The Tangle but if this changed your life did you have one before

@Eske

winter is only one of caw’s favorite seasons for what it drives wolves to.
 
he finds many much more willing to fight when there is food on the line, and though the snow is beginning to melt into spring its effects will not disappear so quickly. caw knows this as he knows few other things. and after it, as always, comes children, and they are so much easier to take then adults. to fight is one thing he enjoys; to control is another.
 
it is yet early morning. there is the remnants of a deer’s body practically under caw’s feet, the protruding ribs all but picked clean by scavengers, the bare remainder of thawing meat underneath freshly gnawed apart. there are toothmarks sunk into caw’s muzzle, scored faintly along one shoulder, and the half-starved coywolf who has caused them struggles weakly, snapping and pawing at caw’s chest and legs with blunt claws.
 
his own teeth are sunk deep into its throat, and the taste of blood and the sharp sting of fresh wounds only spurs him on. his tail wags excitedly behind him, ears cupped forward and eyes gleaming, murmuring in soft, cheerful latin through a mouthful of fur and flesh. the sun rises higher, and eventually, with slow inevitability, the last trickle of life bleeds away beneath his fangs.
 
caw always savors death the way few are able. he can feel the moment the other wolf dies – the moment the muscles resisting him lose all tension. there is always an abruptness to it, an abruptness that grants him one of the few periods of true emotion he ever has.
 
his ears flicker faintly, and his jaws part, and the wolf – mouth still wide, teeth still gleaming in the light – slumps to the ground. avis flutters down from caw’s shoulder, shooting him a brief look that he ignores in favor of lapping at the wounds on his muzzle. it shoots delicate tendrils of pain through his body, and he grins, dripping red across the patchy snow.
 
“digna,” he trills, as closely to respectful as he ever gets, and lowers his head to tear its stomach open. thick blood spills into the grass and snow, so dark it is almost black, and avis joins him, stripping fur and flesh away as caw prods his muzzle into the gash, searching out the organs within.

eske returns to the tangle, slipping out of drageda's borders once she wrapped up her patrol in the hopes of spotting the dragon-thing again. she wants answers for the strange thing wrapped around her neck. she isn't sure that she's going to find them — she doesn't even know what it is and though her pack mates have attempted to chew it off it was all to no avail. she has almost gotten used to it. somedays, she doesn't even feel it anymore except for when she moves her head to either side and feels it press against her flesh through her thick, chocolate brown pelage. her steps are slow and cautious, her ears alert atop her skull as her gaze flicks to and fro, taking in the surroundings and looking for any sign of the giant bird/dragon thing she'd seen before she'd fallen asleep and awoke with the collar 'round her throat.

to her dismay she hears and sees nothing out of the ordinary. eventually, she is lured in a direction by the sound of ripping flesh and upon the winds beneath the pungent scent of blood she detects coywolf and wolf. it is in a neighboring territory and thus she feels within her jurisdiction to sate her curiosity investigate. she does not conceal her steps upon her approach — the last thing she wants to do is startle the stranger and she's never been one for hiding in the shadows, anyway.

eske shrugs through gnarled underbrush, wincing slightly as a crooked branch snags a small tuft of fur from her shoulder. the scene unfolds before her eyes: a wolf, large, male with a monochrome pelage with varying shades and what she thinks is feathers in his fur. would eske have been the vain type she might've been jealous about his patterning. her coat was rather dull in comparison. to her great perplexity, he draws her eye. even as he dines on a coywolf all she can think is that she finds him aesthetically pleasing. 'strange', she thinks; because he's not her type at all. her gaze flickers down to the coywolf's corpse after she gives a soft chuff to announce her presence and then flickers up to the crow perched upon the wolf's shoulder, studying the bird for a moment before her gaze comes to rest on the cannibalistic stranger.

after the first spatter of red, with no life to drive it, the bleeding slows to a trickle. caw’s front paws are already stained, a thick red visible even against the black of his fur, and his muzzle is so dark with it the tooth-marks are nothing approaching visible. he gulps down mouthfuls of flesh and organ as avis picks her own meal, and but for the sounds of tearing meat it is quiet, for a moment.
 
so when the soft chuff sounds out behind him, it is easy to hear.
 
caw’s ears flick, curious. for a moment he thinks perhaps it is a relative of the wolf lying at his paws, but he has rarely seen family approach such a scene and simply greet the one that has caused it, even if it is clear proof of their weakness. he lifts his muzzle, licking at the crimson staining his fur, and turns, blood-bright eyes gleaming as he scans the gnarled underbrush.
 
the woman he sees is no more difficult to pick out from the bush than the coywolf was. she is larger, even, all shades of woody brown, but caw cares little for the color of fur – what is more curious is the strange thing wrapped around her neck.
 
meal forgotten, caw immediately beelines for her, eyes locked on the object.
 
“aspice!” caw chirps. the rustle of wings behind him is noted and forgotten just as quickly as he draws as close as possible, blood-soaked muzzle aiming to press directly against the collar as though there is no wolf attached to it at all.

her appraisal of his aesthetically pleasing monochrome coloring is cut abruptly short as the stranger makes a direct beeline for her. eske's muscles tense as her hackles and the fur at the nape of her neck bristle. his eyes — the color of blood, she notes — are locked on the collar around her neck but the wanlida has never before been so boldly approached by a stranger before and she takes the approach as a threat. "hod klin!" she spits the command in her native tongue just as he chirps in a language that she does not understand. he is faster than she anticipated and from the flurry of movement and the initial shock his muzzle, blood soaked and flecked with bits of flesh is pressed against the collar. her heart is in her throat, the pulse hard against the pressure of the collar. his teeth are too close for comfort and to hide the fear she feels at that knowledge she lets out a low, warning growl from betwixt trembling lips. "get off me." eske demands coarsely in common tongue, recoiling away from him.

even if caw were able to understand her language, he would thoroughly ignore it. as it is, it does not even register as warning, as anything but pointless, and his nose presses eagerly against the band, nostrils flaring. it smells naturally very much of wolf, even through the blood painting his muzzle, but underneath there is something stale, faded, and somehow vaguely familiar.
 
caw’s ears flutter, and he presses yet closer, snuffling at the collar while he combs his mind for the memory that will connect it. it is from beyond this place – nearer, he thinks, where he was raised – but while he has not lived that long he has seen and scented many things. he does not so much as notice avis landing once more on his back.
 
the woman’s words, as the first did, go unacknowledged, if understood; what caw is far less pleased with is the way she recoils from him, removing the collar from under his nose.
 
caw does not even bother lifting his head. “no, no,” he insists, drifting closer immediately, paws fumbling in the snowy ground in his haste to replant his muzzle where it has just been. there is already a sticky patch of blood clinging to the band and her otherwise-neat fur. “what is? where from?”

the stranger persists. even as eske recoils he does not appear to have given much consideration towards her demand as he moves to close the distance. she deliberates for a heartbeat of a moment and with a decision that surprises even her she curbs her inclination towards aggression if only because he's had several seconds in which he could have ended her life but hadn't taken the opportunity. in fact, he seemed less interested in her and much more interested in the strange thing around her neck. that is what truly stills her natural aggression. because she wants to know what it is. she wants to know if it's going to hurt her and thus far he's the only one that has showed peculiar interest in it in a way that suggests that maybe he might know something.

he presses his nose to her neck again and she lets out a low, reluctant huff but otherwise allows it, this time. "i don't know." she responds a bit briskly, feeling her previously kept at bay aggression begin to bubble slowly in her chest. if he doesn't know then what good is he? and why would she have any inclination to keep allowing him to touch her? she doesn't. "there was this great big ...bird. maybe." eske isn't sure what she saw. a bird. a dragon. it made no difference. it was big and loud and the last thing she remembers before the grog had set in and she fell unconscious only to wake up with the collar around her neck. "i fell asleep and then i woke up with this ...thing on me." she explains, finding that she's looking to him for some kind of answer despite that she isn't so sure she can provide her with one anymore than anyone else.

this time she does not back away, and caw is free to jab his nose all over the collar, ears twitching as he snuffles at it, combing his mind to try and remember exactly where he has scented the strange stale alien smell clinging to it before. back in his old pack -- with crow -- there was a lot to see. and one of them -- one of them was the giant black path and the things that would roar across it, like huge silver bears but much faster than caw had ever seen bears run. and sometimes they would pause and these strange animals would pour out and chatter at each other and flash bright lights in caw's direction.

caw had found it interesting the first few times, especially since when he'd gotten close to them they'd scatter and run like a herd of deer and go back to the beasts they'd come out of. after that the flashing lights had just been irritating. but they'd left scents behind them and he didn't remember them all that well, not perfectly, but this -- this is, he thinks, similar.

he snuffs at it some more as she explains about a big bird, and falling asleep, and caw doesn't know anything about that, but. he wags his tail excitedly, ears flicking back and forth, and then blinks up at her, still probably far too close for comfort as his muzzle is a scant inch or so from her neck. "big bird!" he repeats, eager now to share his knowledge about this thing. "silver bird? did flash?"

eske watches him with a carefully composed weariness, torn between the desire to enforce distance between them — a distance that he seems to take no issue with breaching and while he's shown no signs of wanting to kill her the fact is he's a stranger and she doesn't trust him — and the consideration that if she snaps her teeth at his face that it might frighten him off. she cannot risk that happening ...not when he's the first one that seems to have some sort of inkling on what the thing around her neck is; and presently some sort of answer is answer enough for wanlida. he has what she wants and she's desperate enough to take the risk.

"yes." eske replies, her salmon pink tongue drawing across her jowls once in a quick, sharp swipe. she can vaguely recall it in her mind's eye but her mental picture of it was foggy at best. she'd been fighting the loss of consciousness — strange, when she'd been wide awake seconds before the sharp pin-prickle she'd felt a heart beat or so before the world had begun to get foggy — and yet even construed as it was: the giant, loud, flashing silver bird wasn't something she's likely to ever forget. "you know of it?" these words were spoken less like a question and much more of a statement, unabashedly seeking information that she was willing to pry for if need be.