Great Bear Wilderness We get to carry each other

Burke lifted his head a bit and then gave her an even grumpier look jut to annoy her. Afterwards a smile did turn on his face. Somehow he could deal with her friendly banter. "Who says I don't have any other wolves that give me compliments?," he returned, though it was indeed rare to get a compliment from her. 

Burke nodded slowly. "Indeed. But she is her mother's daughter by heart," he hummed. Meldresi also had that same flare. Burke then grinned. "Is that another compliment?," he spoke with a bit of a grin. Look at this woman going.

"Sorry to say, but you are not exactly "apple of someone's eye" type of guy," Osprey responded almost immediately. Burke was big, brutish, scary and you respected the very sight of his shadow. Yet he did not have the face to put on a "Cosmopolitan" cover - in other words - he was not handsome. At least not by modelling standards. He was more like Jason Statham in an action movie and you never heard him being complimented much for his looks, did you?

"Let me think..." she scrutinized him for a bit, looking for a witty remark. "Let's say... it kind of is. You don't have a tail and you are proud of it. Makes you kind of original. Kind of..." 

Burke let out a snort. He found himself very handsome. He raised his muzzle a bit. But he did understand that he might not be the type for anyone, still Burke loved his looks and had accepted them. That is what counted. Burke wiggled his short bob of a tail when she spoke about it. "Of course I am," he spoke, though she had probably not met his son, because he was basically him with a tail. 

"I am totally original," he then spoke once more and quirked up his lips. The male looked over at her. "You are too. You are weird in a way that makes you interesting." And that was saying a lot coming from Burke that rarely said such things.

ooc: would you like to make this a super-long thread? My personal record is 80 posts (40 on each party) - if you wish, we can try to beat it and go for 100?

"Grumpy but cool tail-less guy and an interesting weirdo," Osprey mused loudly while failing to hold back girlish giggles. They would never run out of fancy epithets, would they? "We make a very odd pair," she then said, thinking about, how so many awkward and un-planned encounters had ended up in a sort of a friendship. 

"What about those other wolves that give you compliments," she picked up the previous thread of their conversation. "How do they praise you - perhaps, I will hear something useful too. Is it along the lines of "Hail, Caesar!""

I would most definitely like to try! :D

Burke let out a snort of laughter because he could not really disagree with the words she spoken. Burke looked to the side, if only they would make an actual pair. But that had not happened, their fleeting encounters turned into friendship. Alas, that was what he would have peace with. A friend. He couldn't remember when he had a friend outside the pack. "We do, but why would we need to be a common pair? I think this is far better," he commented.

The male had to think about that. Did he ever get compliments? Not really, and if he did then those were small ones. More along the line that his wolves were happy and his pack was functioning which he took as a compliment to his hardworking self. "With my older son Damien, or well step-son, he spoke about me being a good father. Same for Potema that she missed me."

ooc: let's make it happen! *cracks knuckles*

Osprey had expected to hear the more common praises and words to flatter one's ego, but Burke's choice of compliments he had received were on the modest and deep side. Having a kid look up at his parent and think him being a great one was the best praise you could get and the one that truly counted. 

"That's very nice," she said, realizing that she had unknowingly told him again - you are not that bad. "Your step-kids - how old are they and what are they like? You are not obliged to tell me, what kind of secret super-powers they behold. The simple stuff, please."

Excited for this!

Burke nodded slowly, not really realizing that having such thing as a compliment was a huge deal. Though he did feel proud when thinking about it. There was only one black sheep and that ws Sebastian, though not entirely black, he did kill his brother which was surprising. The female asked about his step kids, and well, how could he not talk about them?

"There are three of them, two boys one girl. I came into their lives at a young age. I was meant to be their mentor to prove myself in my pack at the time, but I grew closer to them. One is a philospher. He thinks about the world, the other is a fighter and the last one is truly a princess," he explained, smiling a bit. Kendra was not like that at all, while Potema wanted to be royal since the beginning. "They are all very different."

"A thinker, a warrior and a pretty princess - that's quite a combination," Osprey commented, trying to imagine, what the kids could look like and coming up with nothing better than three copies of Burke. With tails, of course. 

"This thinker - how has he had you surprised?" she asked, encouraged by Burke's moment of openess. "And the warrior and princess - what do they aim for in life?"

Burke nodded, because they were all very different and that is what he liked about them. "True. Can you even imagine them as teenagers," he joked lightly, though they were an active bunch. Now they mostly settled. He was glad about that, even Damien had matured quite a bit in the end.

"He started about love at a very young age, but in a philosophical way. If family could be romantic love and why they could not be romantic loves in the first place," he spoke. It gave him quite a think, because well one was learned it was wrong but why was it wrong? Maybe it was not wrong at all.

"That's quite impressive," Osprey replied, trying to remember, what she had been thinking about when she had been a teenager. And she was pretty sure about that stories aside, it was something about having her first crush on an older pack-mate. Now she could not even remember his name. Amazing, how things change over time.

There was suddenly a "bang"-like noise in the vicinity and Osprey stopped in her tracks, ears up and looking around for the source. When coming up with nothing, she turned to face Burke: "What was that?"

ooc: free interpretation of what could it be. :)

Burke nodded and continued to walk with the female. He himself looked up too at the loud sound. The male trotted forward with his ears perked up, he did stop as the grey female did. The male sniffed the air. He could smell the strong scent of a plant, or that kind of smell at least. "It sounded like a tree falling down?," he called out to her.

The male stopped now too, so the female could catch up with him. It might as well have been two bison clashing into each other, yet he wasn't sure if that was the season, and the did scent the plant matter being in distress, like freshly mown grass, not that Burke knew this. "Want to check it out?

"Maybe," Osprey shrugged, not feeling too sure about what had happened earlier. It was funny that the scariest sounds were those, which happened suddenly and only once, leaving you in confusion about, what had happened and why. 

She would never tell, but secretly she felt relieved that Burke took few steps forward to check, what was going on. After a little hesitation she followed, stopping next to him and looking in the general direction of the trees from the nearby forest. "Do you sense anything?" she asked, feeling clueless herself.

Burke turned his attention on again. Maybe he had been wrong, maybe that sound had not been a tree falling down. It did not have the crunching sound, only the bang sound. Maybe the scents of spring confused his brain. He was not good with plants after all. The male tipped his head a bit. "I do not. Maybe it was not a tree, but what could it have been otherwise?," he asked curiously, now he wanted to inspect what this bang was.

They were not all to far from the Brotherhood, and his lands, surely it took more than a few hours of traveling but if it was something dangerous he would like to know. "We could check it out?," he asked, not sure if she was in a hurry to go to the Caldera pack and what not.

"Probably," Osprey agreed, though she much rather would have preferred going elsewhere and not stick her nose in a possible danger. Then again she was with Burke - equivalent of all the action movie machos - so there was nothing she should be afraid of, should she? He would take them down or die trying and that would leave her enough time to run away. 

She then remembered a funny story a wolf that had lived all it's life near ocean had told her and she thought that it was a good moment to tell this. To make the situation a little bit funnier. "Do you know, what whales are?" she wanted to test grounds, before moving on to the best part.

Burke was ready to step forward and instantly take control, or at least he wanted to. He was curious to see what had happened. It spiked his interest. He was not sure if that was the same for the female though. The large male turned to her when she asked him a question. Whales. Whales. He had heard about this before, long ago. He frowned as he recollected his memory. It had been in his time in the north, sometimes they would pass by the shore, massive fish.

Burke looked at her curiously, seeing that he had not thought about those whales-things in a long time. The male nodded. "Massive fish they are. They pass by the coast of where I was born," he spoke to her. "They do not live on land like the seals do," he commented, basically saying that it could not have been a whale.

"True, but sometimes they get washed ashore," Osprey went on. She had seen only pieces of bones scattered in the beach and only once had she caught sight of one's tail disappearing in the waves. 

"Anyway - an old acquaintance of mine told me that, if they stay on the shore for too long - especially on a very sunny day, then they fill up with gasses and... kaboom - explode! Gut juices, rotten meat everywhere," now she recalled his name. Pete - and not just anyone - thee-legged. "This same person happened to be near one, when it happened. He told that the impact threw him in the air and he landed several feet away. He broke a leg that never healed properly and thus earned a nickname Three-legs."

ooc: reference - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X0hq0ug9q4 . 

Haha gross. XD

Burke listened to the female and her story. He looked a bit surprised as he had not heard that kind story before. The male slowly nodded, seeing that it could create a loud sound, but he doubted that this was the case. "But we are quite a bit away from the coast, do you really thing the sound came all the way from there?," he wondered skeptically. He was not convinced at all.

The large male listened once more, but now there was no sound that could confirm it. He looked at the female and then smiled a bit. "Nice story though. Interesting way to lose a leg, bet that guy didn't live long," he pointed out.

"No, no - he did not lose the leg. The bones just grew the wrong way and it always stayed a bit crooked. But he was an excellent hunter and tracker," Osprey had learned quite a lot from the old Pete and had been very sad the day he had passed away. 
 
"Well, you don't need a whale to explode - any carcass can, if it stays unopened in the sun long enough," she countered Burke's argument. Though she had not seen this happen, again there were stories and there was no reason not to believe them. "I mean, you have seen, how the bellies of the corpses swell after a while - that is the dangerous moment, when you should not make a direct bite," unless you wanted your face covered in rotting guts.

The male nodded softly when she spoke about the male, or more so, clarified it. "I see. Good for him, interesting story." Burke was curious how much impact that explosion would have had. 

Burke let out a soft 'aha' moment when she spoke about a carcass exploding. "I am skeptical. I don't think any wolf or predator would leave a carcass laying around in the sun for days for it to explode?," he commented. Burke was not convinced yet. 

Burke looked to the side. "You could be right, but it would be highly unlikely at least," he stated. Now he was genuinely curious what that sound was.

"Don't forget that there are animals that die of natural causes," Osprey pointed out in an annoying know-it-all tone (on purpose, of course, she could not let Burke feel too smug about himself). "And their chances of kabooming, if they are left unnoticed, are just as high as for the whale washed ashore, left rotting on the shores."

Her monologue was cut short, when a rancid smell hit her nostrils. Even to her, who had eaten worse things during her lifetime, this felt horrible. "You see," she said breathing through her mouth, "I might be right about the exploding carcass. Look out for the guts hanging on the branches."

Burke knew that and shot a light glare at her. "I know that, what I meant to say was that there are enough predators that would sniff out a carcass that would have died of natural causes," he returned to her. But as it turned out the female seemed to be right because there was a very strong scented smell. Burke was used to the stench of the swamp and well, rotting bodies, so for him this was not particularly standing out. Still he scrunched up his nose a bit.

"That would be rather interesting to see," he admitted to the female. The large male who was used to seeing death instantly trotted forward, scanning the trees for some organs or intestines. He did like how he had learned something new again. "Would that carcass be safe for eating though?"

Osprey had no idea that Burke's home was a spooky place, where coprses floated and rotted in the swamp on daily basis. Frankly speaking, she had never really thought about, where the guy came from or what he was doing in his free time. The conversation about his adoptive children had been the closest to an inquiry about himself so far. A more sensitive wolf than Osprey would have frowned upon declaration that exploded corspes were interesting, but the gray she-wolf found them just as fascinating. Just the mental image!

"Well... I don't know about you, but my stomach is made of iron. I have eaten worse than fermented corpses," she replied, casting a glance at Burke and wondering, if this brute's of a wolf Achilles' heel was a senstive stomach.

Burke looked around, not yet seeing the organs, but the smell was there. The male quirked up his lips when she spoke about an iron stomach, he thought he had one too but then he had that bloat accident last year. He had too much gass trapped in his stomach. Maybe he had exploded like this animal if Meldresi hadn't helped him.

"I a good stomach too," he spoke in return, because after the bloat accident he was pretty okay, and he was usually the one that ate the left overs in the cache before they would be too rotten to eat. The male had moved forward and started to come across homps of meat. He glanced to the side at the female. "Guess you were right then."

"I never said I wasn't," Osprey returned with a smug grin and went ahead to sniff at the scattered pieces of the meat. It smelled horrible and the taste was even worse, but the golden rule of any true scavanger was that you never left anything nearly edible to waste. 

Though as they proceeded further in the forest and the odour became stronger, Osprey began to doubt her Big Bang Theory. When the remains of a deer came into the few, it looked more like someone had had a very messy meal and left it, having been disturbed.

"Does it look too good to be true?" she asked Burke, looking around to see any sign of the person, who had had his meal before their arrival. Even before the bang.

Burke could not say that he was familair with these lands, he had traveled through it but did not know it excessively. The meat smelled foul, if meat could even smell foul for a wolf. The male grabbed a small homp and then swallowed the piece of meat. To him it seemed perfectly fine. He was not the sucpsicious type. 

"The sound probably cared most predators off," he commented. "But if you want I can keep watch. I am not that hungry," he spoke, after all he had a meal quite recently and he knew what happened if he ate too much.