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Ira had woken early, attempting to move out of the communal denning site where the wolves of Silvertip slumbered close together without waking those that still inhabited it and when he was free of it, shrugged out of the scent borders and into the no-man’s territory and then beyond to the free territories that stretched out before in a canvas of green and brown and blue. If anyone were to ask he would have shrugged it off as the fact that he was doing recruiting - which wasn’t an exact lie. He wasn’t going to recruit anyone if he was never outside of Silvertip’s borders and he was always looking for potential recruits even if the concentration of his attention and intentions remained elsewhere. He could multi-task well enough, for a teenage boy, for what it was worth; but there was a hidden truth to his venture. He was hoping to catch a glimpse or even a tendril of Bones’ scent. Something. Anything. Even if she had bypassed him to go straight to Atticus - Ira didn’t even care. At least if she was with Atticus she was safe and it meant that she hadn’t been eaten by any kind of beast or anything (Ira wasn’t very imaginative and even if he was he probably would have never predicted the truth). He was becoming almost pitifully desperate for some kind of news no matter what form it came in; and then scolded himself internally. This was what happened when he let himself get close to others. …Though the boy attributed it to his imagined curse, the truth of the matter was: he often wound up hurt. And beneath the pain he felt wrath - at himself, at those that hurt him, at his “curse”.
He tried not to dwell upon it, not wanting those hateful and fiery feelings to manifest unfairly. He had no idea what was happening and it was wrong to assume that Bones just broke up with him without telling him or whatever. She was probably just really busy with things in Swiftcurrent Creek -- or maybe Fox had banned her from seeing him (it was kind of a long shot because he didn’t think there was any hostility between Fox and himself). Tucking those darkened thoughts away he turned his attention to his path which had over the stretch of the morning eventually found him, by mid afternoon at the ’watering hole’ that touched by the sunlight was a shimmering lake, fresh tracks of deer leading in a confusion of trampled trails that split in several different ways - but he wasn’t here to hunt. He had been sort of heading towards Blacktail Deer Plateau but had decided to apply the brakes his over zealous pursuit of his girlfriend. Jinx had not given him permission to visit them to ask around about Bones and he respected his mother too much to outright do something without making her aware first. Sure, it wasn’t as if he had intentions of doing anything that would reflect badly upon Silvertip - all he wanted to know was if anyone had heard from or seen his girlfriend - but still.
Turning his body towards the lake he bent his head and lapped up the cool, refreshing water, ears swiveling out to either side of his head to listen for any sign of approach while his back was turned.
As he strolled about, eyes darting from left to right to take in the details of the terrain, he spotted a white figure drinking from the lake. Immediately freezing, for a second his heart clenched, tail up in preparation for a fight, thinking of his father. It was his mother that had given him the tan color of his pelt, while his father had made it lighter, and given him his blue eyes.
Realizing a few seconds later that it was absurd to assume that he had been followed all the way to the Plateau, and as he got closer -- subtly, quietly -- he realized how different the scent of the stranger was. Holding back a sigh of relief, Rayder's posture relaxed. Then, a grin started to cross his face. Oh, this should be fun.
"Well, well. Hello there." He called to the other male, who was roughly about the same size as him from what he could tell, maybe smaller. Walking, no probably more like strutting up, he stopped only a few feet. "Good thing it's spring, if it was still winter, I wouldn'ta noticed ya." His voice had the hint of a degrading tone, as if he was heavily implying with the words that the wolf wasn't worth anyone's time, that he was insignificant.
He didn't have to feign a more quiet, kinder personality, to a non-pack member. He could be as loud and as rude as he wanted. And he took pleasure in this, abusing it -- it had been a while since he'd found the opportunity to rile another up. "What brings you here?" A smirk still on his muzzle, Rayder took a few steps towards the water, dipping his head down and taking a drink himself, as he waited for the other to reply.
For a moment all that Ira could smell was the crisp, almost saccharine scent of the glimmering water, and beyond the scent of dampened earth of the bank, and the musk of the deer that herded here. Though the insolent Princeling had been hoping to catch even a ghostly tendril of Bones’ scent thus far he had came up empty handed much to his inherent dissatisfaction. It was then that a scent, distinctly of Blacktail Deer Plateau (he had scented it on Bones’ pelt before even in a small amount) when he had thoroughly explored the silken tendrils of her fur by preening by raking his teeth through it (which was probably as close to sensual and carnal as Ira could currently get, admittedly). So far this love story she had wanted was a little too similar to her described Romeo And Juliet for Ira’s personal liking - especially given how it had ended. Head lifted, small droplets of water dripping off of his damp chin, as sharp, frosted crystalline blue eyes studied the male that greeted him. There was something in the other’s tone that made the Prince of Silvertip bristle with unbidden aversion, only further enforced by the strut the other walked in. As if he were Jinx’s Gods’ (which ironically Ira wasn’t sure if he believed in or not yet) gift to the earth. Gross. The juvenile wasted no time assessing him mercilessly and determining that he wasn’t what Ira would have called ‘attractive’ - though that could have purely been that Ira wasn’t a girl and therefore was not attracted to fellow males in any semblance of the word.
Ira snorted softly at the male’s words, realizing at the degrading tone of the Plateau male that they were probably way more similar than Ira cared to admit (and he didn’t care so he had no intentions of admitting anything - thankyouverymuch).
Deciding to take a chance, despite them being quite a bit away from the pack lands that he walked, he used the group to give him an edge in the conversation. "I'm pretty sure it is my business, since you're heading for my home, aren't you?" A sly grin coated his muzzle. If the other denied it, even if it likely was in truth, Rayder would treat it as simply that -- denial.
He didn't bother taking a more assertive or aggressive stance, though the lack of submission in his posture was quite clear that he wasn't about to recognize the other as a threat anytime soon. "I mean, aren't you wandering a little too far from mommy, coming to the Plateau?" Oh, how he hoped that this would be a weak spot for the stranger, that it would make him even further agitated to be treated like a pup, and like a momma's boy at that.
The tan colored man’s laugh was enough to grate on Ira’s nerves and leave the Princeling grinding his teeth because while it might not have necessarily been meant as so Ira took it to be mocking, as if Ira were spewing lies out of his butt. He wasn’t an assassin yet but he had been training to be one so wasn’t an apprentice basically the same thing? And here this male was mocking him — or so Ira chose to believe even if it wasn’t necessarily true. Ira leveled an sneer at the Plateau man then when he boldly assumed that Ira was heading towards Blacktail Deer Plateau. While Ira had been hoping to catch a scent trail, or maybe even a glimpse of Bones making her way to see her father he had not, in fact, been heading to the Plateau if only because Bones didn’t live there so how would they know if she was ok or not and because he hadn’t gotten permission from Jinx to dig into his investigations on the topic of Bones’ gaping absence. Despite that Ira had an extremely ‘I do whatever I want’ attitude when it came to everyone else he loved and respected Jinx too take such a large trip without her permission. He was an unruly, insolent child but he wasn’t stupid and didn’t want to do something and then find himself without a home when he returned or something.