Fox's Glade i wanna let go

@Clary This is thread one of three in the "quest" to gain an alliance with the Sunspire pack! Sorry it's so short lol.

Red had taken the first shift carrying the bison skin across her back. It was hot underneath it, but luckily, it was not a warm day. It was relatively cool and light rain pattered on the leaves and the grass in this glade. Red was appreciative of the rain, which was helping to wash away the smell of fox so strong in this area, but she worried about what would happen to the bison skin if it got too wet. Well… there was nothing she could do about it, honestly, so she figured it was best not to worry. “Are you excited?” she asked Clary, glancing at the girl. “Have you ever been outside of the pack territory before?”

No worries! Thanks for starting, I'm so pumped for this! <3

Was she excited? "You bet!" Clary coupled her laugh with a bounce and twirl to accentuate her words. How could she be anything else! For everything, really - the waning high of her trip with Nanook, the recent birth of her newest siblings, and now this - her realest real and first assignment, and with Red, to boot, her newest self-proclaimed best friend (minus Steph, of course, but sisters didn't count) even though she hardly even knew her. Life couldn't get any better. Her movement swayed the soft spring grasses, and their stalks brushed a flutter of rain against her thinning fur and into the air, and probably onto Red and the bison pelt. Oops - but ah, the pelt would be fine, and Clary hardly felt the wetness of the drizzle, or really even cared. The coolness of the air refreshed her, and she sucked in a deep breath through her nose and exhaled. Yeah, sure, this place lingered with that nasty underscent of fox, but still! If you breathed in deep enough you could definitely smell all the colours of every flower, and they warmed her face with a grin.

Even better was her company, and she turned to Red with a vigorous nod. "Yeah! My aunt took me North just this winter - I practically had to beg and plead and promise I wouldn't run off which I definitely didn't by the way if she ever asks but anyway we were away a whole moon, but gosh, it only felt like a day! And I thought this place was big and cold and snowy, but lemme tell you - " but instead of telling her about the mammoth snowbanks, or how she thought all her toes would fall off, she stopped and turned to Red instead, "hey, wait. You came from somewhere else before here, didn't you? Were you from up there? Up North?" She hadn't seen any wolf quite as small and red before, not where Nanook had taken her, but then, she hadn't seen any wolves quite like Nanook up North, either, and she had seemed well enough at home there. Clary didn't think it was a stretch to ask.

Rambly post is rambly.

Red had chuckled to herself and then settled in to listen to Clary babble on, and she was just about settled into their journey when her younger companion cut herself off. She turned a 180 and asked Red about herself. “Oh,” Red began, taken by surprise. “Uhh, no, not North. East. I mean, the last place I was in was to the East. But. I’m kind of from everywhere.” She squinted, trying to remember all the packs she’d been in, all the places she’d seen. “I’ve been traveling since I was old enough to catch rabbits and live on my own without constant fear of death. So… since about a year old. Umm…” She thought back to her childhood, which seemed vague and far away, even though she was only three years old.

“Let’s see, I was born in a forest, to Mom and Dad who were great hunters and scouts, so I guess that’s where I got it from. I left to travel the world with their blessing when I was old enough and I regret to say I never went back to see them. I don’t even know if they’re still alive. But they’re so far away, it would take me months to return.” She stopped, not exactly sad, but the turn of conversation had made her more somber than she had been when they’d set out. “Anyways, I’ve been all over,” she continued. “Forests, lakes, the sea, the desert. Up North where it’s always cold and icy, down south where no one knows what snow is.” This little monologue made her happy again and she grinned at Clary. “You wanna hear about anywhere in particular?”

<3 no worries!

Red was from everywhere, which was way beyond anything Clary could say of herself. She was only from Easthollow, and though she'd travelled the cold and rugged steppes of the North, that had only been for a cycle of the moon. She wasn't actually, you know, from there, nor had she been there long enough for it to replace Easthollow as her home. And she couldn't help but wonder what that would be like - to travel around so much much until the place you lived became just another place.

But even Red seemed to miss her family, and though her words might not have carried the sorrow Clary herself was beginning to feel, she brushed a bit closer to her friend. How awful, to leave your family and never see them again. Even though she longed to travel, Clary didn't think she would ever truly leave Easthollow, not in the everlasting sense. She'd still be a part of them, would still watch her siblings grow, would still feel like a part of them, no matter how long she spent away... right?

The thought perturbed her, but thankfully, the mood lifted, and Clary found Red's grin contagious. She was glad to smile again - but then she found her face pinch in confusion. "A desert? What's that?" She'd seen forests, lakes, the sea - but a desert, that was something new and entirely blank to her.

Red laughed at Clary, but not in a mean way or anything. She often forgot, though, that not a lot of wolves lived in deserts. Actually, Red hadn’t exactly lived in one, just passed through one to get to the valley on the other side. As they walked along, she tried to think of how to explain a desert to someone who had never seen or gone through one. “Hmm…” 

“Okay,” she said, after a few moments’ thought. “Well, first things first, not a lot of animals live in deserts, at least not a lot of big animals. It’s very hot and dry during the day, but it can get down to below freezing at night. There’s lots of sand and grit and not much water. Also, because of this, there’s not a lot of vegetation, either. Basically, it kind of sucks. Usually, deserts are very flat, at least the one I’ve been in. Dehydration can be a big problem if you have to cross a desert.” 

She realized, then, that she was painting deserts in a rather scary light. “They can be quite beautiful, though,” she added hastily, as an afterthought. “Because there’s nothing blocking the view, you get great night skies. You can see all the constellations and things.” Red figured that that was probably enough information. She glanced at Clary to gauge the girl’s reaction.

The more Red told her about the desert, the more Clary absolutely knew she did not want to live there. Come to think of it, the desert didn't even sound like a place she wanted on her bucket list (which - c'mon, this is Clary. It doesn't take all that much to make that list). Her growing look of horror must've shown through every inch of her furrowed brow and gaping jaw, but even with her friend's effort to pretty up Clary's mental image with talk of the sky and constellations, these good things were honestly just streaks of nice paint smeared across a canvas already ruined by the painting underneath. The colours were pretty, sure - but the thing underneath remained the thing underneath - grotesque, and hideous, and better off shoved under a rock and forgotten.

But she couldn't just say that about somewhere Red used to live. You just didn't do that. So when Red turned to her, Clary corrected her gaping mouth to a wide and toothy grin, though the splay of her ears betrayed every ounce of everything she actually felt. Great stars, how was she supposed to respond to this. "You get great night skies here, too," she pointed out, the care not to offend evident in the slowness of her words, "And, you know. Water. And grass. And big animals you can eat. And also nice weather." And basically everything else the desert didn't have, and everything it did - which surely made Easthollow the better place - but she didn't say that. Of course she didn't say that. Not out loud, anyway. She followed her words with a nervous laugh, that splay of the ears, and that same toothy grin.

Sorry for shit post! I totally forgot it was my turn!!

Red could not help but laugh at Clary’s reaction, the horror so obvious on the girl’s face that it was immediately hilarious. “Look, kid, just cos I like deserts doesn’t mean you have to. Trust me, I grew was born in a forest and spent my puphood in one. I totally get the liking forests thing.” She grinned at the yearling and then looked forward again.

“Okay, so. Enough chit-chat. You wanna be a scout, right? Well, ya gotta learn to really pay attention to the land if you wanna be a good scout. Look around and tell me what you see. Do you know what direction we’re going in? Has anyone ever taught you that? Finding your direction based on the sun?” Red glanced up at the cloudy sky. “I mean, it’s kinda hard now, but like, on a clear day, if you watch the sun to see where it rises and sets, you can tell what direction you’re in based on that.”

No worries! <3 Haha the dynamic of these two, both just blabbing away. I love it <3

So Red didn't expect her to like the desert, and all Clary could give was a great old sigh of, "oh good." Her nervous laughter shook into a chuckle of blissful relief when her friend simply laughed along, and her tail picked up an easy sway again. It wasn't even forests she thought she liked better, but pretty much everything else - heck, even that big strip of rock Nanook had made them wander through for a week or more wasn't so bad next to what she pictured the desert as.

She drew alert when Red's voice edged serious, and she gave a swift nod and a quick, "right!" when prompted, before she fell silent again. With both ears cupped, she listened, eager to learn from the skills her friend could lend her. Red almost talked more quickly than her - probably just as fast, with as many threads and tangents, and it made Clary dizzy, and not quite knowing where to interject. "Oh, umm - " she turned to survey their surroundings, about ready to list the things she could see and smell, but her friend had moved on already to ask about direction, and at this her body snapped with a bounce and a shake of a knowing excitement.

"Oh! Oh oh, yes! Mom taught me this when I was still little! The sun rises in the East - " she pointed her snout to where she'd seen the sun rise that morning - straight back the way they'd come -  "and sets in the West," and she struck her muzzle toward the Sunspire, in the direction they wanted to go. "And that makes North that way, and South down there!" and she spun and pointed in each direction, before swirling back to meet Red with beaming eyes. "And at night, the stars tell you things too. So, as long as you know how to find North, you can figure out all the other directions too," she grinned from ear to ear, and her chest puffed just a little. She just knew Red would be impressed. "My aunt taught me that one."

Okay, seriously, Red thought to herself, as she listened to her packmate ramble, Clary is the cutest thing ever. She meant it in a big-sister kind of way and couldn’t help but look at Clary as a kind of adopted little sister. It was early in their relationship, but she’d seen more of Clary than any of the other wolves in Easthollow, and younglings always brought out her maternal instinct, so maybe that was why. 

“Well,” she said aloud, “maybe I don’t need to teach you about directions!” Red laughed. “Let me see if I can think of something else to teach you about scouting. Hmm…” She looked around at the meadow they were in and thought of things she had had to learn growing up. “Do you know about tracking animal trails and things like that? That’s more associated with hunting, obviously, but using deer trails and things can lead you to some interesting places!”