The Heartwood Why Did It Have to be Thunder?

@Ptarmigan I always check the weather thing on Wolf before starting posts, to reference it ICly, and I happened to refresh the page and saw “Thunder” and went “YES. PERFECT.” Also, this was partially inspired by me feeling really bad for all the poor dogs that people decided to bring with them to go see fireworks because everyone forgets that dogs can hear way better than we can.

Red found herself that night in the Heartwood, though she didn’t know it was called that. She wasn’t really paying attention to where she was going. All she knew was that she needed to get away from the thunder that was suddenly assaulting her eardrums. Had she known that the sound of thunder was caused by lightning, and that lightning liked to strike at trees in order to be absorbed into the ground, and that lightning-struck trees often caught fire, she never would have decided to charge headlong into a place full of trees. However, being a wolf meant that this knowledge would probably never be known to her, and so she ran to the Heartwood in the hopes of finding somewhere to block out the noise. She felt like her ears were bleeding (though they really weren’t).

It wasn’t that she was scared, Red thought as she looked around desperately for some sort of burrow or den to stuff her head into. She had been in plenty of thunderstorms before. And all of them had been just as bad. Maybe she just had extra-sensitive hearing. She didn’t know. All she knew was that anytime after a thunderstorm was fair game for the worst headache of her life. If she had known what cannons were, she would have likened the sound of thunder to being the same as a thousand cannons going off all at once.

Finally, she found what she had been looking for. Well, kind of. It was a massive oak tree, whose roots were so large and sprawling that they broke up the ground around them like a mini earthquake had taken place only right at that tree and nowhere else. This meant there was plenty of space to make a temporary den for the night and shove her head beneath her front legs, only to wake up in the morning like a dumb teenager with their first hangover. Hopefully there would be a water source nearby. Drinking lots of water usually helped the headaches she got.

She began digging out a little bit more room in the roots system, as the cannons thunder went off around her.

As the sky bellowed and flashed with the raging storm, Ptarmigan loped swiftly through a tangle of green foliage and wilting dogwoods. The sky was dark, but streaks of brilliant white cut across it at regular intervals, spooking the petite wolf further into the trees. Her fur stood up rigidly on her spine, signalling her fear of the storm.

She sought shelter in the massive deciduous forest. Having lived much of her life in grasslands and plains, Ptarmigan wasn't well-versed in forest hiding places, and settled for a gnarled knot of roots at the base of an oak. She could scarcely fit, but managed to wedge her body between the roots... Only to come face-to-ass with its current owner, another canine looking very much like a coyote, but with the scent of her own breed.

Being of the larger predator species despite her small size, and being pure of blood at that with the full-blown instincts of her kind, Ptarmigan wrinkled back her lips and loosed a guttural snarl, hoping to scare the coywolf out of her hiding place so the Endore herself could occupy it.

Red was just getting comfortable in her hiding place within the roots of the oak tree when she was suddenly interrupted by a snarling sound coming from her rear end. She yelped in fear and confusion and tried desperately to scramble away from the sound - another animal, no doubt. And trapped in the roots as they were, the scent of the Wolf was strong and obvious. Unfortunately for the both of them, the Wolf had blocked Red’s only escape, so there was nowhere for the coywolf to go except forward. The problem with that being that there was no forward. She was about as tightly fit under the roots as she possibly could be, so she wasn’t sure what the Wolf expected her to do about moving.

She emitted a high-pitched whine as a show of distress. In that one sound were multiple meanings: “I’m afraid of the storm! I’m afraid of you! I can’t move! You trapped me! Leave me alone!” In desperation, she curled her lower body inward towards herself and ended up in an odd sort of almost-fetal position. She was afraid the wolf might snap at her behind if she didn’t do something. But other than that, she was rather powerless to do anything that her half-cousin wanted.

To be honest, she was perfectly willing to share the space if she could, if only out of the necessity to get away from the sound of the thunder booming overhead and the rain that was sure to follow. Besides, she had found the space first. This Wolf would have to learn that just because she was pureblood, that didn’t mean she was entitled to everything.

Unfortunately for Red, Ptarmigan's behaviour was a combination of arrogance and self-entitlement, much of it having little to do with being a purebred wolf. She thought because she was larger (read: equal size if not slightly taller), she was more entitled. She was obviously smarter (in her mind), so she was more entitled. Overall, Ptarmigan thought she was better, and probably would have thought that if it was a huge towering Mackenzie Valley wolf hidden in those tree roots.

That wasn't to say instinct wasn't a part of it. The girl moved back a step or two, peeling her lips further over her gums and growling lowly for the other to remove itself. It would become a game of will, no doubt. The coywolf was safely wedged in the tree roots, although its subtle cries could be heard even out there in the open, while Ptarmigan, exposed to the brewing storm, was determined to get the space the coywolf occupied. Whichever gave in to fear first would lose.

I would try to make this longer, except for the fact that, since I’m trying to play Red as realistically as possible, that means quality over quantity sometimes, and she wouldn’t realistically stick around with a giant angry wolf under a tree any longer than she had to. This’ll be my last post. But thanks! It was fun.

Rumble… BOOM!

Red yelped loudly, though the sound was drowned out by the thunder. It took her several moments to get her bearings again, and when she did, she finally noticed that her new friend had kindly — or not — taken a few steps back, inviting her to leave. Red gladly scrambled around to face the entrance, looking everywhere except at the Wolf and, as quickly as she possibly could, got the hell out of there. She would take the noise of the storm to a possibly dangerous half-cousin any day. Besides, she was sure she could find somewhere else to den for the night.

Without looking back, and jumping at every sound, she was gone in less than thirty seconds. The Wolf could have her hiding place.

The battle of wills was quickly over as a streak of red shot out from the nook beneath the tree roots. Ptarmigan watched smugly as Red fled the scene, then proceeded to force herself into the hole, where she would wait out the storm in silence with her nose tucked beneath her tail.