Redtail Rise You're the one I want to want me

A splendid sunrise lit the eastern face of Redtail Rise, causing the forest along the ridge's lower reaches to explode into bright colours. The hawks were up already, circling overhead, surveying the plains below for any sign of movement. A pair circled together just above the treeline. It was beautiful to any except Saena, who was awakened when the sun shone into her face and was spending her morning padding along the ridge's base, where she refreshed the pack's scent markers.

Patrolling the borders was something she did infrequently as a member of the plateau, but now that she led, Saena knew her priorities would have to change. She would have less time to go outriding and would need to be home more often to ward off potential intruders. She'd thought about it for days and decided that training to be a Warden was necessary if she wanted to be a serious Alpha. She hadn't yet decided which of her current trades she would forego for it, though. Outrider was obvious, but she didn't want to feel permanently tied down, and at least as an Outrider, she could serve as an ambassador for her own pack.

Squatting to spray the base of a tree with urine, the Alpha angled her head toward the northern mountain. So far, no trouble had come from them despite their proximity. Saena could only hope that Kaskara was willing to help maintain peace between the two packs... and if she wasn't, then it only reinforced Saena's decision to become a Warden as soon as she could handle it.

     The sunrise practically blinded Reek as he made his second morning descent from the ridge.  However, it did an effective job of waking him up.  Upon meeting Junior he had been in a tired haze, still groggy from the sweet grip of sleep.  Although their race had roused the ragged wolf into a state of alertness, the rising sun had completed the job. Reek bounded down the ridge with a chipper bounce to his step. His excitement about the newly formed pack knew no bounds.

     His excitement had spurred a strange idea inside the ragged wolf's mind.  An idea that was rarely ever entertained, unless necessity dictated otherwise.  Reek was going to do, things.  Stuff and things.  However, he had yet to know what these things would entail... only that he would try to pull his meager weight within the pack instead of the usual nothings.  Even thinking about not being lazy was hard work. But, it was the thought that counts, right?

     Reek had decided to seek Saena out instead of thinking of individual jobs to do.  Perhaps he could aid her in whatever she was occupying herself with at the moment.  The ragged wolf followed her scent straight to the border where he found her marking her territory on the base of a tree.  "Saena!" He exclaimed while hiking his leg over a bush to aid in her marking.  "Guess who I just met!"   

From here, it was impossible to spot any movement on the mountain, but Saena watched it for another half minute before moving on. Her eyes would be to the north frequently, just in case the worst came to pass. She had zero experience with packs jockeying for space, but she knew it could happen. She'd offered a pretty decent deal to Nova Peak and could only hope that Kaskara had presented it to her brother Alpha as a good thing rather than a bad one. The last thing she wanted was neighbourly aggression.

She was just squatting at another spot less than a quarter mile from her last marking when Reek stepped up behind her and marked his own spot. Saena turned to grin at him, grateful for his help, but his excited question stopped her in her tracks. Marking could wait long enough for her to play his little guessing game.

She had an idea who Reek might be referring to, but since there was a chance it wasn't what she thought, Saena wryly said, "God?" Of course, Saena had no religion and believed in no gods, having been raised in a family who believed no such things. In case there was any confusion, though, she quickly said, "I'm just kidding. This wolf you met wouldn't happen to have white armpits, would they?" Junior's pits were about the most distinguishing of her features, but so rarely commented on. It was possible Reek hadn't noticed them and her question would make no sense to him, but it was worth a shot anyway. Better than guessing names and getting it wrong.

I had two final exams today and I feel mentally dead.  Excuse the mess!  Thankfully, sophomore year of college is finally over!

Reek's typical grin spread across his face while Saena played along with his guessing game.  Work could wait, this would be far more entertaining for the raggedy jokester.  He shook his leg, finishing his mark over the bush before settling to his haunches beside his meager claim.  It seemed Saena was right with her second (If you could call it that) guess, since her description of her sister was pretty spot on.  How disappointing. However, he did let out a slight chuckle to the preposterousness of her first.  

"And we have a winner!" Reek exclaimed with his usual enthusiasm. "Please step forward and claim your prize... which is, erm, my... appreciation?"  His grin shifted haphazardly into an awkward cringe . 

"But, seriously though," he continued. "You never told me you had a sister!"  He had never asked her family history, however, at this point he felt as if he should have. Saena was like a sister to him already, yet, he knew so little about her.  But, for a blabbermouth like Reek, his life's history was usually told within the first hour of meeting: genealogies, anecdotes, and all sorts of information tended to erupt from the bastard without anyone asking, like word-vomit.  "Junior ain't too bad.  She'll be good to have around," mused Reek as he rose back to his feet to give Saena a playful nudge with his shoulder. 

"You find God and that's all you can offer?" Saena joked, knowing full well that if there were any gods, they were unable to provide anything to the mortal creatures on the earth below. There was nothing more engimatic than supposedly all-knowing, omnipotent, invisible dudes in the sky with the power to grant anything and the refusal to actually do so to prove their worth or existence. Religious wolves clung to the belief that there was something for them when they died, but Saena wasn't convinced by the argument that all-powerful sky dudes could only give gifts when one was unable to receive them any longer, so the joke was, of course, that Reek couldn't give a gift from God because there were no gods to give him gifts in the first place.

"Honestly, it just never came up," she said, though he'd successfully made her feel a little guilty for never mentioning her siblings. "I actually have two, but the other one is kinda weird and told me she hates me and ran off to god knows where," The Sunspire, she now knew, "and I haven't seen her since. Her name's Tytonidae. Junior's the cool sister, and we have a brother named Pura, but he's sort of a vampire." That was a joke as well, but Pura might as well have been, with his penchant for stalking other wolves and living on the fringe and not stepping foot in daylight, it seemed.

"She's great," Saena continued, padding a few feet and squatting to mark a stone sunken into the soil. "She's a Warrior and an Outrider. We always thought she was gonna lead a pack, maybe even our birthplace, but I guess she just likes traveling too much to really be a leader." It was disappointing for Saena, who would've allowed Junior to rise to Beta position in a heart beat, but it was lucky that her sister declined; it was unlikely the fledgling pack would've taken kindly to such blatant favoritism, a flaw Saena had yet to realize in herself.

Sorry for the delay!  Work has been crazy busy and I only have enough time for, like, 1 or 2 replies at night.  Hopefully things will cool down soon.  I feel half-dead.

Reek laughed lightly at Saena's joke.  The ragged wolf was never really the religious type.  However, he had been surrounded by religious wolves for most of his life: back at the Colombia River Valley, the wolves worshiped their Alpha, Cato, as their God-king and the sirens of Ankyra Sound had the mothers (Which, any male following them absolutely dumbfounded Reek).  Reek briefly thought of his friend Pantaleimon who blindly followed anything the sirens told him... brainwashing at it's finest.  It was safe to say, religion had left a sour taste in Reek's mouth.

Saena had begun to describe her rather large family, and Reek smiled as he listened to her in full.  Even though her family may not have been tightly knit, having relatives around was always a comforting thing.  His smile began to falter when he began to think about his own situation. Reek's only living (possibly) relative was Cato, who Reek despised more than anything.  His siblings had all died before Reek even opened his eyes, he never even saw their faces.  He had his mother, well, until she kicked it.  Other than the family Reek intended to eventually create, (chance willing if he could ever get the balls to say anything to Wynter) he was totally alone.  

"That must be nice," said Reek, feeling a slight twinge of envy toward the bond Saena and Junior had.  "I know I don't have much of a biological family, but I've got you guys.  So, I guess I've got that going for me." That was a comforting thought.  The corners of Reeks mouth curled into a terse and awkward smile.  Although, like they say, the family you choose is more important than the family you get.

Don't apologize! I feel you, I'm back at school for the month for a blood taking course. I thought it'd be pretty relaxed but it's almost worse than a real semester because of how much they cram into the one month! So I'm a bit slow too. :P

She nodded absently in response to Reek's comment. Having family everywhere was pretty nice until you didn't want a lot to do with them. With the exception of Junior and Pura, Saena had mostly forsaken her family, including her sister at the Sunspire. It was a sad truth that she and Tytonidae were scarcely even friends, let alone familial in any way, and her parents were both basically dead to her in a family sort of way. True, she'd apologized to Peregrine for treating him shitty and had forgiven him in a way for leaving, but he still wasn't family anymore. Blue Willow was family, Lasher was family, and soon, Redtail Rise would be family.

"It's not all that great sometimes," Saena told him, brushing her coat past a tree rather than marking it with urine. "People sort of get to know you as so-and-so's kid, rather than who you really are. I lived a long time without any of them, so aside from Junior and my brother, they aren't really family anymore." They still shared blood, albeit distally, but Saena was long past believing that blood had anything to do with family.

"I can be your family if you'll be mine," she said with a grin. Though it came off like a joke, the young Alpha was dead serious. Her pack would become her family, every one of them that stayed around. She wouldn't need Reek's permission to consider him a part of it, but if he wanted it acknowledged, then she was willing to do that, too.