who says i even want a girlfriend? you're all too high maintenance-- sheesh!" 

and then poorly eljay corrected himself, and tegan shook his head. "my bad, elroy," he said, choosing faidh's botched name instead of his own. "and cause, i'm calling fiadh's bluff. there's no way it'll actually summon a bear, she's full of it!" he added, giving his sister a look and sticking a blep of his pink tongue out at her. "she's gonna prove it."

"Oh yeah?" retorted the fiery Blackthorn with a snort. "Where's your handsome prince face, then, huh?" All she saw was stinky, ugly Tegan. Okay, so he was only stinky sometimes, and he was only as ugly as every other Blackthorn, but it was Tegan. There was no gallant knight hiding under that. Just a ball of hot air, not unlike Fiadh herself, or Clover or Lucca or most of them. All of them, really.

Except... well... Eljay, who quietly corrected them. Are you deaf too, Tegan? Fiadh teased her brother in ptero, though it was fondness that coloured her expression when she did it, then verbally added, "he said his name is Emjay." Shooting her elder brother a sweet apologetic smile for their brother's mistake, and naturally failing to catch her own mistakes along the way, she crinkled up her brow and insisted, "yeah, it totally does summon bears! A bear brought me home, you know!" She thought Eljay would be impressed by that. Her parents had certainly seemed impressed when she'd told them.

Or... something kind of like impressed. Worried? Amused? Nah. Totally impressed. "C'mon, I'll show you," she said with a challenging flicker of her tail as she hopped to her paws and struck out for the Caldera's northern edge. "The bears live in the meadow, and one will totally come!"

LOL thank you! Dw I cringe every time she teases anyone because ack Fiadh I know you love them but eesh.

The ptero was mostly lost on Eljay, who had from the beginning on always been terrible at the sign language. He found it hard to catch on to, though ignored it for now and looked at Tegan and Fiadh as he blinked in confusion. He opened his mouth to correct Fiadh again as she said his name wrong once more, but was beginning to think he was being teased and so he just shut his mouth again and took the blow with no more than a silent wince.

They went on with their bear story and while Eljay was sure it was all just some sort of joke, he was also afraid of the consequences should they really find a bear. "Brought you home..?" Eljay said in confusion, though again he thought it was likely just a joke or a game of sorts. "Bears... Bears can be very aggressive, uhm, it's not safe to go look for them." If she had met one before she had been lucky... but Eljay didn't think it would be a good idea to go and try to confirm that luck now.

While Eljay hoped that his kid siblings were playing jokes on him, Fiadh was busy hoping that Tynee would make another appearance. Her oldest brother seemed a little worried about finding a bear, whereas Tegan seemed totally stoked on it. She'd be lying if she said she wasn't kind of disappointed that their brother didn't share in the excitement, but he just wasn't as cool, she supposed.

"They aren't aggressive, that's a myth," Fiadh confidently claimed, though that was a bit of a fib. She knew, of course, that bears were kind of dangerous. But Tynee hadn't been aggressive and had even helped her to get home! Surely bears were just misunderstood. She was certain Tynee would prove Eljay wrong and he would come to like bears just as much, so she said, "come on, we're going to get a bear!" before taking off, Tegan in tow (and probably a reluctant and worried Eljay), for the place where Tynee had dropped her off.