Phoenix Maplewood nobody with a body can reach ya

NPC'ing a random wolf for Tavi to chase off. Open to anyone!

In an effort to keep busy (or at least that is what she told herself), Tavi began to do rounds on the western edge of the forest. She did some stretches and warmed up her muscles with a brisk run outside of the den, and then took to the trees - winding a route between them as she headed west, then southwest, towards the swampland. There wasn't much to look out for; some caches caught her attention, a few geese flew by overhead and honked loud enough to make her pause to watch, but otherwise it was a quiet day. 

Then, the scent of something odd slipped through the air. She thought it might've been Ukko - so she put aside rational thought and plunged through the forest, excited to be reunited with him. There was a dark figure at one of the caches (she could smell the freshness of loose dirt), and as she pulled up behind the stranger, she was holding back the desire to shout a hello and go barrelling in to Ukko's hind end. When Tavi was a few feet away from the stranger's tail, she realized there was a bit of silver in the creature's pelt - more than that, the creature wasn't black like Ukko at all, but a mix of dark sterling grays.

Immediately Tavi's fur spiked. She was confused for a split second, which was long enough for the stranger to notice her, wheeling about and snapping. The girl managed to dodge, but just barely. Clearly she wasn't a fighter - and as soon as she moved to swiftly avoid a bite, the stranger (or rather, intruder) seemed to relent in their own assault. With a tucked tail, the beast grabbed something from the cache and tore out of the tree line, heading for the wetlands in earnest.

Tavi stumbled, but pursued. She tossed up her head and called out for help - but the sound was swallowed by the trees, at least until she was out from beneath their boughs and charging across the grass. By this point the call had died in her throat, and she was intent on one thing: stopping the vagabond and retrieving whatever they had stolen.

Novak was patrolling the land, familiarizing himself with the territory. He was relieved that Anwyl didn't hate him for his decisions in their last pack, in fact the wolf was overjoyed to see him join his pack and was already asking for help with girls. Just thinking about it gave him a small smile. This pack was just what he needed, and he was perfectly content with his rank. Needing a break from his last positions in the past. Being pulled from his thoughts when he saw a wolf running at full speed towards... something? It was strange to see someone at such urgent speed for no reason but fun. His ears perked, and his head tilted in confusion.

Her small bark was almost silent, but Novak got the message. This wolf needed help, and he had to do what he could to aid her in her pursuit. Picking up his speed, which as rather quick, he was behind her in no time. Catching the scent of an unfamiliar wolf, he realized she was chasing after an intruder. "Hey!" he barked back, hoping she noticed she wasn't alone. The large wolf was already forming a plan onto how he could help capture the intruder. If he picked up his speed, and turned himself to the right, they could form a barrier around the stranger. He was definitely capable of it, and seeing this girl, she was too.

Keeping food down had been difficult of late, but Saena managed it today. She gingerly stripped meat off a three-day old rabbit and swallowed it slowly, laid next to the river in the event her stomach continued to disagree with her cuisine. But it seemed settled and she was able to enjoy a few more bites before Tavi's surprisingly near call for help had her on her feet, running and praying that she wouldn't vomit on the run.

Her rib, doomed to never properly heal, still pulsed painfully with every thundering step but the alpha female was quickly learning to ignore it and push past it. She did so now, intent on aiding her pack mate, but it was an unfamiliar call of "hey!" that spurred her, and she passed the last tree of the forest, still not the full extent of their claim, to see chaos.

Tavi was running after a fleeing figure and some second intruder was coming up on her. Not understanding that Novak's intent was to help (and she wouldn't have cared anyway for he was clearly a noseblind idiot who had walked right into her territory), she angled for him with her jaws wide. "Get out!" screamed the alpha female at Novak as she barreled toward him, heedless of her possible pregnancy or the possibility of aggravating her injury.

Novak -- posting in this forum means you're trespassing or way too close! Your character will need to run immediately or sustain at least one injury as a result.

Thinking she would be fast enough to catch the thief, Tavi was surprised when her lungs began to ache; she tasted copper at the back of her throat, and her tongue lolled out as she tore after the stranger. By the time she reached the edge of the swampland, her head was low and she was panting hard. The thief had vanished in to the muck - she thought she saw their silhouette narrowing in the corner of her vision - and for a minute all Tavi could do was fight to regain her breath. When she lifted her head, it was to the sound of an angry shout - the voice familiar. The girl's fur spiked when she saw the alpha female charging towards her, and shrank back from her, stumbling a bit in the slop of the wetlands foliage, only to catch sight of another intruder just as Saena careened by her.

Now was not the time to rest, then. She launched herself in to a jostling run, coming up beside the alpha and directing herself in line with the new intruder. This one was different; this one was warm toned and had a layered scent, indicating it was a pack wolf. Had this stranger been working in tandem with the rogue she had nearly caught? Tavi didn't want to waste time asking questions, so she chose to be on the defensive - snapping her teeth at the stranger whenever she came close to contact.

Novak wasn't surprised by the fae's reaction, and decided this wasn't his place. He slowed down, away from the girl and took the alpha's warning. He focused himself farther away from the borders, and soon was out of sight of the others.

I still feel like the dumbest person in the world for thinking Novak was in this pack, I apologize for how short the response

While Novak had proven his lack of brains by straying into claimed territory, he proved in the next breath that he had to have some modicum of sense, for he spun about and bolted away. Saena kept on him for several yards with blood thrumming angrily in her ears before slowing. She wheeled, still cantering, to return to Tavi with a mask of disgust thrown over her normally sharp-but-peaceful expression.

"What idiots live in this region, anyway?" she wondered aloud as a means to curb the need to vent. She raked her tongue with her teeth, then shook her head and sighed. "Thanks for catching that so fast," she breathed gratefully, seeking to bump the side of her delta's face if permitted. Her mind briefly flit to the pack attempting to claim the west, and her brain worked out the assumption that the pair of miscreants had come from the Emberwood, possibly sent by their would-be alpha to trouble the maplewood wolves. That just made their upcoming mission there all the more crucial.

With two versus one, the intruder had enough sense to back off. He fled before either wolf could do too much harm, and neither one of them was willing to pursue the vagrant further than necessary. As Tavi's stomping strides came to a halt, she turned and regarded Saena briefly, and then waited as Saena jogged back to her position. Her comment brought a sharp snort from Tavi's snout; she had no real answer to that question. There were a lot of idiots out here, and she could only hope there weren't many living among them. Saena's praise made Tavi's ears twitch, and her tail swayed in an inadvertent expression of contentment. 

"I caught one trying to grab some shit from our caches, but couldn't stop him. At least this one didn't get far." Her tone wasn't as pleasant as Saena's. The girl was unhappy with her failings -- losing some old meat might not have been a huge deal, but that had been the last bit of doe she had hidden away herself. With the failed pack hunt fresh in her mind, the thief's escape was something that she should've prevented. "I'll try to scare up some grub to make up for it later. Unless..." she glanced at the alpha, lightly nosing at the woman's pale shoulder with her nose, and asked, "You wanna go bird hunting with me?"

Tavi's self-proclaimed failure was nevertheless a success to Saena, who was glad the gunmetal woman had prevented a second theft from occurring, even if there was reason to doubt the second wolf was even intelligent enough to make an attempt. The loss of a cache was unfortunate but they could've incurred greater losses had the intruders chosen to team up and fight back. The two year old was just grateful that she and Tavi were unharmed, if winded.

"We can replace it, there's no rush," said Saena in a tone that in no way made light of the situation, but she wasn't disappointed in Tavi, not in the slightest. It was the Delta's efforts that had prevented worse. Her ears lifted and her features brightened when the suggestion of hunting birds met them. She hadn't hunted in a long while, not since her injury. "I'm pretty terrible at bird hunting," admitted the alpha female, aiming an affectionately blunted nip at Tavi's cheek, "but I don't mind looking dumb trying. Hell, maybe I'll suck less for trying." Anyway, if Tavi was an effective bird hunter then Saena could certainly learn something from her.

"Lead the way!" offered the alpha female, who really didn't know where to go to hunt birds effectively anyway.

Bird hunting was easier as a solo thing, which was probably why Tavi had begun to excel at it. She remembered trying to subdue a turkey with Ukko -- but as soon as that memory surfaced, she shoved it far away and focused on what Saena was saying. Well, you could always scare them up once we find them. I've seen some pheasants hiding out in the forest, so we just gotta find them. Maybe it would be easier to leave Saena to her own business? But this would be fun. May as well get to know the leader of the pack a bit better, considering she had been living here for a few months now.

They don't fly very well. The pheasants. Their wings are too small and usually their bodies are too fat. Good conversation skills Tavi, you budding bird-nerd. I saw a bunch of lady pheasants a few hours ago, but they might have moved on. There were a couple dude pheasants getting gropey with them, y'know? Passing a brief raised-eyebrow look to Saena, she turned her attention to the foliage all around and began the hunt.

Pheasants. What the bloody fuck was a pheasant, thought Saena as they began to scour the woods. Tavi's description did little to help her understand, for while Saena had seen flightless birds with small wings before, there was a variety of them in the taiga. There were turkeys sometimes, and small ones with curly bits on their heads, some that looked odd and others that were brightly coloured. Saena didn't have the slightest idea which of these varieties Tavi was after, but she went along in hopes that she would figure it out before tailing the wrong sort.

"Uh," Saena mumbled, "how do you know they were dude pheasants? Birds look kinda all the same to me." Sexual dimorphism in birds and plumage differences weren't something the alpha was schooled in. Feeling oddly moronic, for her hunting knowledge was primarily small and large terrestrial game and not birds or fish, the alpha female hung back a few feet behind Tavi, doing her best to contribute but really just unsure what they were looking for, exactly.

The dudes are the pretty ones, Tavi hastily added when she noticed Saena's hesitation. They have colored heads and bright wing feathers, while the ladies are all brown like tree bark. The ones I've been tracking recently are really big and fat, probably loaded with eggs and building nests somewhere in the forest. It was kind of... Energizing, if that was the right word, that Tavi could be helpful like this. Even just passing on a few bits and pieces of bird-related information made her feel genuinely good. Finally, someone who didn't think it was weird to collect feathers and bird heads! Well, that's probably still weird, but she wasn't going to bring that up to Saena -- that was a friend thing, and their relationship was more like a working relationship, for now.

The boy birds are bigger, just like with us and.. A lot of other animals. We'd probably end up with more meat if we went for one of thos- as she explained, there was a call that caught in her ears; it seemed to originate a good distance from them around a copse of trees, or perhaps in the tangled bushes beyond them. Tavi stopped abruptly and when Saena was closer, muttered, I think that was a pheasant. The call itself had been short and quick, like the bird was crowing a quick ah-hah through a voice distortion machine. If Saena wanted to scare up some birds, now was the chance.

What a terrible sound LOL

She made mental notes as Tavi rattled off some facts about birds. Dudes are pretty. Chicks are fugly. "Doesn't that seem weird?" interjected the alpha female, who thought that the females should be the pretty ones. How could you ever attract a mate if you were the colour of moose shit? Still, she supposed animals weren't all made equally and perhaps whatever creator existed had simply run out of female pretty genes and decided to make male birds the flashier of the species instead. Males are larger and females are smaller.

Cue the end of the lesson, for Saena's fur ruffled when Tavi came to a standstill and both of them listened to the chilling cry. "Is that what those are?" she whispered, having heard that sound many times before but never equating it to any particular bird. She knew what crows were, and was ashamed to say she didn't even know the difference between a crow and a raven. That was about the end of Saena's bird knowledge.

The call sounded again and, responding to the primal urge to hunt welling in her breast, Saena barged headlong into the underbrush, likely foiling Tavi's entire plan (or not, she really had no idea what she was doing).

I guess it's kind of weird. But maybe birds are just really hard to impress. And to Tavi, that made total sense. Birds could fly, they could sing, what else could they do to impress their opposites but get shiny, bright feathers? Hm. There wasn't time to think or discuss bird-stuff any further, because Saena was launching herself in to the foliage after hearing more of the calls. Tavi would've stopped her, but she was gone before anything could be done -- and out from the underbrush came a pair of fluttering, useless birds. There were two birds from her initial count, but then realized there were two brown birds, not one. And the fat thing chasing them was a big, puppy, shiny dude bird.

Shit! Tavi half-shouted, charging after Saena and then at the birds. They were distracted by the pale Alpha, giving Tavi the perfect opportunity to snap at the three birds in an attempt to nab at least one. When the flurry of activity subsided, the two brown hens were screeching and running off in to the forest, while the colorful male bird hung loosely from Tavi's jaws. She spat the bird on to the dirt and grinned at Saena, her tail wagging. Okay, not what I expected, but it worked.

Well, fuck, thought Saena as she charged blindly into the brush and promptly tripped over one of the fleeing hens. She tumbled and found her feet again in the space of a second, putting to good use the natural agility of her species, and she was charging after the iridescent butt of a running male pheasant. She had just barely cleared the bush when she had to veer sharply to the left to avoid colliding with Tavi, whose charge allowed her to snag the biggest of the birds by the neck.

Saena made a grab at one of the hens, but both of them evaded her grasp—likely because their movements were awkward and therefore unpredictable—and she watched regretfully as they disappeared into the wood. "Fuck, I'm sorry," Saena began as she turned, ready to accept any berating Tavi would give her for being an awful bird hunter, but then she spotted what dangled from Tavi's grip and she smirked. "Nice," complimented the alpha female as her comrade dropped the bird. Hell, what else could she say? She'd been a hot mess and Tavi had swooped in, proving herself to be a superior hunter, at least where birds were concerned.

You did good. Tavi announced, grinning across the bird's carcass at her. I can stash this one for later, unless you want it now. And since Saena was growing a bunch of bodies in her belly, maybe that'd be best. The girl birds are a lot faster. Plus they're probably full of eggs, so... Hunting them is great in a pinch, but not ideal. If they grabbed all the girls, there'd be no more birds in the maplewood. The boys were expendable. Plus, with their bright plumage, they were easier to see.

Did you want some of the feathers? she asked next, having given enough pause for Saena to answer the first question. This bird was in full-blown shine; his face had red glowing brilliantly off his cheeks, and his throat had a white band - bloodied though it was - while the rest of him was emerald green. Tavi would've taken the best feathers for herself, but this seemed like a great opportunity to share with the Alpha.

Tavi alluded to the balance of nature and Saena nodded, though it wasn't something she ever consciously thought about. The ancestral tug to target animals that were weak, sick or otherwise unproductive wasn't one she fully understood. She believed they went after sick and injured animals to make it easier, and truly it did work that way. She wasn't as aware of the other reason, and so her nod was only half-hearted, for she believed a bird heavy with eggs would make an even finer meal, but didn't want to risk offending the true bird hunter by suggesting it.

"Maybe one," Saena said, having never been much of a collector of anything. One feather to scoot around the den would be fun, and her pups would probably appreciate it in the future. "Maybe one of those?" She gestured to the stunning green feathers on the bird's breast, though her eye occasionally darted to the ruby red of its face as well.

Once she pointed out which bits she wanted, Tavi got to work carefully pulling them free from the skin. It only took a few tugs - and while one of the feathers had a noticeable kink, she made up for the slight mistake by grabbing extras. The pile of feathers gathered together, and eventually Tavi lifted her face free of the plump bird carcass, which now had a pale breast exposed. There you go, lots to choose from. A few bits of fluff were stuck to Tavi's lips, so while Saena decided on her prize, the beta huffed and puffed to get those bits off. When that didn't work, she rubbed her snout against her foreleg.

I'll get the bird prepped and put away in a cache, unless you want some now? She licked her own lips, but had no intention of eating anything yet. It was too early, and she had loads of energy to use up first.

The alpha's eyes widened unconsciously as several feathers drifted to the ground, and she zeroed in on them with razor sharp focus. It would have to be the perfect feather to serve as a play thing for her eventual pups. In choosing, her mind wandered to other topics, like who she would pick as a godmother (she knew it would be Tavi) and whether they would even like feathers, but her mind turned off again when she selected the greenest, but not the largest, of the feathers.

Gripping it as delicately as she could between her teeth, the alpha female shook her head and muttered, "you gor ahread," through her clenched jaws. Leaning forward to bump Tavi in an affectionate gesture of thanks, the woman turned and paraded away with the resplendent green feather and promptly stashed it in the very depths of the den she and Reek shared.

Feel free to post once more or just archive! <3