Bearclaw Valley a predicament

for @Glaucos, @Astyanax, @Aventus or all of the above!

it's been over a moon, but Avicus still hasn't gotten over the adoption of the dead woman's pups. the sight of them at her mother's breast. the space they took up in her home and in her life. it fills her with a rage she doesn't know how to handle.

she is angry with them, and she was angry with her mother, too. Astara had, effectively, replaced Avicus and Aventus. how dare they suck at her teats? how dare she allow it?

around the edge of the rendezvous she plods, a storm writ upon her face. it rains as it has for days on end, darkening her fur to a deep rust. eyes of indigo dart, snakelike, back and forth, as if daring someone to come across her path while she's in such a mood. avoiding a fight and yet actively seeking one out. provocative as always.

thunder ahead. lightning in the distance. a storm is a-coming—and the weather comes, too.

He is ignorant to being plucked from the mountain's side, and only notices a change in his mother when he tastes her milk; it is thinner milk, tasteless, and he does not like it but he is too hungry. She is different too; spindly, having lost much of the warmth and the solidity he is used to.

Was this their own doing? Had they devoured their mother from the inside-out?

She is absent much of the time too, which is a change. The seemingly eternal presence of mother has reversed, and now she only shares her presence with them when she deigns to feed them, and those feedings are short, rough, and leave him yearning.

Glaucos is not a nimble child, but he is more mobile now that he is a little bit older, and he is driven by his hunger to seek out mother; so he follows her waning milk scent in to the rain. He bumbles from the den mouth in to the open where he is met with the cold and the wet, and then the loud, the bright.

The sky booms overhead and he is reminded of the vibrations in the earth when mother collapsed. He trembles there, tail tucked, and urine dribbles down his leg.

From a distance, tucked beneath a bush, Aventus watched Avicus prowl through the rainy haze. She was more antagonistic than usual since the introduction of two invading whelps in their lives. He was avoiding her. He avoided them, too, and Astara by extension. Some days he sought the one-eyed dragon. Other days, he spent alone.

Unlike Avicus, Aventus wasn't jealous of the new cubs suckling from Astara. He'd seen them one or twice, small things compared to him, weak. Pathetic. He'd felt the warm beat of wrath in his throat at the sight of them. Of the thought of the dynamic they sullied with their vulnerability and their dependency.

They were as prey to him.

So when one came tumbling out into the rain, Aventus slipped from his cover beneath the booming thunder and began to stalk toward it, on the opposite side of the clearing from Avicus. He was cautious of inviting his sibling's rage and slunk in a low, hesitant manner, but if she just gave him the chance to move into place, she might recognize a pincer formation.

With little Glaucous pinned right in the middle of them, smelling of piss and mother's milk and fear.

the acrid smell of urine reaches her nostrils, more pungent even than petrichor, and her face twists into a scowl as she sees the little boy ahead. she is caught between avoiding him and attacking him, and is beginning to seriously consider the latter when she notices a flash of silver orbs, a dark shadow.

Aventus.

she doesn't dare do anything but blink once at her brother, understanding, and then her gaze snaps back to Glaucos. she pads forward, slowly, each step deliberate and commanding. if she can catch his attention from the front, Aventus can attack from behind. if he startles, they can catch him.

he deserves it, pathetic little pretender. her mother's milk will never make him worthy.

The puddle he creates for himself is warmer than the rain so he promptly sits down in it, unbothered. The smell seeps in to his fur though and he doesn't like that very much. As the urine soaks in to the dirt at the mouth of the den the warmth vanishes, and he stands up again, looking down at his toes and wriggling them a moment, perplexed.

A few fat rain drops hit his eartips, causing them to bounce. He looks up, wide-eyed, somewhat fearful, in case more booming transpires—and sees something move. It is red, and as it slinks closer his focus is entirely locked upon it; he is reminded of Astyanax immediately and smiles, except this child is larger and more warmly decorated, even with the rain saturating their coat.

He steps towards them, his little tail beginning to whip back and forth.

Aventus kept sharp eyes on the child. A silent, satisfied smirk when the pup sat down and an equally silent flinch when Glaucous stood again were the only indications that he was aware of anything but the granite coat in front of him. His singular focus was so intense that the raindrops pelting him weren't even felt, much less seen.

Avicus, now, each calculating step placed with attention-grabbing authority. Any wolf would be hard-pressed to ignore that. It afforded the perfect opportunity for her shadow to sweep in behind, pausing only a moment before rushing forward. For now, his teeth were sheathed. He aimed to bowl Glaucous over with the force of his body, shove him into a more compromising position, make him squeal like the prey he was. Anything to excite the blood.

An image of another prone wolf flashed behind his eyelids, and drool pooled heavy in his jaws. They would eat this one, too.

He hadn't quite yet comprehended the fact that his own mother was dead. He knew only that this woman they now nursed from, these new walls they slept in; it was all different. Astyanax spent most of his time either sleeping or staring at the dark mass who had replaced their bear of a mother. Like Glaucos, he too noticed she was gone often, a stark difference to what was the near constant presence of Ikkalrok.

They had also gained two older siblings, and similar in manner to the new imposter-mother, these two were far more rough with them.

The thick stench of urine woke Astyanax from his nap, and he peered through the darkness towards the faint glow at the entrance of the den. There, just outside, stood his brother, standing in a puddle of his own making, attention locked on something beyond their new home. The boy scrambled to his paws to make his way towards the entrance curiously, his own gaze drawn to the sky as a bright flash arcs across the void, highlighting a larger being bearing down upon Glaucos from behind.

Fear causes his heart to race, yet a sense of protectiveness over his brother coaxes Astyanax towards the dark form Glaucos was oblivious to. Despite his bumbling gait, the boy makes his way over to the nearest ankle as quick as he can, unsheathing needle sharp puppy-teeth and aiming to latch onto it in a foolish show of dominance.

the plan is in motion. she strides forward, and Aventus attacks from the rear. he aims to bowl the pup over, and she is about to seize the boy's scruff between her teeth when a flash of charcoal-gray distracts her. a shadow that didn't quite belong.

Avicus snarls as Astyanax sets upon her brother, forgetting the other child in an attempt to herd him away. this is the bold one, the one who'd gone for the stick with which she'd taunted him. she had taunted him that day, and she would today. he will know his master.

red fury, she bears down upon him, twilight eyes flickering cold fire. she's bigger and stronger and faster and she will not have this pretender show such flagrant disrespect for the son of the alphas. he will learn.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap this one since it's getting outdated and half the participants are no longer active!

Before he reached Glaucous, the needling pain of freshly erupted teeth pinched into his ankle. Aventus’ reaction was immediate. His target shifted from the grey to the black. Twisting his lithe little body, the pup aimed to rake his teeth over Astyanax’s face or neck, whichever part of him he managed to reach first.

That part of Astyanax would learn what real teeth could do to flesh. Aventus pulled no punches with his blow. Avicus was already on him from the other side, ensuring that if Aventus somehow didn’t inflict damage, his sister certainly would.

He managed to slam Astyanax into the ground, but then he was pulled away by the jaws of some adult or another, who rushed forward to protect the younger cubs. With a temperamental snap of his jaws for this perceived betrayal, Aventus whirled and stalked away, fuming at his inability to kill the weakling brat.