Nova Peak hearts and minds

This thread is intended for @Swift @Pasha @Allure II and @Whittier - I know how hard it is to have complete threads with a baby, so I'm going to post Bazi bringing in a new thing for the pups every now and then (possibly every day) and you can respond with their reaction on whatever timeline you want. Double-posting is fine, and there's no real timeline apart from the pups age - you can cover 2 weeks in a single post if you want.

Anyone else is welcome to bring the pups things (under mum's watchful eye).

STIMULUS 1: POOP!

Meat was one thing; her children possessed an untrained but hard-wired instinct to seek it out. Who had taught the first ever wolf that she needed to hunt prey and eat its flesh? You just.. knew.

But there were plenty of other things that the four Frostfur heirs needed to be exposed to before they could venture beyond the den. Today, it was poo - all kinds of poo. Bazi had sourced everything from dark rabbit pellets to dried ox droppings the size of the pups' heads. She arranged them in scattered piles near the center of the den and waited to see what her brood would make of it.

Swift had not yet opened his eyes, but he was awake, and his senses were sharpening by the day. Thus when his mother arrived with an assortment of goodies, his nose began to twitch and his head turned toward the smells wafting his way. Strength was building in his legs, and they pulled him steadily toward the new smells, where his nose bumped into the clump of ox droppings. He stopped, his head bobbing, nose probing the clump as it breathed in the peculiar smell.

Then, his eyelids slid back.

And so it was that young Swift's first view of the world was...

well... shitty.

Allure was not yet fully aware of the differing antics her mother played upon her pups. Deaf and still not able to see, the bi-toned babe could only rely on her sense of smell -- and today, it was rather raunchy. It smelled different than when she and her brothers defacated -- another thing she was not sure what that was, but only that she had been victim to rolling in to a pile of stink more often than not before her mother or father would pluck her up and clean her up.

Rather than seek out the smell, the girl's nose scrunched. and in turn, she attempted to tuck her nose in to her belly, as if that would make it go away.

STIMULUS 2: MOUNTAIN LION POOP AND FUR

It had taken time and careful planning, but finally, Bazi was able to bring her children something rare.

To her knowledge, there were no mountain lions on Nova Peak. The sample she dropped onto the floor had come from The Tangle, and had taken her a full day to locate and transport. This was a scent that her children needed to know and fear from an early age - although Bazi was not entirely sure how to impress upon her sons and daughter that this was not just a fun and exciting new smell. It stank. Sour, almost. Surely their brains were hard-wired to just know what this was.

Bazi placed the tuft of belly fluff and sample of scat in front of her children, and sat back to see what they would make of it.

For @Pasha @Swift @Allure II @Whittier - part of your training!

Swift was awake when his mother returned. His eyesight was still developing, but she was looking less and less like a blob and more like her own shape, and he could now track her movements with some level of clarity. His sense of smell was sharpening too, and he was quick to wrinkle his nose as a new scent bathed his muzzle. It was a sour, rank scent, not unlike anything they had been exposed to before. The littlest Frostfur was showing more and more boldness though, and was the first to rise. Yes, rise. His legs were just beginning to be able to support him and lift him from the floor, and he moved brazenly toward the tuft of fur.

His infantile rrrrr...'ing was gone, and now he growled and it was unmistakeable. He shoved his nose close to the fur, barked at it and swiped a paw it as he clumsily leaped backwards, planting on his rump for a few moments before he could summon his legs to stand again. Then he stamped two forepaws onto the fur, and bit into with the milk incisors that erupted a few days prior. Soon he was separating pieces of the fluff into smaller bits, and then...

He stepped back, and his head tilted, and he howled. A high pitched, squeaky howl, but there it was. Like a little king claiming victory over the fluff.

STIMULUS 3: RAIN


Thus far, her children had responded appropriately to everything that had been brought into the den. Swift in particular had quite a nose on him, and had been quick to identify the mountain lion as something to avoid. Bazi was immensely proud of them. Each time they responded appropriately, there was a greater chance that the pups might survive past childhood.

Today, she did not have to go out in search of something to introduce her children to - nature delivered to their doorstep.

Created companion thread: http://wolf-rpg.com/showthread.php?tid=9528

Tagging @Pasha @Allure II @Swift @Whittier @Jorunn - going to start using this thread for 'teaching' the pups things now that they're a bit older. These posts are mostly for you to have some background parenting to react to. :)

Now that each pup had proven to her that they had some command of language (Swift's first word was not what she had hoped for), Bazi started to hold court more frequently. She would summon the children to her, dragging those that refused into the circle by whatever limb she could seize, and relay terrible tales of the world's many dangers. Even Jorunn was encouraged to join in, though she made no special effort to include him.

That day, she would tell them about Lecter - and all hell-sent witch-spawn like him.

"There are wolves out there that call themselves .. shamans. Witches," she told her assembled brood. "If you ever come across someone claiming to be able to fix your problems with some mystical herb or chant, someone that makes your skin crawl, someone that believes that the rain falls because they did a dance... I want you to run. Doesn't matter how wise or sincere they seem, they are always, always out to trick you and cause you harm. Mommy has met several of these creatures in her time - when I was pregnant with you, in fact! A witch came to the borders and told mommy she could help, but your mother isn't stupid. If I'd eaten the the thing she offered me.." Bazi paused for dramatic effect, lowering her head to the children's level, "Every one of you would've been born without legs and eyes. I mean it," she barked, "I've seen it happen. There was a wolf named Jinx, long before I ever met daddy, who loved a shaman named Lecter. But she did something to offend him, and he made her unborn children leak out of her like rotted frog-spawn."

Far from the truth, of course - and a terrible thing to bring up. But Jinx was dead, and so was Lecter - Bazi was free to twist their lives for her own again. "I saw him murder a child in the forest," she told them with a dark look. "For fun." Another serious kink in the truth. The wolf in question had not been Lecter, but Jorunn's late father - and the child in question had not been a wolf. But the Frostfur children did not need to know that. "You need to know how to spot one of these lunatics, and protect yourselves from falling for their tricks. Listen closely.."

It was unlikely that the children would recall the detail of her sermon in later life. Her goal was to etch the ghost of fear and prejudice deep into their hindbrain, arming them with the pseudo-instincts that had kept their mother alive and well up until this point.

Bazi talked and talked until Whittier looked about ready to collapse and Swift's patience for sitting ran out. She told them about painted signs and symbols, lairs of bones and weeds, the twisted language and fantastical beliefs. She described Ragnar, Lecter, the borderlands witch, and every creature in between - all lumped into one dark, dagger-toothed entity.

She referenced her own great-uncle in whispers, unable to meet Swift's eye.