Redhawk Caldera No walls around me

@Sassafras

"Stream. Good fish." "Forest. Good rabbits." "Hill. Good cardio."

Shrike wasn't the greatest tour guide in the world, or the greatest stand up comedian. He still took a bit of offense to the fact that he'd been hired on as a tour guide for their newest pack member. Where had his tour been? Why hadn't he been given a tour of the pack? Oh, probably because it hadn't been necessary- Shrike had been capable enough on his own, and perhaps Fox was too lazy to show him around herself. Needless to say, he figured he had better things to do other than be voluntold to do something like this, so he walked at a very brisk pace, expecting that Sassafras would keep up. 

He stopped suddenly, and turned his angular face toward her. "Any questions yet?" He asked, though his tone probably hinted that he didn't expect any. He didn't even realize yet that he didn't know her name- he'd simply obediently been leading her around pointing out particular landmarks and saying one or two notes about each of them. His application to Disney World would never make it out of the envelope.

I loled hard at that

Sassafras didn’t actually care about the tour. If she hadn’t gotten herself so twisted up in knots over the fact that she had just concealed truth upon being allowed to stay at the caldera, she might have forgone it altogether. She already knew her way around because she’d lived there before. She wasn’t sure she wanted to divulge that information to the silvery male who had essentially been ordered to lead her around, however, and she didn’t want to tip him off that something was amiss. And so it was that she kept her mouth tightly shut on the subject, and continued to prance along after him. Her bouncy pace and long legs had no trouble keeping up. She would nod and beam like a bright afternoon sun at the short notes he gave her, entirely happy to observe the animal in his natural habitat.

She was caught off guard when he halted on a dime and shot a question at her, and her full stop came too late. She had to take a step back from him, then, and her ears splayed to the sides of her head as she watched his very sharp features carefully. "Sure," she replied, as though she’d only been waiting for him to ask. "What do you normally do when you’re not showing the taken-in stray around?"

Shrike hadn't been terribly considerate to stop without any warning, and lifted hg is head as Sassfras backpedaled, looking fairly surprised. She'd been so pleasant thus far, perhaps she'd been lost in her own world as he'd been showing her around. He took note of the light in her mahogany eyes, and once again was reminded of the sleek and beautiful Allure; not that the two looked anything alike, apart from being healthy and attractive young females. But there was something wilder about Sassafras, maybe in the way the long guard hairs along her hackles and back had a quill-like look to them, or maybe in the way she moved. He couldn't quite place it, but she was strikingly charming in her own, unique way. 

One of Shrike's silver ears turned back at her question and he sniffed. "Whatchu think?" He asked, but as soon as he'd realized his abruptness, he decided to humour her. Maybe she was actually being honest- Shrike wasn't terribly good at detecting sarcasm. "Patrol. Hunt. Scout." He said, sounding almost militant in the way he described his life in general. "Tracking down a bad wolf. Murderer." He confessed.

His speech pattern was interesting, and although he might have been abrupt with his language, his thought process, and possibly even his physical maneuvering, Sassafras smiled at him. There was nothing he offered that she found offensive or off-putting. He hadn’t ditched her the second Fox was out of earshot, after all.

Having asked a very broad question, she hadn’t expected to pin down any profound details about him. Her intent had been to determine what made him tick in terms of active contributions. As it turned out, his answers were anything she might have said herself if asked the same, but his terseness was the difference. It wasn’t until his latter comment that his words resonated, and she paused. "Bad wolves" were about, surely, but "murderer" was too specific.

"Murderer?" she repeated, tossing both ears back and perhaps sounding somewhat thick. Sassafras wasn’t thick, but she also wasn’t entirely convinced she was understanding him correctly. "Murderer of what?" Despite having no context whatsoever, her hackles prickled instinctively and she found herself rattled to the core. She had to be sure, though. For all she knew, he was only telling her of some game he had devised for training or preparation purposes, but she didn’t really believe that. She took him very seriously that something was afoot.

Murderer of what? Shrike gave her a look that might have indicated that she'd just sprouted a pair of horns and had begun to reek like four day old socks, and crinkled his nose. He had to put in an effort to stop himself from asking her What do you bloody well think?! And took a deep breath instead. He was still angry about Peter's death, and told himself he'd simply be transferring that anger to her, and she didn't deserve it. He turned his face away and kept moving, assuming that she would follow. 

"Peter." He said, voice somewhat gruff with poorly masked hostility. "Peregrine and Fox's son." He continued, so she might understand the gravity of the situation. This wasn't just some omega of the pack that had outstepped his boundaries or been too weak to stand up in a proper territory fight at the borders, this was a pup. His defenselessness was what made it so much worse. "Got her fur. Gonna give you her scent."

Okay, so upon reflection, she supposed her question had been a stupid one. But a murderer was not something Sassafras took lightly, nor something she came across in her daily life. The silvery male wrinkled his nose and breathed deeply for a second, but she didn’t for a moment take his agitation to be directed at her. Even if she had, she was far more interested (and horrified) by what he said to follow than she would have been if she had found herself consumed by self-recrimination. If she was honest with herself, she would forever maintain that her question was entirely valid.

Someone waltzed in and slaughtered their child? she thought privately as her own features crinkled in disgust and disbelief. Sassafras did understand the gravity of the situation, but while she continued to think quietly to herself and while Shrike told her he was going to introduce her to the scent of the murderer, her mind reeled as it occurred to her that said murderer had to have been incredibly desperate to survive by taking a risk of that nature. She said nothing of it, of course. Her eyes latched onto the grey Gamma with deep concern as she waited for him to present a wad of Murderer fur.

He could have showed her more of the pack lands, but instead, he'd chosen to create yet another safeguard against the murderer should she return to the pack again. A fair use of time, he felt, given that it was absolutely necessary that they keep that female away from the pack and maintain a safe home. He also knew that him leading her around and showing her the packlands was more or less useless- she could just as easily explore on her own, but there was no way he was going to go against the orders he'd received from Fox to show the newbie around. At least Sassafras wasn't annoying and seemed to follow along quite willingly without expecting him to point out all the good pokestops. 

She was quiet as they moved, and it was a good tactic on her part; had she asked too many questions he might have gotten frustrated with the role he'd been given and dumped her somewhere. As this was not the case, he found himself wondering a bit about her merely because she seemed agreeable. Where had she come from, what had she done with her life up until this point, what were her assets...But then again, Shrike wasn't a great conversationalist so he too kept his trap shut. He had yet to take any courses in being friendly beyond Social Skills 101. 

Finally they reached the area he'd left the tuft of fur, and found that there were several other packmate scents in the area; he hoped the word had spread about the fur and that Peregrine and Fox had been advising their packmates to pick up the scent lest it appear on their borders again. It took him some time, wandering in a zig-zag pattern to find the tuft of hair, as it didn't exactly leave behind a scent trail, but it wasn't too far from the place where he'd left it, encased in several leaves and held down by a rock. He gently nudged the rock aside with his nose and delicately lifted each leaf away with ginger teeth before he saw the flattened clump of hair. Still dark and ominous, and getting smaller by each day, but it was there. He stepped back as soon as he'd unveiled it, so as to not mask the fur with his own scent. He knew that perhaps by now the scent of the female had possibly faded- but he would let Sassafras smell it first, to see if she could get anything out of it. He gestured, and allowed her to approach, hoping she'd have the sense not to sniff to hard and send the hairs flying away.

She followed obediently at his shoulder, close enough, but not step for step. Her ears fluttered forth and to the sides as she went, unsure of Shrike’s patience, but driven nevertheless to get a sense of the slaughterer’s fur for herself. Redhawk Caldera had been her home last year and she hadn’t stopped thinking about the pack since. They were her family now, and she felt the duty to protect them swell inside her as though she had never been apart from them. Her eyes focused directly ahead until Shrike seemed to slow with the intention of looking carefully for the only evidence they had to go by. She stopped to wait for him with both forepaws poised close together and a stance she held a little lower than his.

When he finally stepped back to reveal a rock, dry leaves and a small wad of fur, she looked at him briefly before gingerly making her way forward and lowering her refined head to sniff. She took several long and gentle breaths of it, then turned right around to face him again. "That’s enough," she said with a solemn nod. Her eyes connected with his before she looked away from him out of respect for his rank and her tail swayed low and softly behind her. If she smelled anything like that on her intended border runs, the bearer would be subject to the fierce threat of her fangs.

Gonna wrap this up since it's way outdated :)

He watched as Sassafras gingerly moved forward to smell the tuft of hair. He watched carefully, lest she should muss it up or send some of it flying, and once she'd finished, and seemed a bit unnerved by the fact that this was the hair of a murderer, she stepped away and Shrike moved forward to replace the leaf and rock that had been keeping the fur in its place. He scuffed some earth around it as well, with his claws, to make it easier to see in case he had to find it again. He had already memorized the scent, but if he needed to show it to another wolf, he'd want to find it again, and fast. 

"Let's go on patrol." He said, then, feeling that it was urgent that they make the rounds. This way Sassafras would know where the borders were, and wouold leave her scent along the trail as well, as an extra threat to any strangers who even thought about challenging their pack again.