Sun Mote Copse breakfast, lunch and dinner's for beginners

I'm still not sure if she'll get into RH, so... vague. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Despite the homesickness which had plagued her terribly for a spell—or perhaps because of it—she threw herself headfirst into her new hobby: scouting. She ranged far and wide, exploring the hinterlands and even creating a mental map of the area. It surprised her that she came across no other packs... and sort of disappointed her too.

An idea had started to form in her young brain, based on her experiences of late. She pondered it today as she dodged some falling acorns and parked beneath a leafy oak in the center of a sunny copse. The October air was colder than she'd ever felt and she shivered slightly, trying to decide how she felt about the drop in temperature. Her devious plotting kept her warm, at least.

*eyes*

He rarely left the confines of the plateau, comforted by the safety it provided him with. Besides, his cool family lived there, what reason did he have to wander? It was only when he began to feel an itch in his paws that he did cross the borders, intent on making his own discoveries - it seemed like everyone else had explored, and he heard of so many stories from excapades out of the redhawk domain! Cinder had promptly decided he wanted an adventure of his own, though there was a significant chance he would high-tail it back home before the sun fell.

While wandering amongst the browning leaves, a scent passed across his leathery nose and the blackthorn's first reaction was to sink to the ground, frantically peering in all directions. Who was there? They better not come near or he'd... or he'd... uh... kick some butt! No wait... Tegan told him to say ass, not butt. Okay, he'd kick some ass! Yeah, that sounded cool. He was cool.

It took a great heave of courage, but his curiosity soon overuled everything else and the youth set out to track the scent to the source. Once he came upon her, the boy immediately froze. There was silence for a few heartbeats, but then his tail behind to wag excitedly at his hind, grey tail flicking against his hind. She looked like she was young, too! Maybe she could be a new friend. "Hiiiii~" Cinder chirped, a goofy smile curling his lips.

Suddenly, the urge to float her idea past Tegan struck her. She hadn't really seen him in a while, having kept her distance during the worst of her homesickness so he wouldn't think she was a wimp or that she wanted to go back to Drageda (she wasn't and she didn't!). Bat leaped to her feet, though before she took more than two steps, her mentor abruptly materialized—or so she thought. "Te—!" she exclaimed, the shout dying in her throat when she realized his dimensions and features weren't quite right. Her mouth clapped shut and she blinked, trying to make sense of what (or, rather, who) she was seeing.

"You're not Tegan!" she said in the next beat, lifting a paw and pointing almost accusingly. But there was no heat in the words. In fact, there was intrigue written all over the youngster's face. She moved closer, feet scraping noisily over the brittle leaf litter on the forest floor. "You look just like him though! Are you his mini-me or something?" she wanted to know, sniffing noses with her mentor's lookalike.

He blinked in surprise at her cut off outburst, unsure how to approach the situation. "I'm not Tegan..." The young blackthorn began, giggling softly, tail continuing to beat, this time against the ground as he promptly settled his rear. "Tegan's my brother!" Did they really look similar? Speaking of which, the boy took a moment to actually look at the girl-who-thought-he-was-tegan, who bore a pelt of grey (another one!) but was adorned with pixie-like features and paler markings amongst her fur. 

"My name is Cinder," He corrected with a smile, leaning forward to sniff noses with the girl just as she moved to do the same. "Who're you?" Well, now that she knew his brother the youth was even more intruiged.

He seemed rather amused by the mistake, quickly clearing up the matter with an introduction. Bat's eyes sparkled with interest. "I'm B—Rory!" she rejoined gaily, very nearly slipping up and using her former name. "Rory," she enunciated more clearly, "and I'm Tegan's apprentice! We're scouting partners." Her tail waved enthusiastically, kicking up a breeze in the already chilly air.

She still really wanted to track down her buddy, Tegan, but Bat couldn't deny that she was interested in Cinder for his own sake. The family resemblance definitely endeared her to him immediately. Plus, he was a Redhawk! She hadn't met many of them yet. Somehow, weeks had slipped by while she struggled to work through her terrible bout of homesickness. But that was in the past now—all of her attachments to Drageda had been put firmly behind her—and it was definitely time to make acquaintances with another of her new pack mates.

"Do you scout too?" she wondered.

A brow quirked curiously as she stumbled to speak her name, but he liked the sound of it, once she managed to say it properly. Rory. He liked that name. The little Blackthorn's ears perked up at mention of his brother again, gaze of bronze glimmering like the surface of shiny metal; he hadn't known Tegan had an apprentice. A scouting partner, huh?

Do you scout too? Cinder hesitated for a moment, pondering how to answer her enquiry. Did he? Well... not regularly, but he was beginning to think this adventure thing was pretty fun, 'specially since it meant he could meet others, and there was always a chance one of them might think he was just as awesome as his siblings! "Yeah!" He grinned, decided to just roll with it. "There are lots of things I like to do, but scouting is definitely one of them." Not... entirely a lie, he supposed. Oh well. Maybe he should learn more about this scouting business.

He replied enthusiastically and Bat took his answer at face value. "Well, cool! Wanna hang out and explore? I wasn't really doing much, just sort of meandering, but we can have a look around if you want. How old're you?" she wondered, rather apropos of nothing. He seemed to be closer to her own age than Tegan.

Expecting an affirmative answer, she didn't really wait before she began to move. Her feet scuffled through more of the dry leaves carpeting the ground as she began to mosey forward. She was now headed west, an observation she made based on the slant of the afternoon sun. She'd noticed it had begun to get darker earlier lately and wondered if it was caused by or correlated to the cooler climates of late.

He was greatly pleased at her response, enthusiastically nodding his head in her direction. "Sure!" She was quick to begin moving, paws creating an audible crunch as leaves were crushed beneath her feet. "I'm six months old now. You?" The reply fell from his lips with ease, finding great comfort in the idea that she was likely very similar in age to himself. It would be great to enjoy the company of someone other than his siblings (though of course he did love them), and the thought made him relax and speak with less hesitance.

The Blackthorn wasn't quite sure where they were heading, but that surely made it exciting! Besides, he was all too intrigued in this Rory, and who she was. If Tegan liked her, she must be cool, and Cinder as of yet could see nothing about the girl that he disliked.

He was a bit older than her then, though Bat lied with practiced ease. "Oh, just a little bit older." She found it less difficult to both deliver and stick to an untruth if it was relatively nonspecific. She smiled sideways at him as he joined her, feeling no need to pursue the topic any further than that.

But then it came up again despite herself as Bat observed, "So this is your first winter too. What do you think of the cold so far?" As she spoke, she continued sashaying through the wood. She paused to poke at a cluster of fungi growing near the roots of another oak. They made her think of Ephraim and she moved on quickly, twisting her head to look at Cinder, awaiting his response.

Cinder hadn't thought much about the changing of seasons, not really - he had noticed the shift in temperature, and the leaves beginning to lose their vivid green, but he could not quite decide whether he liked it or not. "Hmm..." He thought to himself, wondering how to word his answer. "The trees look pretty, I think, but the cold does get bothersome at times. And there's less food around. It hasn't got too bad yet - the cold I mean, though the wind feels like ice sometimes. How much colder do you think it'll get?"

He observed with interest as Rory nosed at something just out of view, and peered behind him as they walked away to spot the cluster of fungi growing at the base of a tree. After deciding it was nothing too interesting (at least, not interesting enough for him to go all the way back to sniff at it himself), his gaze refocused onto the girl.

When Cinder mentioned the leaves, Bat's gaze naturally drifted upward. They were still mostly green, attached to the boughs that shook ever so slightly in a cool breeze. But there were rashes of color: gold here, blood red over there. And the ones that sifted around their feet were brown and dried, clearly dead. Bat stirred a paw in the layer of detritus, weighing her newfound friend's question.

"I don't think I like the cold much," she said, "or the way it gets dark so much earlier. I liked the summertime." Her lips pressed together as a flood of memories threatened to crash over her head. She beat them back, locked them in a cabinet in some shadowy corner of her mind, and let out a low breath. "But the leaves are pretty. Do you think they all change color and fall off? Like," she wondered, scanning the treetops again, "will the trees be nekkid?"

Occasionally a leaf would fall, twirling down with the slow descent of a feather, only to land softly on the ground beside the walking pair. Cinder felt a small tickle upon his crown and frowned, shaking his head to release one of the fallen leaves from his forehead, where it had landed without his notice.

"I get that. The cold isn't very nice all the time, and the dark can be scary." The boy pondered, wondering if autumn and winter were always cold. Did they switch with spring and summer, or were the temperatures set in stone? He had no idea. His brows furrowed in serious thinking when she proposed another question, but his stony (yet thoughtful) expression was immediately broken at her following words; what did she just say? He had to hold down the childish giggles that threatened to burst from his muzzle, eyes glimmering with unspoken amusement. "I dunno. Maybe they will. We'll have to watch them and see."

The silly word had the effect she'd hoped for, eliciting a boyish giggle from Cinder. Bat grinned at him, then nodded in agreement with his assessment. Only time would tell the youths how each of the remaining seasons changed the landscape and what those changes meant for the wilderness's inhabitants.

For a few moments, Bat simply took in the autumnal changes already laid out before them. Then she abruptly noticed a distant sound above the whisper of the wind in the trees and the rustling of dead leaves at their feet. "Shhhhh," she said to Cinder, flailing a foreleg at him to get him to be still and stop crunching the leaves.

She had to rotate her head and pivot her ears, yet Bat finally picked up on it again. It was water! The barely discernible noise reminded her of the pounding of surf, which made her heart tremble momentarily. But she further suppressed her homesickness and latched onto the feeling of excitement water still engendered in her.

"Cinder, c'mon!" Bat exclaimed, suddenly making a mad dash southeast.

He hadn't noticed the noise, not until the girl shushed him - Cinder was quick to stop and blink at her with wide eyes, filled with curiousity. He strained hard, ears perking forward, but soon enough the sound reached him; the distant swish of water, it made him quirk his head with interest. Bat seemed overly excitement by the discovery, and he could not deny the intruige that coursed through his own veins.

When she began to dash toward it, the Blackthorn grinned and shot off like a rocket to follow her, paws racing across the ground eagerly. Finally! An adventure!

Now their feet crunched so loudly in the leaf litter, a cacophony that followed them through the woods. But Bat knew which direction to head now, so she didn't mind. She even shot Cinder a sideways glance as he caught up to her. She couldn't remember if she'd ever run with someone side by side like this. It was thrilling.

There was a thin mist suspended over the treetops ahead. Bat slowed a little and discovered she could hear the thunderous rush of falling water even despite their paws crunching the leaves underfoot. Moving swiftly again, she broke through a small thicket and found herself on the edge of a winding river.

And, best of all, a wall of water tumbled down from the mountains looming overhead, splashing into the water just a few dozen yards away. This close, it was hard to hear anything but the dull roar of the waterfall crashing into the freshet below. It was music to Bat's over-sized ears.

He relished in the sound of the leaves beneath their feet, who had browned and cracked like shells under their paws as they raced across the ground. The wind whipped around their young bodies, and with it came an uplifting feeling of freedom, of something wild, and the Blackthorn's heart thundered in his chest as they went; to run like this, it gave him a thrill greater than anything he'd felt before, and he savoured it while it lasted.

As his companion began to slow, so did Cinder, tongue rolling out to hang out of the side of his muzzle - the mist had caught his attention, but the sounds of the water were what captivated him most. He had not heard such a sound before! It was a great roar, like the bellow of thunder in a storm, and it was close. His bronze gaze flickered toward Bat, following her through the thicket until they caught sight of the winding river. From there, he could see the churning water as it rolled down the mountains ahead, a spray (it felt almost like rain!) pouring over the area ahead of them. The sounds, so loud and powerful, had silenced Cinder entirely. If this was what scouting involved, he wanted to do it forever, and he looked at his new friend with widened, amazed eyes.

She wanted so badly to throw herself into the water, maybe even swim closer to the waterfall and find out what it was like paddling around in that bubbly froth. But Bat knew it was probably a bad idea to get soaking wet, with the air so cool. The thought actually sent a shiver down her spine. Rather than diving in, she gazed wistfully across the river to the falls.

Eventually, she glanced sideways at Cinder, smiling at the look of enraptured wonder on his face. "It's kinda like the one at the plateau, only it's like... twice, maybe three times, as big," Bat observed, raising her voice to be heard over the crashing water. "I wish we could go for a swim!" she added ruefully.

Cinder, too, gazed longingly at the waters and the plume of white spray that dusted around the bottom of the waterfall; his friend's question had him grow silent for a little while, sucked into his own thoughts. Raleska had said she'd liked swimming. If Bat liked it too, surely he ought to try when the air had grown warmer and he felt brave enough? It must be fun, and he quickly added it to his to-do list... the list he'd only just created in his mind.

"I wonder what it would be like to be a fish." The young boy murmured, head inclining a touch to the side as his bronze eyes flicked back to Bat. "Have you ever thought about that? Or a bird, because they can fly. I wonder what flying feels like." He could only imagine, conjure images within his head - they looked so free, so beautiful; what was it like to be able to soar over the clouds and watch the world pass from above?

Cinder's query triggered a memory of frolicking with Dacio at the seaside, small fishes slipping between her toes. Bat gasped and shoved the memory away, doing her best to focus on her new friend and stave off a recurrence of her homesickness.

But when he shifted to asking about birds and it made her want to tell him, "Did you know birds sometimes live in holes?" the bitter ache rose within her. Bat found she couldn't quell it. She very nearly threw herself into the water, after all, if only to wash off these unwanted memories.

Instead, she turned away and exclaimed, "We can fly too! Race you back to the plateau!" Without giving Cinder a chance to react, she shot away into the forest, away from the riverbank and the recollections that seemed to want to drown her.

Wanna finish it off for us? :)