Nova Peak a lesson to be learned

Anyone!

In his first two months of life, Swift had made it quite clear to those around him that he was a clumsy, haphazard boy, and that was not about to change anytime soon. When his coat got wet, it was still possible to smell skunk on him, a reminder of one such occasion when he found trouble. But trouble also had a way of finding him even when he was not being bold and brazen, as was the case when a wasp sneaked out of a decaying log and stung his snout.

He was, as he often was, the first one out of the den. By now, the pups were able to travel further from the den and soon would move to a rendezvous site, and Swift made full use of his freedom. He headed toward the Bitcurrent, nosing around the grasses and shrubs, gathering a few plants as he came across them. He still did not truly understand his affinity for them, or why he sought certain ones when he was hurt, but he was starting to recognize that he did. His two minds were becoming one.

He rounded a corner, with about a half dozen plants in his mouth, and there he came face to face with a bobcat and her kits, and laid beside them a freshly killed rabbit. His fur bristled, and his muzzle wrinkled into a snarl, his clenched teeth crushing the plants he held. He did not know what he was getting himself into, and took a stiff step forward. Chest puffed out and head high, a perfect portrait of a threat to the mother and her children.

She hissed and swatted at him. Her warning. The only one she'd give.

Bazi chose a good day to follow her son on one of his bizarre trips.

She has distanced herself from the pups of late, leaving them alone for long periods of time whilst she hunted, explored, and escaped to the secret life she was nurturing being the borders. The children didn't seem to mind - there was plenty to explore at home, and she kept them warm and fed. The vulnerable months were behind them.

She tailed her son at a comfortable distance. He wandered the woods often, going from plant to plant like he knew what he was doing. Bazi put it down to play, but the pattern worried her for reasons she could not explain. He has taken to gathering greens and taking them home - something she noticed but did not question. It was.. unsettling. But why?

He disappeared around a corner. Bazi picked up her pace, deciding then and there to confront her son and ask what he was up to. She opened her mouth to summon him in the same second that she, too, came face to face with the wild cat.

Swift stepped towards it. His mother froze.

"Swift. Get behind me now, " she hissed, heart hammering in her throat.

HI MOM! Sorry for the scare but Swift has some learning to do! ;)

He was focused on the cat, and paid little attention to his mother, who he had not been aware was following him. She hissed at him to get behind her, a command he understood perfectly well, but one he was too entranced, too stubborn to listen to. No, in his yet young mind he was in control here. This cat was in his way and he did not like it. He lunged for the cat with a bark and that's when he was delivered a quick and painful message: she retaliated with a claws extended, swiping them across his muzzle. He yelped and stumbled backward, his plants falling from his mouth, but the cat was not done.

She had kits to protect, and though the young Frostfur was not as big of a threat as an adult wolf could be, she aimed to teach him some respect. Some fear. In a flash, with a deafening yowl, she was upon him, pinning him to the ground, hissing loudly in his face. His eyes were wide with terror, staring transfixed into the glaring yellow ones of hers. The cat's mouth gaped to brandish her sharp teeth. He thought he was done. He felt the tips of her claws against his body, holding him. It seemed he had been trapped for an eternity, waiting to be torn to pieces. In reality, it was but a moment.

Without Bazi's intervention, the cat would release him and return to her kits, ushering them into the woods and away from the wolves. But Bazi was a mother as well, and her brazen son had found himself in peril.

Bazi would not have believed it if every deity in human history appeared before her and written it in blood on her eyeballs. As far as she was concerned, the cat was about to execute her son. Mothers' instinct overrode sense, filling her with equal parts rage and the capacity for self-sacrifice. Without thinking, the wolf mother snarled bloody murder, lunging for creature's own children - a snap decision she would no doubt come to regret.

PPin with permission! Don't worry, Mom I'll patch you up later! ;)

He had never known fear like this. He felt it in his marrow, even as the cat lifted off of him. But he was wrong to think that what he felt was the peak of terror, for in the same moment the cat let him up his mother shot past and went for the kits, and the mother cat was lightning on paws. This was a new level of fear.

He watched in horror as the cat leaped for his mother with a frightening yowl, terrible claws extended to slash at her and drive her back from the kits, and no doubt blood would color her white fur just as it had on Swift's muzzle. He shook uncontrollably, not knowing what to do, until...

With focus he sprang into action, all signs of fear replaced with calm determination. Like a battering ram he launched himself at the cat, barelling into her and sending her sprawling momentarily as her kits huddled together. He then immediately turned to his mother and started to push against her forcefully, snarling loudly in his attempt to make her move back, move away from the kits and the cat who was hissing and lashing her tail, ready to sacrifice herself, though no sensible animal wanted to die if they did not have to.

Bazi literally turned the other cheek, receiving the business end of the cat's rage with her cheek, neck, and shoulder. It was enough to drive her a few feet away from the kits, and she was a split second away from launching an ill-advised counter-attack when son appeared at her feet - shoving and snarling at her just as fiercely as their enemy. Perplexed but too stunned by her injuries to argue, Bazi backed away. A wolf's strength against a fellow apex predator was its pack; alone, she stood a far lesser chance of coming out of the encounter alive.

Swift succeeded in herding his snarling, glaring mother away from the family of bobcats. They were smart enough to move on, and quickly, leaving Swift and his bleeding mother to tend to their wounds. "Mother of hell," Bazi swore, inspecting her lacerated shoulder. Blood flowed freely down her leg, but they were only flesh wounds - easily disguised by fur (her first, vain thought). "Don't you ever puff your chest out at one of those creatures," she roared down at her son, spittle flying around her. In that moment, it did not matter that he had very likely saved them - he was only solving a mess that he had caused.

It was his 'second mind' that had taken hold, something that happened more and more infrequently as time went on. Whatever it was, it had awoken at the precise moment it was needed. With his mother shoved back, the mother cat took the opportunity to herd her kittens away. Swift immediately set about his business - as he did when this mind of his took control. He moved to inspect his mother's wounds even as she roared at him, and rightfully so. He paid her little heed though, entranced as always by his task, sniffing at the slashes in her cheek first, then her neck, and her shoulder.

Suddenly he spun, as if coming to a conclusion, and he went for the plants that had been dropped when the cat swiped at him. But what he found were not his carefully gathered greens, but the torn and trampled remains. His eyes fell on one in particular, the only of its kind he had found thus far. He quivered with anger and his nose twitched into a sneer.

Suddenly, he snapped. "FUCK!"

And there it was: Swift's first word.

How beautiful.

Bazi did not understand her son's inspections and plant-foraging as anything other than uncomfortable weirdness, and had to siphon every ounce of spare energy into not losing her shit. She seethed as he sniffed her, teeth clenching when he moved to his pile of useless greens. What on Darwin's green earth was he doing?

The frustrated mother was not given much time to ponder this question in the context of a rational mind - instead of apologizing, Swift swore (at plants, but Bazi wasn't to know that), and Bazi's patience ran dry. With a strangled snarl, she turned tail and marched off, leaving her son to his ridiculous games. Better that than strangling him.

One more post each to finish this? :) I see the budding of a beautiful relationship between these two lmao.

He stared with such rage at his trodden plants that he barely registered his mother's snarl, and was startled when he turned to see her marching away from it. He barked after her retreating back, gathering what was left of his greens and storming after her. His brows were furrowed in frustration and he rumbled around the plants clasped in his teeth. When he neared her, he darted forward to headbutt her hind leg, and then stood glaring at her, tail twitching in annoyance. He had said his first word, but the words to explain that he wanted for her to sit her ass down and let him work were not coming, and so he merely snorted, nose wrinkled in such a displeased expression.

Rather than sit and stew in his own shame, Swift responded in kind with his own brand of frustration. Bazi felt the nudge of his nose against her hind leg, whipped around to glare, but decided not to engage - there was too much anger, and she did not want Swift's second and third word to match the first. With a similar snort, she turned back in the direction of home and quickened her gait, leaving Swift to follow or find his own way home.

Many dysfunctional, such weird. :D

He snarled loudly around the plants when she hiked it home, clearly missing what he wanted her to do. It was of course his own fault for being so cryptic. In rage, he spat his plants on the ground and stalked off. He would not head home right away. In fact, he would only get so far before he rushed back to pick up his plants again, and then he would find a quiet place to skulk before returning home.