Blacktail Deer Plateau You can't take me, I'm free

Today, Peregrine's mind swarmed with thoughts that no amount of hunting could beat back, so he eventually gave up and sought a quiet place to sit, settling on a ledge overlooking the flatlands. He thought of his three siblings: Atticus, who practically loathed him right now; Crete, who similarly wasn't speaking to him much (and it had nothing to do with his being mute); and Osprey, who'd arrived too late to be directly involved in everything but whom Peregrine worried might also begin to hate him. Then, of course, there was Hawkeye, who'd taken possession of his mind and heart so swiftly while causing so much dissension between brothers. And, of course, the pups—his pups— hopefully growing even now in her belly.

The swarthy male sighed and slumped forward into a sphinx-like position. He felt happy and sad, celebratory and dismal, all at once. He felt uncertain about his future and whether Atticus, Crete and Osprey would even stay here on the plateau with him. Even if all three left him, Peregrine was irrevocably tethered here now, not only to Hawkeye but to their children. The thought tore at him, leaving him distraught and restless.

Climbing back onto all fours, Peregrine began to prowl along the ledge, his steps slow but deliberate. He halfway hoped for someone—perhaps even his old nemesis, Jinx—to appear on his borders so he could take out all these conflicting emotions on a good old territorial dispute. Yes, a good, thorough brawl would cure him of his affliction...

Few days had passed, since she had arrived in the Blacktail deer's plateu. She had a bit rest from her long travel and then spent the rest of her time, exploring the lands and tracking possible prey. MO had done a great deal to teach every single of her offspring, how to hunt efficiently and be able to take care of themselves. Therefore it was hard for Osprey to sit around and do nothing for a very long time, therefore she was up and going, returning to the denning place only at nighttime.

Unfortunately Osprey hadn't been able to make any progress regarding her estranged brothers. Crete was mute and it was hard to tell, whether he agreed or disagreed with what she told. Plus, he seemed a bit off-standish in the matter. And she hadn't met Atticus at all, which was a little sad. So... no happy news for Peregrine. However - he had his own things and matters to deal with. The beautiful femme fatale Hawkeye and working towards the new generation of the pack. She didn't want to interefere.

However they weren't best friends and kindred souls for nothing. Being away from each other for too long didn't feel right, therefore today, instead of going on another hunting trip, she chose to look for Peregrine. And it did not take long, because his scent, so heavily mingled with frustration, sadness and stress, was not that hard to find. Soon she saw him in person. "Hey, handsome," she called out to him and padding towards him. "A lady needs company - want to join?"

When Osprey's dulcet tones reached his ears, the black cloud hovering over him lightened a little. He turned and his mood changed; he went from spoiling for a fight to relieved joy in a heartbeat. Her greeting at least put one of his fears to rest: it was pretty clear his brothers' attitude toward him hadn't affected Osprey's opinion in the least. Grateful, the swarthy Alpha stretched out, his muzzle touching the side of hers and his tongue poking out in a sweet, fraternal kiss.

"Of course. What're you getting into today?" he replied. "I was just... brooding," he shared of his own affairs, giving her a crooked, almost sheepish smile before admitting something else, "I'm glad you're here."

Osprey returned his greeting the same way and then took two steps back to have a good look at her brother. He might be good at hiding his emotions, but he practically "reeked" of someone, who was having a hard time. She made a promise there and then that she would make him feel better today. No matter what her siblings thought, Peregrine worked hard enough to deserve a nice time off.

"Well... duties aside I intended to spend a day with you," she explained to him. "I mean, I don't see you nearly as often as I would like," this didn't mean that she disapproved, "therefore we need sibling time." She took a step closer, nibbled on his ear and then said quietly: "Therefore I am kidnapping you here and now. Make no sound or else..."

Her words gave his worried heart a rest. "You can't kidnap the willing," he replied jokingly, grumbling rather happily as she nibbled on his ear, as it felt good. "I'm all yours," he added with a glimmer in his eye. He recollected how he'd sort of dumped her back on Crete last time, simply because he needed to get back to Hawkeye. Well, he and his mate had finished their mission—though only time would tell if they'd succeeded—and there was no such distraction today.

"What would you like to do, Silver Bullet?" he questioned, his open face indicating that he would be up for just about anything she wanted to do. "We could hunt or patrol or do something 'responsible'... or we could play all the live long day. It's up to you, Oss," he told her, his dark tail waving as he awaited her suggestion.

"Oh, come on... you could at least act like you are surprised and afraid," Osprey whined. "Just a teeny bit to make a girl happy, please?" She mustered up an innocent face and looked at him expectantly, while her tail was wagging behind. But moments later she could not hold her joy inside and burst out laughing. How strange it was - they both were grown up, serious and boring wolves and yet, when she was around Peregrine, all she could think about was fun and fooling around. Today at least.

"Hmmm..." she thought a bit about the options - none of them seemed very exciting. Probably because these were the things they were doing every single day and would do for the rest of their lives. "We'll go dragonhunting," she finally told him. Stories of dragons were among Osprey's favorites and she had really got on the Falcons' lorekeeper's nerves, when she had asked her to tell about dragons over and over and over again. At one point it had seemed that there couldn't be enough dragons for Osprey.

"I can bet my life on it - I saw one this morning."

Although he didn't expect her answer—they hadn't hunted dragons since their younger days—Peregrine found himself immediately embracing the idea. And then a thought struck him and, with a laugh, he exclaimed, "Oss, did you know this is where Koontz's pack lived when they were here? She called them the Dragonwatchers. How funny is that?" Then, more playfully, he added, "I bet she left a few dragons behind when she left..." The swarthy two-year-old wiggled his eyebrows.

"What did it look like?' he questioned in the next beat, his deep voice serious even if his eyes glittered impishly. "I mean, how do you know it wasn't just a lizard? Were there any telltale signs? Like, did it breathe fire or at least smoke from the nostrils or something?" Peregrine pressed, his lips twitching.

"Really?" Osprey was surprised. She was aware that Koontz had led a pack somewhere around in the wilds, but her sister hadn't specified where exactly. The fact that they where standing on the same grounds was amazing. And there were people who said that life was not an adventure novel. "Well - she knows the deal!" she winked.

"A lizard - are you kidding me?" she snorted. "It was huge and long and had wings. Big wings," Osprey described the looks of the dragon, coming up with more details as she spoke. "And it had a lot of horns too. And had a maw that just screamed out to the world: "Look at me! I am a dragon!" she exclaimed the last one and pounded her forefeet to make her point clear.

"You know what - we have to keep the dragonwatcher legacy alive," she told Peregrine, struck by a sudden and crazy idea. "I mean - we could make a secret club or something..."

"Well, if it had wings..." Peregrined teased, enjoying Osprey's enthusiasm, "it was probably a dragon, then. I wonder what kind of dragon it was, though. What color were its scales?" the Alpha pressed. "And how long was its snout?"

Then his sister proposed something else and he didn't know whether she was joking around or serious. Testing the waters, Peregrine asked, "What did you have in mind? We should probably start, you know, walking if we want to find this dragon." He motioned for her to fall into step beside him as she began to trot leisurely through the trees.

"A mistwalker maybe? It was very visible and feelable, but it did not appear to have solid body. Plus, the mist around him - it was as if a cloud was moving through the forest on it's own," Osprey told him about a dragon type neither of them had heard before. The great thing about her brother was that she could come up with the most bizarre things in the world and he would play along without blinking an eye. Other people she had tried roleplaying with either thought she was crazy or felt very awkward, pretending to be something they were not.

"The snout? I was surprised to see it there that I didn't have any time to contemplate snouts. Hell, I don't even know, how long my own snout is," this occurred to her only now. "Sure, let's go. You are in charge of sniffing - I will be the one to outrun it," Osprey got to her feet and padded near Peregrine. "I mean - the first rule about dragonwatcher club is you DO NOT talk about dragonwatcher club - in that kind of way," she found it a little hard to explain the idea in simple terms.

Peregrine listened studiously as Osprey described the dragon, nodding and mhming accordingly. When she mentioned her own snout, he looked at her speculatively, screwing up his left eyeball and estimating, "I'd say it's three to four inches long. You're definitely not snub-nosed." He smiled at her.

"Hey, wait a second," he said as they began to move, "what do you mean you're the one to outrun it? Does that mean you're going to let it eat me? That's not very nice, Oss." The Alpha male chuffed at her rule and nodded to show his acceptance before saying, "If it's made out of mist, do you think it'll even have a scent to track...?"

"Peregrine," Osprey stopped in her tracks and looked at her earnestly, "after all of our dragon-hunting adventures, has there been one time I have left you behind for a dragon to feast on?" Never in a game, never in the real life would she walk out on him, if that was possible. As long as she would be by his side, no beast real or imaginary would dare to touch Perry. Either they both escaped or went down fighting.

"I have a plan, trust me," she nudged him and resumed the walk. Osprey did not reveal it yet, because she had no idea, what it was. "That's why I have you for - you have the best nose out of two of us," it wasn't that his sister was bad at tracking scents, she simply enjoyed running more. "So, I want you to revert back to every time you have been in mist - it has a scent. Just try to remember and get to work."

Although he'd been teasing her and she was now teasing him in turn, Peregrine said simply, "Truth," in reply to Osprey's statement. "I know you have my back and my front," he added, referring to a joke that dated as far back as their childhood. With a small laugh, her bumped his swarthy muzzle against her hoary one.

"Aha," he said when she revealed she had a plan, though he didn't press her for details; he knew they would come in time. "Um..." he added when she instructed him to think back on the times he'd walked through mist. What had it smelled like? His nose wriggled, as if actually questing for the scent.

"Well yes ma'am!" he crowed playfully when she ordered him to get to work. Jauntily, he pranced alongside her, sniffing at the air or occasionally dropping his head to brush his nose along the ground. He smelled quite a few scents, though none of them were quite misty enough to capture his interest yet.

All of your sides, if needed. Osprey replied to his statement in her mind and smiled at him. It was so easy to be happy and carefree around Peregrine, that it felt almost as if they were kids again. During their first winter. God, that was such a long time ago and how much things had changed since then. She still hadn't figured out, how to get on the moon, even though that dream of being the first wolf to walk there was not entirely lost. Then - how they had thought that everything would stay the same forever. And how short that forever had turned out to be.

Nope, no sulking today. She reminded herself and shook her head to get rid of those thoughts. There was a thing her siblings did not know - that despite her cheerful and open attitude to everything new in her life, she missed home and her family just as much as they did. But she was very good at hiding it. "Any luck?" while she had contemplated all of this, Peregrine had gone ahead of her. She caught up with him and gave an expectant glance.

They proceeded in comfortable, mutual silence until his sister's voice broke it. "N—" he began to say when he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. His head snapped around and he began to move even before he consciously realized what he was doing, his keen hunter's instincts guiding him.

A lean, brown hare fled in front of him. It was no dragon but the Gamekeeper wasn't about to let a game stop him from catching some fresh meat. As it zigzagged through the brush, he pursued, gaining a foot here and there until he was able to reach out an athletic foreleg and swipe the rabbit's feet from beneath it. It went tumbling and he pivoted to pounce it, crushing it to the ground with his weight and quickly killing it with a bite to the back of its neck.

Picking up his fresh kill, Peregrine trotted back to Osprey, smiling around the carcass. "Fo' you," he said around it, holding out the limp, bloodied body to his sister.

ooc: the more I play Osprey, the more I love her. :)

Osprey might be an excellent sprinter and a good hunter, but the latter was, where Peregrine bested her. He was quick to notice a hare several seconds before his sister even understood, what was going on. He bolted past her and her first instinct was to follow him. She picked up the speed and ran paralell him, spotting the prey now too and seeking for an opportunity to join in bringing it down.

But Perry was a great hunter for a reason - it all happened in a whirl and the little fast creature had lost his life seconds later. Being the gentleman he was, her brother brought the hare back to her to share. Osprey looked at him, eyes narrowed to slits and then a crooked grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. "Show off," she told him and nudged his shoulder in a playful manner.

That's awesome to hear. :)

Peregrine contemplated swinging the rabbit to slap it against his sister's face, then thought better of it. He dropped it gently at her feet instead, then grinned and made a scoffing noise at her allegation. "Who, me? Hey, I never give you shit when you show off your winged feet, Osprey the Fleet of Foot," he teased in turn. "Seriously, though, eat up! I imagine you burn a trillion calories running around the way you do."

Knowing how fast a wolf could eat, Peregrine didn't bother sitting down. He roamed ahead, sniffing at the ground, still trying to pick up on the scent of a dragon. In the meantime, an ear remained rotated always in Osprey's direction, waiting to hear her finish her impromptu meal.

"Touché," Osprey admitted her defeat in this argument. Like every young wolf, she enjoyed to be seen as someone extraordinary in other eyes. Peregrine was very good at being an admirer - for this reason she had never suffered for the lack of confidence. She always knew that she would be the best in his eyes, just the same way he was her idol. And if anyone else thought differently, then that was their problem.

"Hey," she furrowed her brow and called after her brother, when he left her alone by the rabbit. "How do you imagine I will be able to chase that dragon, if my full belly will drag me down?" in other words - she didn't want to eat alone. Perry had every right to have a bite of it too. "Come over here! I refuse to eat, unless, you take a half," she sat down and turned her head away to look in the opposite direction.

Peregrine affectionately rolled his eyes at Osprey's insistence. Nevertheless, he trotted back toward her and said, almost too agreeably, "If you insist." He then pinned the rabbit's body down with a single paw and tore it in half—albeit, one half consisted of the rabbit's body and the other merely its head.

With an impish smirk, he pushed the decapitated carcass back toward his silvery sibling, then gamely took the head in his mouth and flopped to the ground. Now holding it between his black paws, he gnawed the eyes out of the skull and then cracked it with his teeth, the noise echoing like a gunshot in the quiet wood.

Osprey cracked a grin at her brother, then took her bigger half of the rabbit, brought a little distance away from him and settled down to eat it. She tore piece after piece, chewing them a little or swallowing them whole. For the winter this creature had fared surprisingly well - the meat was soft and nutritious. Usually besides the plush coat, skin and bones there was little else of worth eating.

When she had finished, she licked her chops and yawned. "This was one good - remind me that I owe you a picnic in the wilds too," Osprey told her brother and meant it. "So, what now - it is obvious that with this delay we won't be catching that mist dragon. I wouldn't be surprised if he was high up in the sky by now," she lifted her head, squinted her eyes and observed the sky above her for a while. "Suggestions?"

After finishing his own portion, Peregrine belched lustily, smacked his lips and announced, "Well, I'm just about ready for a nap," in response to Osprey's question. "You see, I know I should get all the sleep I can get, 'cause I won't be getting much of it after the kids are born..." He winked, then laughed.

"Of course," he continued in the next instant, rising and trotting to stand over her, "I wouldn't waste our day together sleeping. Wanna play a game of some sort? Tag's out; I'd never catch you. We've already played hide-and-seek with the mist dragon—and lost. What does that leave?"

"A nap sounds alright," Osprey yawned and felt the sleepiness immediately after. That is, what good meals do to you, you get slow at thinking and are unwilling to do anything else but lie down and sleep. "I am yet to see a cranky Peregrine," she chuckled, having a vivid image of a grumpy and sleep-deprived Peregrine. It was hilarious, but since laughing at it wouldn't be very nice, she assured him instead: "Well... MO did a good job at shutting us up, when we were too whiny. I am sure that you will be just as good. She nuzzled the fur on his nape to emphasize it.

"Let's lie down for a moment," she did this and encouraged him to do the same. "And discuss our plans."

Peregrine gave Osprey a lopsided smile when she mentioned she'd never seen him cranky. Either she was being generous or—well, he supposed it was possible he'd never been in a bad mood around her. In many ways, his sister was the light of his life and, aside from their emotional encounter after his exile, he'd never once been short with her that he could recall.

Soon enough, the pair of them flopped on the ground side-by-side. Peregrine rolled onto his side and lifted his free legs to drape them over her, using his forepaw to give her a lazy, brotherly shove. "You know I don't care what we do, as long as we're together," he murmured, smiling at the corniness of it.

Bad mood was a relative term. Osprey had grown up, surrounded by loud-mouthed, testosterone fueled guys, who had had occasional brawls and small fights with one another. Anger came, anger went - you simply shook it off and moved forward. By her definition bad mood was something very radical and serious. This did not happen often, therefore she had only two terms to describe, how other people felt - good and not so good.

"Ok then..." Osprey pounced at the opportunity to exploit her brother's generosity in doing, whatever they wanted. "Why don't you tell me the story of how you managed to charm the queen of the forest? From what I have seen from afar and heard from others, she is quite a lady."

Osprey wanted to know how he'd wound up with Hawkeye. Peregrine thought back on his first encounter with the Alpha female, just outside the plateau, and actually winced. "Funny story: my first words to her were 'fuck off." He winced again, grinning sheepishly at Osprey. Likely, this didn't surprise her much. To explain himself, Peregrine added, "It wasn't long after, you know, the stuff with Tyrannus... and I was so bitter..."

He trailed off for a moment, then resumed the story on a lighter note. "Well, I got into a fight with an intruder and Hawkeye seemed a little worried, so I took her aside and explained what'd happened. Then we started to flirt. I offered myself to her if she wanted to have a litter in the spring. It was kind of off-the-cuff... I wasn't thinking of becoming her mate or the Alpha. I guess I said it in a moment of lust.

Well, she declined but told me we could court. So that's what we did. It wasn't long before I wooed her, of course," he continued with a grin. Although it didn't fade, his face seemed to freeze when he added, "She called a meeting one day and I was the first to show up. We actually bickered a bit, then she surprised me by asking me to make it official right then and there. And, just like that, I was her mate and the Alpha.

That's why Atti's so mad at me..." Peregrine revealed after a long beat, staring at his toes. "Not only did the promotion shock and anger them—him and Crete, I mean—Atti also had a crush on Hawkeye. We'd talked about it beforehand and he said it was cool. But, considering everything, I'm not sure Atticus is ever going to be okay with me again." His voice died in his throat and he continued to stare at his forepaws for a long time.

"But," the swarthy male exclaimed after blinking himself back to focus and turning his dusky jade eyes to Osprey's face, "let's not dwell on that right now. Back to Hawkeye: she's become the center of my life. I mean, you'll always be my girl too, though," he was sure to add, nudging her cheek.