The Sunspire The House of Troubles

A few days past the hunt, ubervague about what happens, though. -- Unless Treason gets super hurt or something and then in that case, it's before?? IDK

Something had shifted within the pale devil over the past month and a half.  She'd spent more of her time on her own, patrolling borders, yes, but not really seeking the company of packmates.  The ones she met hadn't really lived up to expectations, and then there were the litters of lawbreakers.

One could maybe be excused, but two?  Why would she want to support that kind of disregard of reason?  That pitiful and weak sympathy to those that apparently didn't care what the result of their actions did to everyone else.  Maybe they should all starve.  Treason was strong and of good breeding, she could just leave them to their own devices and go off on her own again, especially at this time of year, laughing as they spiraled down the drain under a pile of mewling whelps that leeched away all the resources from the competent. It was very tempting.  It wasn't like they seemed to be in any danger from neighbors any more now either -- they could live their weak little lives without her there.

Leadership took making hard decisions, and now she questioned whether the ones she followed had the capability to make them.  And why wouldn't she?  Treason had thought they were the sort that would follow logic and therefore law, but these extra broods of parasites ran counter to it.  Her expression was sour and her pace fairly swift as she wandered the borders again today beneath the cloudy sky.  Why had she bothered?  Why should she continue to?

Maia had still been slightly more reclusive that usual as the weeks of her new home went on, but she was beginning to regain her old verve, and that meant barreling about and greeting most she came upon without checking to gauge their mood first.

Case and point; she'd found that a lot of the pack could be found at the borders at various times, and she loved a good patrol almost as much as she loved good company, so why not?  Today she happened to run into Treason, and as above... did not get the memo.

"HEY!  What's up!?"  She hollered, galloping awkwardly up.  She was delighted to see that not only was this girl super pretty, but she was about the same build as Maia, and that meant insta friends right?

On the other hand, she wasn't sure what she'd do necessarily.  There were too many here invested in the stupidity, so either she had to accept that they were a pack of fools and just work with it, or find some place that would appreciate her skills more.  Where?  She had not a damn clue -- she'd just followed along with the first group that would have her, and since the neighbors had both vanished, she didn't know too much about what else was around.

The one that galloped forward wasn't a packmate that she was all that familiar with, though was someone she'd scented around, at least -- and possibly seen at the hunt, depending on timelines.  But why the heck was she so gleeful?  Uhh.  Patrols?  Treason was more confused than anything, mostly because that greeting was way more casual than she'd ever say to someone who was basically a stranger.  Did she mistake her for someone else?  It only slightly broke her out of her sour mood, but it'd be easy enough for it to return.  Treason left the stage open for an unsaid, 'Soooo... Did you want something?'

Well that wasn't nearly as interesting as she'd hoped!! So she pouted a moment before brightening again.  Oh well!  Introductions were always good, yeah?

"I'm Maia.  Just got here not too long ago, Wraen brought me.  She's my sister, and super awesome.  I was hoping to find her and Terance since home was kinda boring, though leaving sorta sucked anyway.  Have you been here long?" This was all delivered at a relatively impressive rate, and when she finally paused to listen for an answer, she finally took a breath.  She hoped this newfound friend was friendly! She liked the look of her.

! Yikes, sorry for that huge delay. I thought I'd replied here way more recently. >_>

Blink.  Blink.  Oh man this chick talked a lot.  Like where was the fire?  Treason obviously worked at a much more measured pace than Maia did.  One thing was for sure, she wasn't going to let her dictate the pace they were walking.  Her steps, like her following words, were even and calm.  Treason. -- And as long as they have.  Met up with them when the pack was being formed.  Wait, how long ago was that? Whenever that was.  Time?  Yeah, not so important.  What was slightly more important was her wondering if it had all been a waste.  Maybe she was just getting annoyed at nothing happening.

What do you think?  Though Treason meant what she thought of the pack, it was probably open ended enough that who the heck knew what tangent Maia might run off on if given the chance.

What did she think? "They're pretty awesome, I think," she said, and while it still came out a bit fast, she caught on to Treason's subdued way of talking and tried to tone her own excitement down.  She wanted to look cool as Treason was, after all, and that meant not seeming toooo overeager.

"I mean, I knew my siblings were gonna be cool.  Least I hoped it, I hadn't seen Terance since he left home forever ago, and Wraen wasn't around super long.  But everyone else is cool too."  She paused.  "At least everyone I've met so far."

It helped that she'd screwed up more than a couple times and well, no one had seemed to blame her for it.  So points on that!

"Liffey seems a little weird though," she said in a kinda conspiratorial undertone.  "Tried to introduce myself but she just threw up and left."  Who did that?

Wolves falling in Treason's respect levels seemed to be a not-new thing now.  Terance had seemed like an ok guy, but the fact he'd gone and had pups with... What was her name?  That chick that seemed to excel at putting herself in positions where she'd get beaten up even though she obviously couldn't fight.  Honestly, the only reason he hadn't fallen as far as the two mothers (neither of which she really knew) was because at least Terance had rank.  It was stupid, but he was probably allowed to be and that was a huge difference.  You didn't want to do your own thing?  Going out of her way to find siblings sounded... Eh.  Either annoying or suffocating, she wasn't sure.  Probably depended on the sibling in question.

Then there was Liffey, Yeah, dunno about her.  Heard about the Redshank thing?  She was being a bleeding heart at that, then she was angry as hell last time I saw her.  She hadn't figured out the real reason, but that impression from the Redshank Incident stuck in her mind the most -- it hadn't given her a good impression of Liffey as a leader.  It was a bad choice.  End of story.  Maybe Treason's willingness to do the dirty work made Liffey hate her.  She couldn't care less, really.  The only thing that was sure was that if Liffey had run the pack solo, Treason was pretty sure that it wouldn't have lasted long, for one reason or another.

Ouch.  Maia flinched momentarily as Treason struck right at the heart of one of her worries - that Wraen and Terence and everyone would think she was lame for just following. But then she shook her head, and her tone took on a bit of a defensive beat to it. "I coulda, but why go somewhere with a bunch of strangers when you can go hang with people you actually like?"  Besides, if they minded, they woulda told her.... right?

She was too thrown off by that question to catch everything super well that she said next, but she definitely didn't know about a redshank thing.  "What's a redshank?"

Eh.  Each to their own.  Apparently Treason either didn't have such a good relationship with her family or just didn't put much weight on the idea to begin with.  It did seem more natural to her, at least, to go somewhere new and start a nice little empire of her own or what-have-you, and the only wolf out there that she trusted to do that with was herself.  Everyone else were to a point just stepping stones to the destiny she had in mind.

A Redshank?  Treason exhaled sharply -- it was probably a good thing there was only the one, Redshank is a wolf.  An idiot.  Showed up, barged past the borders, wanted to kill Rannoch for some reason.  We were going to break his leg but Liffey told us to stop.  And until that instant it really had been an 'us' as far as Treason knew.  Sure, she was the one willing to dish out whatever sadistic justice was decided, but Terance and Rannoch had been going along with it fine until that one moment.  Of course, as she was saying that, Treason was just sniffing about casually, doing normal border-checking things as if that was totally a normal thing to say.

She got the paranoid, youthful feeling there was still some judgement behind the woman's dismissal, and it irked Maia, but because she was still pretty eager to come across as cool, she didn't say anything.  Instead she listened silently as Treason explained her redshank comment. "Oh. Umm." She didn't quite know what to make of that one.  Liffey told them not to break his leg because he wanted to kill Rannoch? "He didn't say why? That's super random."  Who wanted to kill Rannoch? 

"Maybe Rannoch has some kinda secret past, and they're tryin to hide it." She mused out loud, not really believing it but enjoying the train of thought it led her on.  Maybe he was like, a mercenary or assassin or somethin, and this Redshank guy was out for revenge because he offed his brother/mother/cousin.  She didn't know why that would make Liffey stop them from breakin his leg but it was a cool story.

Treason was far less creative.  She lived in reality and thus shrugged, Didn't sound like it.  Was more like he took offense at bad luck or something.  Probably deranged, anyway.  Who runs in to a packland on their own and threatens to kill an alpha?  Nobody with a brain, I'd think.  He was probably off causing problems elsewhere, if he was even alive.  Redshank hadn't looked like the healthiest wolf around, after all.  Nature was usually fairly good about filtering out those who weren't worthy of surviving.  Usually.  She'd be pretty disappointed to find out he was still struggling along elsewhere in this chunk of the world, actually.

I think we get to kill him if he comes back to try again, though.  That seemed to almost amuse her, given the causal way she mentioned it.  If he turned out to be that stupid... Oh man.  She'd at least get to have some fun.

"Yeah, probably," she allowed, though secretly she thought her idea about Rannoch having a secret past was way better.  More interesting anyway.  Maybe she'd ask him about it one of these days, or just make one up for him.  The latter was more likely.

Oh, really? Killing seemed a little harsh, but the woman seemed pretty happy with the idea.  Maia had never killed anyone, but she felt like admitting that would be a bit of a nonstarter, so she turned it instead.  "Have you killed a lot of other wolves?"  Casual interest, Maia, casual.

The question amused her, Haven't exactly had a lot of time, have I?  Treason was young, a year and change.  She'd left home just shy of her birthday and then ended up here, where the fights were squabbles and none had ended up with anyone dead.  Hell, she hadn't even really sparred with anyone here.  They were all just... Too goody-goody.  She doubted their ability to take things seriously and that just gave her more questions, ones that if answered might not meet her scrutiny.  No problem with it though.  It'd happen if it happened, even if here it seemed unlikely.  It was the job of a soldier to kill though, wasn't it?  That and Treason probably lacked enough empathy and was plenty sadistic enough that she wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it.  She looked back to Maia and though it was more to see her reaction to that response, it might also be her asking the same question in return.

Whew.  Ok.  "Yeah, me either," she responded, casually, and almost without thought.  Could she actually kill another wolf? I mean.... she'd never even been in a situation where she had had to consider it.  So in reality, probably not; but in Maia's mind, it couldn't really be that hard.

"I guess you probably don't get much trouble here though, with it bein a mountain and all?" A guess... she hadn't heard of any except this Redshank guy, and definitely not since she joined.

She plodded along.  Treason expected that eventually she'd kill someone... Sometime.  The world liked being cruel and strange to people, so there was no reason she wouldn't be the device to dish it out.  Mm.  Nothing involving wolves recently.  When the pack first got started there were a few things though.  Felt like everyone wanted to cause trouble.  After Redshank, a couple of their members trespassed into the territory -- wasn't there, so not sure what happened.  Then there was the group that settled on uh.. Shadow Mountain I think it is.  They enjoyed causing trouble -- we got in a standoff, but they left.  And then they left for real.  Good riddance.  It was only unfortunate that they hadn't stuck around long enough for her to give them a proper sendoff.

"Oh.  Wow."  That was quite a list, but of course they had made short work of anyone who came. Now she was a little upset nothing had happened while she was here.  Obviously everyone else had gotten the chance to show how awesome they were and she'd never actually been in a real fight before.  A fact she def wasn't going to be disclosing here.

"Well, I hope someone tries something again.  Not like super bad.  But something we gotta fight, since it's kinda boring just patrolling."  As she talked, she watched her new 'friend' (in Maia's mind they were def friends now) for any sign of approval.

It really had been pretty quiet recently, yeah.  If it kept going, Treason might just get restless.  I'm sure something will eventually.  Just gotta be in the right place at the right time, though...  If you're on the wrong side of the territory, you aren't gonna be much use.  But then again, if you're the only one there, might get yourself in too deep, you know?  Though the latter hadn't really been an issue for her, the former had been the case.  Irritatingly.  She wanted to always be at the conflict, get a few bites in and all that.  But no, she couldn't teleport.  An ongoing problem.  If you figure out that balance, let me know.  It was a little sarcastic, perhaps, but close enough to being honest that she really did want to know.

That seemed right.  "Yeah.  Guess I just gotta always be out," she said, with more conviction than she felt.  She liked patrolling because she did want to protect the place, but it was so boring.  And so much more monotonous than napping.  Or meeting other packmates.  Or really literally anything else.

"Same, though.  I mean, if you figure it out."  This was good though yeah? They had a deal.  She grinned, hoping Treason appreciated it as much as she did.  Man she was cool.

Do we wanna wrap this up since it's getting a little old kinda? :P

She grunted an affirmation.  Yep.  It wasn't going to cooperate. Life was a jerk that way.  That and keep an ear out for someone calling about trouble.  Not as reliable as being able to find a deer to hunt or plants to pick or whatever.  If you want constant excitement, gotta choose another calling.  Which was the truth -- then sometimes weird alphas got in the way.

Treason was running low on things to talk about, but there was still a fair amount of ground she was planning on covering before the day was out.  Was Maia going to be awkwardly following along in probably-growing silence or was she going to head off her own way?  Treason didn't care too much one way or another as long as she was able to finish her duties by the end of it.

you betcha!

Oh, you better believe Maia was gonna do the awkward follow! She hadn't nearly exhausted her reserve of conversational topics, and now that she had Treason's (albeit grudging) attention, she happily followed, chatting about past trainings and Terance and Wraen and just how great bein here was.

Likely she'd eventually take the hint and leave, if Treason didn't outright get sick of it and tell her to buzz off.  But she left feeling like she made a pretty good friend here, regardless, and it excited the girl that someone like Treason was down to hang out with her, at least a little.