King Elk Forest if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

@Saena

There was not a cloud in the sky and the breeze was so slight it could barely be felt against one's ear tips. It could not have been a worse afternoon for hunting, but Rexxar tried; his gut was pinched with hunger. Scenting was poor in the hot, dry conditions, and he flushed a grouse before he knew it was there. He chased a few steps, but he knew the bird would travel far and had been made wary, so his effort would be for nought. He turned away, and sought game in another direction, fighting to keep the faint breeze in his nose as it shifted direction every other minute. The next quarry to thwart him was a groundhog. It had not strayed far from its den, and disappeared down its den as Rexxar's teeth snapped the air just a hair's breadth from the creature's tail.

Hungry and defeated, the smokey wolf plucked a stout, foot-long branch from the ground and carried it to the river bank. Here he settled to his stomach in the shade offered by a thick tree trunk and busied himself chewing.

The wolf pack at Silver Creek was unsettled and nervous about the outcome of the swarm, but Saena was still attempting to ignore the consequences of staying in a locust-ravaged land. The leaves would return soon and the hunger would disappear when they did. That was the mantra she futilely repeated in her head as she passed over the borders of her domicile, but her eyes swept the outlying wood hungrily and she couldn't help sampling the breeze with tongue and nose for signs of large prey.

It would be some time yet before Saena keenly felt the pinch of hunger, her body designed for these sorts of conditions albeit not indefinitely, so she abandoned her hunt more readily than she might've had the situation been more dire. It wasn't an emergency yet. She wet her nose as she padded through the woods, doing naught to conceal herself, and when she came upon a river, she knelt to lap at the icy water. The chill of it filled her belly, and though it was no substitute for food, it settled her briefly.

She splashed across the river without regard, and on the other side, her view of the bank opened up and revealed the greyscale man from both coast and creek. She turned her head to regard him cautiously, once more tracing the dark outline of his eyes, but all he gnawed on was a stick, not a tempting bone. "Must be unsatisfying," she thought aloud.

He did not expect, nor hope for, extended solitude, and was not at all bothered to see the white female from the creek appear. The stick was held between his forepaws as he watched her approach, his ears lifted with interest. Her comment drew one corner of his mouth upward in a half-grin. "Yeah, but at least a stick won't fly off or scurry down a burrow," he remarked. With one paw, he shoved the branch toward her. One end was frayed and gouged by his fangs, but the rest was sleek, untouched. "Want a bite?"

Rexxar had a point. Saena almost grimaced at how depressing that point was. When a wolf favoured a branch over a hot-blooded creature that could flee, it was a sad time indeed. Yet she understood his logic and even accepted it. When he shoved the branch forward and her paws stilled their startled flurry on the ground, she crept nearer as if hoping his promise was true.

But of course it wasn't. It wasn't to settle her stomach that she snapped up the clean end of the stick in her jaws. It was for distraction. Travel had made her solemn and solitary even amongst her pack mates, and it had been ages since Saena had last joined in play. Everything seemed to be a conflict in her world, from Sebastian throwing her off a cliff as far as she knew to Sleeping Dragons bearing down upon her pack with all the savagery of barbarians. Hell, her mind was even so twisted by the stress and anticipation of conflict that Saena rewrote the events in her head to always be against her, and never realized the difference between them and reality.

With a growl, the Alpha female pulled back her head, giving the stick an experimental tug while her eyes sought Rexxar's reaction.

It was a distraction, certainly, but there was something about the crunch of a stick between one's molars that was simply pleasing. Not unlike the feel of a soft breeze on the muzzle, or the cool of the stream against one's pads on a warm summer afternoon. But Rexxar was a wolf who knew how to take things in stride and who could find humor in a bad situation such as this. Oh, the stress was there, like the hum of an insect around one's ear it buzzed in the back of his head, a pestilence. But he knew that fretting would not put food in his belly, nor will the green shoots to grow any faster.

She took him up on his offer, growling as her fangs found purchase on the stick. She tugged it away from his paw, and the smokey wolf stood slowly, only to drop his front quarters back down. His hips and tail swayed, an impish smile curling the corner of his mouth as he, too, growled, soft and rumbling like a muffled chuckle. Then he lurched forward, slapping the ground with one paw as the other played in the air and his snout reached to grasp the other end of the stick.

Rexxar's grip on the stick was lax and Saena pulled with all her might, wrenching it away for but a moment. The man dipped into a play bow as she initiated, and while her brows crinkled challengingly and her lips curled into a smug grin around the fresh bark in her jaws, his smile was roguish. His forward momentum caught Saena off guard, assuring Rexxar's success in grasping the stick while his paws came down on the riverbed with a thump.

The Alpha female locked her neck and bunched her shoulders, throwing all of her meager weight into his forelegs as she heaved backwards. Her hind paws scrabbled for purchase on the loose rock underfoot, but even her most earnest effort was unlikely to budge Rexxar and his stick. He had dozens of pounds on her. She was a strong and feisty little thing, but Saena was disadvantaged against the hardier builds of larger wolves, and speed meant little in a game of tug of war.

She dropped her end of the stick, conceding defeat with a pant and a glimmer in her eye, and swept her snout sidelong to survey the trees briefly. "You shouldn't be alone," she commented idly before making another grab at the stick.

He made no attempt to reclaim the stick, and instead was the anchor against which she, the elegant ship, strained. His toes spread and his blunt nails gripped at the earth, as with a widened stance he held his ground. She was spirited, and he admired her fire, but in the end she conceded to him. It was but a moment after she dropped her end of the stick that he surrendered his, and the stick fell and lay still in front of his paws. He reclined on his haunches then.

"No?" he lifted his ears, cocking his head. "I suppose so. Just wouldn't be right be leaving an ol' rogue like me out here unsuper— He was caught off guard by her sudden surge toward the stick, and she was able to grab it uncontested as he looked on and grinned. "Vised," he finished. He made no move to reach for the stick himself. "Tell you what. If you want to take me home with you, I'll let you keep that stick as payment for your trouble," he winked.

As soon as her teeth scored the hard wood of the stick, Saena sprang backward in anticipation of Rexxar's intervention, but it never came. The grey wolf instead spoke, his tone a lazy drawl as a smile unfurled across his lips. The alpha wolf's red ears slicked back and she taunted him with a genial wave of her hindquarters as she tugged the stick just a foot out of his reach, though he could likely close the gap in mere moments if he wanted to. Yet the man was still, and his offer mirrored her own in such a way that she knew he was clever.

Turning her unstated offer into one of his own, punctuated by a wink that suggested he knew the game he was playing. Smartass.

But he was a strong looking wolf and had proven himself on two occasions: first, in predicting the outcome of the plague and warning her of it, and second, in walking away from her territory and the fish at her paws when commanded to do so. There was no reason to not trust Rexxar. That wasn't to say that Saena did trust him—that would be a while in coming—but it was a start. A first recruit for Silver Creek could only bring more recruits, and she soon hoped their pack would be full and bountiful once more.

She let the stick fall again, crouching low over it to protect it from Rexxar's snatching jaws, but her eyes were bright and her smile brighter as she told him, "I'll share my home with you," though by that all she meant was the Creek. Should Rexxar come seeking her in her den on a misunderstanding, he would feel the wrath and fury that a tiny body like Saena's could pent up and release.

It would have been a lie had Rexxar said that he had not already had his eye on the creek pack. The creek had sheltered him through the tail of winter and he had found the thick woods comforting, and though it was bare now it was to the creek he had been intent on returning. It was to his surprise to find that the she wolf, whom he had encountered on the coast, had not only beaten him there but must have seen the same potential in the land as he to claim it for her and her own. Perhaps it was simply meant to be; the smokey wolf did not deign to remain a lone wolf, and wished to live by the cool flowing water; now with her offer he could do both.

"Great," he said in a chipper tone, the corners of his grin pulling towards his ears as his eyes were drawn to the stick she guarded. "Name's Rexxar, by the way, I don't think we exchanged such pleasantries last time." Some passerby might think it odd that he should be invited into her pack without knowing his name, or really anything about him at all. But for Rexxar, this was rather customary. She would learn of him as he worked to prove himself worthy of a rank, and if she found him unsatisfactory, no doubt she and her followers would see him off. On this, he did not plan.

"So, any immediate orders? Anything you would like to ask of me or have me know?" The stick had been given to her; and his gaze rose from it to watch as a bird flitted by.

There was a moment of hesitation, a hint of suspicion, at how readily Rexxar accepted her invitation. Saena wasn't used to wolves taking her offers. The last few times she'd attempted to recruit wolves had gone poorly, and those who ended up under her lead were often those who sought it, for one reason or another. She wasn't privy to the man's history at the creek nor want to live beside it, so for a moment she wondered what he did want. Surely it was something. Reek had shown her that all men were in want of what they didn't have, and Luke's sudden disappearance had taught her that even the most well-mannered of men were devils in disguise.

But of course, none of these thoughts showed on her face as she worried the stick and considered Rexxar. She'd expected his rejection, almost relished the thought of it if she was honest with herself, but she could work with his acceptance as well.

He offered a name, and she offered hers: "Saena." There was naught in a name anyway, and never in her life had she seen a reason to hide hers. He asked about orders, and she smirked as she told him, "all you need to know is I'm the head bitch," as in the canine variety, "and what I say, goes." Surely Rexxar would have no problems with that, she told herself. There were many a wolf who were too arrogant to follow the orders given them by a superior without question or complaint, but he didn't strike her as the type, even if she was mildly unsure of his easy acquiescence either.

"We are hunters, not scavengers," she said, pondering, and then decided, "ours is the old way. We kill, we eat, we guard the kill, but we don't put it in the ground." How did Saena know about the old way, anyway? Magic, she thought. The knowledge of hundreds of generations of wolves worked into her DNA, an instinct as old as time that told her to guard a kill. Besides, they'd lost a lot when they left Phoenix Maplewood, and she would not lose anything on that scale ever again. "Caches only invite predators and serve as spoils of war," she attempted to explain, and with a pang, she thought of how undeserving wolves like Reek and Tavi were surely enjoying the remains of her former caches. "Anything you catch yourself is yours to do with as you will, of course."

"Oh, and the defense of my children is priority number one." The defense of comrades was number two and the territory was number three, but Saena would be damned if ever they were pushed to leave the place. She'd sooner die than run again, but her children were of paramount importance, and no harm would befall them while she still drew breath. "Any questions?"

She laid it out in no uncertain terms; a true alpha female if ever there was one, and he, with bright eyes and an amused grin, took it all in, nodding along in agreement as she recited the rules. None of the things she spoke of did he have a problem with. He was a dutiful, obedient sort, and the old ways may have been old, traditional, and to some archaic, but they were sensible. Priority one was of course her offspring, the mention of which drew his ears upright. These were bad times for adults, let alone pups.

"Nope," he replied. "I understand. If you will excuse me then, I will make myself useful at once, and see if I can find something for your pups." Rexxar stood, holding his front paws together proper-like, his head lowered belowed the height of her own, and his ears turned back, awaiting her dismissal, or some other order.

Saena was surprised at Rexxar's acceptance of her rules, and the fact showed plainly in her blue eyes as they widened slightly, but hopefully before he noticed, he dismissed himself. She did her best to wipe the expression away and maintain a mask of dignity, but Saena had never been good at keeping her feelings in check, and her eyes would continue to dance with astonishment long after he was out of sight.

Her eyes traced the dark outline around his eyes once more as he held himself beneath her, then bobbed her head and said, "sure." It felt immodest and demanding to send him off in search of something for her pups, but Saena was pleased at the notion and chose not to stop him either. She did manage to remember to say, "thank you," before she herself turned her attention back toward the stick left between them.

She was accepting of his proposition, and much to his amusement, which twinkled in the blue of his eyes like sunlight on the ocean and picked up the corners of his mouth, she seemed surprised by it. She did not yet know of the smoke wolf's raising, nor of his preference toward duty. It was something she would learn in time. For now, he offered a glimpse as he nodded his head, said "you're welcome," and turned away to go hunt for her children.