Ankyra Sound we live through scars this time

AW

The rain came and went unremarked––one could only muse why she wilted in all the sunshine.

Lusca breathed in the earth, snout on a reconnaissance mission to find something contained within one of the many decaying logs furnishing the Monolith Forest. Mist unrolled like fabric across the base of rainslicked sequoias and a wet silence sapped the senses. 

She stepped up, as though the bole was a rostrum; her claws dismantling insecure shingles of bark as she leaned into her weight to peer into a hallow. Something about this one's structure caused her to lose interest and her subconscious ticked away the minutes lost, frustration filling her cheeks as she huffed and leapt over the log––onto the next.

Maude wasn't a fan of forests, hence why she continued to stay on the shore in the Saltwinter crew, but she decided to make a small exception for the forest that bordered their territory. It was in a way hers after all. She decided to explore it, more for the sake of knowing the territory than enjoying the woods.

Her lip curled with disgust as she walked over the damp ground fed by the recent rain, already feeling her paws be stained with mud (though it was hard to distinguish from her fur color). She'd rather be coated in sand, thank you very much. Mud to her was...dirty...disgusting even. She wiped her paw furiously on the grass, only to spread the dark material around. She tried to rub it against a tree, though its bark was just as slick with rain as the grass and dirt. Maude's head snapped towards the breaking of bark nearby and saw the wolf jumping from log to log. Her paw continued to rub furiously at the bark in what she thought was an effective way of removing dirt from one's fur as she called out. Oi! Yew a rabbit or somefin'? Wotchu 'oppin' around fer?

Oi! Lusca sprung straight upwards (now fully conforming to her rabbit likeness), skin and bones nearly detaching from her pelage as alarm surged up her limbs. The wolf loomed up behind her, and Luc was too rapt in her task to take stock of her surroundings before setting about––she was not prepared for company, not this far away from the strand. It would have been a wise decision to ensure her solitude, given her recent transgressions against Saltwinter's superstar. 

She did her best to avoid scrutiny––the process of time had revealed to her, slowly, the clamant result of her indiscrimination with the opposite sex, and when it came to Lusca's curveballs, Caiaphas did not have a promising performance history in terms of stress management. 

The dialect to follow caused Lusca's ears to fold. As with Vlad, she found it difficult to understand the pronunciations of certain words. She gave Maude a strange, perplexed look, swinging her abdomen out of view. "Or something." Her eyes scoured the rainrot, nostrils flexing against the rind of the log. "Yew eat somefin' sour'?" 

Pregnancy certainly did no favors for her attitude.

The wolf jumped upwards in shock, and Maude bit back a cackle at the sight, though it seeped through the snarled teeth. She sat back, nibbling indiscriminately at her paw in order to tear the dark material from her fur. She looked over the female as she settled — though the woman hid her stomach from view the scent was unmistakable: pregnancy. Low caches an' a pregnant wench? 'Tis gettin' better, me luck. Maude grumbled to herself, tearing a hefty chunk of fur from her paw. Are yew t'reason our caches are low, fatty? She smirked, baring yellow-tinted fangs in a semblance of a smile.

With a grunt, the gravid female hoisted herself over the bole and galumphed to the next, proceeding with her task despite the distraction of Maude's presence. A serene expression dominated her features, voice peppy as she spoke, "Yup, I'm starving you bitches out." More strictly speaking, were the thought of raiding Saltwinter's cache to even touch the peripherals of consideration in her mind, Caiaphas' intuition would sense it tout de suite and Lusca would not have been long for this world. Best case scenario, she would be eating through a straw. 

At any rate, gestation washed out her appetite. In the spring of her pregnancy she regurgitated nearly everything shortly after consuming it, and it had soured her to most of the food options available on the coast. She got by on whatever bite-sized varmints she could scare up in the forest, but most days, the effort she put into the process barely made the scant morsels worth her exhaustion.

She lifted her head and squinted her eyes, gesturing pointedly at Maude with a look of incredulity. "Who the hell are you to accuse me anyway? You're new. You have no idea what it's like here." Lusca was a pre-existing condition; she'd been a fixture as Saltwinter's gudgeon for months––her investment in the cache was nearly nonexistent and as such, she did not partake of its contents. She only had herself to rely on, and rarely had the opportunity to reap the benefits of living off the successes of the pack. She did not live comfortably. 

But blow-ins like this wolf, adjusting to pack life presumably after a straggler life sustained only by frugality... well, more mouths to feed was a strain on communal resources alone.

Maude smirked at the answer, then dropped her paw hesitantly to the ground, content that the mud had been scowered from her fur. She looked at the woman's annoyed vistage and cackled. Naw, mate, I'm just jokin' wit ye. Surely it ain't just one wolf's fault. It would be utterly hilarious if it was, though. One fat ass eating every morsel of food they brought in. Oh, matey, I'm sure I've lived through worse. This ain't nothin'.

Lusca eyed Maude warily, the saltiness in her manner diminishing somewhat when the wolf admitted to putting her on. "Surely not." She said, slowly returning to the task of nesting. Maude continued to speak, but the little drudge couldn't uphold her end of responsibility as recipient; the way she was addressed as mate and matey vexed her, and finally she snapped her head up from behind a felled sequoia. "What do you want? Why did Caiaphas make you come find me?"

Maude's head tilted at the dark female's accusation. T'Cap'n didn't send me. She said, confused. Why would she, eh? The wench leapt up on the log, looking down at the woman. Just want t'talke to me crewmates. If'n we're gonna be scavengin' an' fightin' t'gether, might as well know who's helpin' me. She wondered if all of the wolves were as offish as this woman was. Maybe it was just the hormones talking. If so, she would be sure to give this wench a wide berth.