Overture Downs Longing
Daughter of The Bear
158 Posts
Ooc — Dai
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Weather : 65࿁F - Slightly windy - Partially cloudy
        Time : Early Afternoon - 1:05 p.m
               Location: Under a Deciduous tree in Overturn Downs.
                      Tagging: @Polaris
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Lounging under the shade of a deciduous tree, Aliana watched a herd from a distance. They gather around the nearby lake, each getting their fill; watching one another while some were eating off of the earth. Always cautious, always vigilant. Nothing new. They wouldn't stay long, they'd be gone before Hati's eye closes. A sigh escapes her muzzle while the crisp breeze carried the thick, musky scent of Bison to her. It filled her nose, gifting her brain with information...and made her stomach twist with a hungering ache. 

Man, what I’d give to have a bite of one of them... 

She had yet to taste Bison ...well, a freshly killed Bison and even the carcass variety are a bit of a rarity. Usually picked over by crows, vultures, and coyotes long before she comes across it. Scavenging and catching small prey; a wolf her size needed more than that. Hunting large prey alone was dangerous. A pair of antlers could rip her open, A well-aimed hoof could split a skull.

Yeah, yeah, one could say she was thinking too...cautiously, too cynical. In her status as a Loner, she couldn’t afford these risks but hunger pushes her to try, try, try. Despite the risks, it was better than starving as these are the risks of being a hunter.

Not only that but ...

She could feel it. The air was getting colder; days shorter, nights longer. Fall was coming and when fall comes, winter was never far behind. Several months of ice and snow and barely scraping by as prey becomes scarce.

She was not spending another Winter as a Loner. 

Aliana hated being a Loner in general. She was a Pack wolf through and through, born and raised. Back then, when she was a whelp, the very thought becoming a Loner terrified her. As she got older, she was raised to look down upon Loners, regarding them as scavenging mutts; always fighting for scraps, criminals. Now...her views changed...to some extent, she had spent a year out here on her own. Aliana could grasp how some wolves would prefer Loner life. They likely see some sort of freedom in it; independence, unanchored by Pack Law, and its ranking rules. But where they saw limitless freedom, she saw lost, no direction, isolation. No safety, no protection, no home, no packmates. She missed the warm and safe embrace of a pack, the daily duties to do instead of wandering aimlessly from one place to the next.

Though she didn’t know whether that thought was out of actual survival or ...she if was homesick. That she missed her siblings and parents and wondered if they too escaped into the wild, looking for her. Or did they stay with those flat-faced creatures and get carted off to a land far from here? She misses them even if she tries not to think about them, she does subconsciously.

A deep mournful sigh leaves her nostrils while Aliana slouched on the spot. Sapphire eyes trailed upward; looking out beyond the grassy plains, over the countless trees, and into the cloudy heavens. 

Mother ... Father … Sister … Brothers… I hope we’re all looking up at the same sky.

When she heard the snap of a twig and shuffle of movement on the grass behind her, Aliana shot up to her feet glancing behind her. Her body posed in a slightly defensive manner, ❝Who’s there? ❞

This is the law of the Jungle, as old and as true as the sky, And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.