Swiftcurrent Creek origin stories

For @Whip and @Gannet! Pit-stop at the ol' stomping grounds.

Well, here it was. Fox's oldest stomping grounds in the Teekon Wilds. "This," she said, gliding her muzzle from one side to the other, "is where I first settled. It's called Swiftcurrent Creek, and I was living here when I met your pops." At the time, he was still hitched to some other lady and living at Blacktail Deer Plateau. "I was dethroned by a crazy bitch named Bazi, but she won it fair and square." Fox and Bazi had almost killed each other that day, and yet Fox didn't hold any ill feelings toward her old comrade. In fact, she hoped that Bazi was somewhere out there living the good life.

It felt strange being back here, and Fox sidled up to the creek and took a long drink from it. Doing that brought back plenty of other memories of Jace, Ferdie, Scimitar, Lethe, Magpie, Bones, Haunter, and the rest of the old creek crew. The latter, Haunter, was an extra pain point in her heart, but it was more of a dull ache than the sharp pain it had been the day she ran to Peregrine for help.

Gannet stared about as Fox explained what this place's significance was, interested but not entirely impressed.  This place was new, but not all that unique.  He was obviously not affected by the same ghosts his mom was.

Her getting beat, though... that was interesting even moreso, and he had a hard time imagining it.  "She took your spot?"  He asked, frowning.  It wasn't a thing he'd ever really considered, that a wolf could just do that.

Surprisingly, Whip's spirits were high. Well, higher than they had been in comparison to his usual self. Of course, he was still an insufferable, distant ass -- but he was finally getting somewhere. He smiled from time to time. First, it felt strange; yet the more he did it, the more natural it began to feel.  His initial apprehension toward the trip had all but been lost. All in all, Whip was just happy to be spending his time with his brother and mother. For once, he finally felt like he was a part of his family and that he wasn't some outsider looking in. 

When their mother led the boys to a creek, they stopped. Whip listened with varied interest to his mother's story, but when Fox mentioned that she had been dethroned, Whip's curiosity was ignited. Gannet spoke first, but Whip was quick to jump in soon after. "Why?" Whip chimed in, mirroring his brother's interest. Leaders were leaders... and they stayed leaders. The others were meant to follow. That's just how things worked.

She had managed to pique their interest, and a grin went from ear-to-ear as they asked their questions. "She did," Fox said to Gannet with a tone of finality, then turned to answer Whip's question. "Bazi thought I wasn't being a good leader; I thought she was wrong." In essence, Bazi had wanted to dethrone her, and that was the only "reason" anyone ever needed. Wait a second, should she really be teaching her kids this? What if, one day, they tried to dethrone her? Fox let that thought linger on her mind for a moment, but she didn't obsess over it.

"Anyway, she was a shit leader, and now nobody lives here." Jokes on you, Bazi! Redhawk Caldera, on the other hand, was two years strong. Sure, it had it's drama, but at least it was trucking along as well as it ever had. Fox couldn't imagine it ever disbanding, or even uprooting to another location. It was her home with Peregrine, Finley, Elwood, and their families. The others—the ones who came and went—were less important in the grand scheme of things.

Well that was... weird.  What happened if someone decided they didn't like her now? Would she have to leave again?  Gannet considered this - for that to happen, it'd have to be someone living there, right?  And everyone liked his mom from what he knew.  Besides, she had him and Whip to back her up.

"She was wrong, but I like home better" he said, finding the flat creek way more boring than their awesome caldera.

Whip looked around, wondering how long it had been since the Creek pack had met its demise under the leadership of Fox's challenger. How its legacy lives on, he inwardly mused. Emptyness. It was sad, but that's how it was for all things. Life, and the legacies left behind were all impermanent, destined to be lost in the annals of time. Hell, even Peter would be forgotten (just as Whip had forgotten his face), and someday so would Whip fade into that same oblivion. 

It was a dark thought -- one that filled Whip with a copious amount of existential dread. So, he shoved it out of his conscious mind and filled it with other things. Questions. One of which, he voiced now. "Why didn't Dad help?" He asked. Wasn't it his job to protect the family?

Gannet threw in his two cents. Ah, she loved how they put her on a pedestal of no wrongdoings! It was pretty adorable, actually, to think that she had done no wrong in their eyes. "Me too, Gannet. Me too." Redhawk Caldera belonged to her and Peregrine, through and through. While she imagined somebody had lived there at some point, it wasn't a hand-me-down from a leader who had thrown herself into a river. Not that Fox wasn't thankful for the leadership, of course.

She tipped an ear toward Whip's question, which was a valid one. Peregrine had been there that day, but... "It wasn't his fight," she replied, "In fact, he never even lived here. He lived at Blacktail Deer Plateau, which we can swing by on the way home. That's where I went after I lost Swiftcurrent Creek to Bazi. From there, your father and I moved to Redhawk Caldera." And the rest, as they say, was history!

Gannet had assumed her fights were always dad's fights, and vice versa, but it was hard for him to imagine there being a time when the two of them weren't a match set.  He'd lived somewhere else?  Then how had they met?  He never saw wolves who lived other places; he thought that was kinda the point.  But he didn't ask, since it didn't really matter now and he already had a bit to think on from what had already been said.

He was fairly certain on one thing - he'd never try to take someone's pack from them.  Why would someone even join a pack if they didn't respect the leader?

Whip didn't quite understand. Something just didn't add up to him. If it had been his mother's fight, wouldn't it be his father's too by extension. He just couldn't think of Peregrine not trying to intervene. Try and fail, perhaps -- but not outright stand aside. But this was all long ago and it was neither here nor there.

"Oh. Okay," Whip conceded. After all, this bit of history was important to the founding of his proper home. Like Gannet, he was more fond of the caldera than the creek anyway. He just couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

They seemed to take her explanation (mostly) at face value. She didn't consider the fact that they had never been alive when she and Peregrine hadn't been together. In fact, none of their kids had. The thought tickled her, and a pleasant smile replaced the more neutral expression she'd been carrying. The Redhawk family was a doozy, and Fox couldn't imagine that it would ever stop growing. Even several years from now, when she and Peregrine were finally gone. They had made quite the legacy, and they would continue to do so for at least another few years.

"I think we'll camp here for the night," she said, making that executive decision on the spot. "We can find the little clearing where we used to sleep." One of her old comrades (Njal's mate, perhaps?) had named it, but Fox could not recall the name of it or Njal's mate's name. She began racking her memory for where it was, and eventually recalled that it was in... that direction and headed toward the small clearing.

It was weird to think that, at one point, a pack like theirs had lived here.  Why did they leave? Maybe that was a thing that packs did; Gannet was, by dint of pure chance, swiftly learning that nothing could last forever.  A lesson that kept on giving, but he wouldn't find that out until later.

"Okay," he said, but as they went he would be on alert, trying to taste some trace of the wolves that used to live here.  He wouldn't find any, but curiosity and the fun of the game made him try regardless.

Hope you don’t mind me wrapping this one up!

Neither son rejected her plan, and for that, Fox was thankful. Sometimes it felt like they challenged her every step of the way. All of the boys had been like that (sans Nightjar and Peter, perhaps), and she couldn’t understand why they were so ornery. Then again, she certainly hadn’t exactly been an easy child to raise. Fox smirked at the thought, then led Gannet and Whip off to their sleeping spot for the evening.