Heron Lake Plateau wuornos

1/5

She needed to be useful, and she had rested long enough. The woman's role was dependent on keeping men happy and at the moment, her fixation was upon Phox. It wasn't hard to fall back to the behavior that lesser men had beaten in to her — specifically, she wanted to find him something to eat. Maybe if she brought him something special he would reward her with his company, or a kind word.

It also occurred to Camilla that she wouldn't be able to explore the surrounding territories for a while, not with the threat of her husband still darkening the Redhawk's doorstep; so she was left to find a gift worthy of Phox without going far. It would be a difficult task. With the weather getting colder and the land often covered in thin layers of ice and snow, it was unlikely that the birds native to the plateau would linger. Most of them had probably fled south for the season, and that meant her hunt would be short lived at best.

But, she'd try anyways. If only to keep herself away from the strangers of the pack, and to impress Phox.

Phox, an experienced hunter, had no need for gifts of food, although he would not refuse them. Camilla still struggled to settle in and integrate with the pack, but he was certain she would with time. He was disappointed that Towhee wouldn’t allow her to bed with them, but he understood. She wanted him all to herself, and that kinda warmed his heart if he was being completely honest. Still, he did care for Camilla, and he had come to accept her as his ward of sorts. Not in the “child” sense, but in the sense that she was his responsibility.

He had picked up on her scent ten or so minutes ago, and with his tracking skills, he quickly followed her trail to her current location. It appeared that she was looking for something, and he gave a soft woof to announce his presence. She always seemed keen on seeing him, and he did not imagine that today would be any different.

The girl had picked up a scent that wasn't of the canine variety, but neither was it typical prey; there was no doubt in her mind that the prey had vanished from the plateau because of the season and the collection of wolves living upon it. Smaller things like squirrels, voles, and other rodents might've been in a state of hibernation by now. But the scent was sharp in her nose, musty. Camilla was on the trail of a fox — or at least was tracing her way towards a small hole in the dirt where a fox had once slept — when she heard a sound behind her. 

The sound wasn't loud but it broke her concentration, and made her jump a little. When she turned to face the oncoming figure she saw that it was Phox, and that made the wariness of her wild eyes abate somewhat. She made a low noise back to him — inviting, friendly, but somewhat feral in nature — and as she intercepted his approach she pressed her nose against his cheek.

She jumped, and Phox winced with a sheepish smile. He had not meant to startle her, but that seemed inevitable. Poor Camilla was clearly traumatized by whatever had happened to her out there. From what he could tell, she had been treated like dirt before coming into the Redhawk fold. Hopefully she would never have to be treated like that again. Phox certainly did feel like her knight in shining armor, and it was a very, very good feeling. He was wanted, needed even, and it was a stark contrast to the cool way that Towhee regarded him most of the time. She was slowly warming up to him, but it wasn’t the same as it was with Camilla. Camilla had no doubts about him. She trusted him completely, and he relished the feeling.

Her nose against his cheek was a welcome gesture, and he returned the greeting by licking her ear a single time. If she had been the more verbal sort, he probably would have greeted her with words rather than woofs and body language. Alas, it seemed he was closest friends with a deaf and a mute. What luck he had. Maybe Camilla would benefit from learning ptero at some point or another. Learning something new might even boost her confidence, and she’d be better integrated into the pack if she learned it, considering most of them ended up “speaking” it... sometimes without even realizing it.

Phox sniffed the air, then the ground, picking up on the smell he assumed she had been tracking. Figuring this was a good opportunity, he signed and spoke at the same time: Hunt?

He returned her affection and the small gesture warmed her all over; she didn't feel the chill of winter for a few moments, instead basking in his presence. Camilla was a completely different person when she was alone with Phox versus when she was roaming the territory — she knew it, she felt it. Being apart from him was absolutely awful and the fact that it couldn't be avoided, and that they couldn't spend every single moment together, bothered her more than she could ever say. If she could explain her compulsion to him then things would probably unravel pretty fast. He'd kick her to the curb, and she'd be left to the twisted mannerisms of whoever came across her.

When he prompted her with a question, Camilla nodded with some vigor; she opened her mouth to explain something, but thought better of it. It wasn't her place to speak, and he hadn't asked any questions, so she stayed silent. The manner in which Phox conveyed this word — spoken as well as signed — went right over her head. She heard him and that was that; it wasn't common for her to be looking directly at him and she certainly wouldn't meet his gaze, so she'd missed the signing completely. Following her nod, she gave him one more nuzzle of her snout (across a shoulder blade this time) and slipped away from him in the direction she had been traveling before. 

The scent was stronger, but she still wasn't certain about it — the fox was somewhere up ahead which should've been an easy thing to find, however there was a lot of snow across the plateau, and that caused some struggle for her.

He didn't expect her to pick up on the ptero right away. It was a second fluent language for him, but hopefully she could learn a few words along the way that might help her communicate better. Poor thing certainly needed that skill if she meant to stay here (and he hoped that she would, despite Towhee's dislike of her). She took the lead, and he was a bit surprised, but also delighted by this. It seemed so rare for her to take the initiative on anything (unless that something was cowering, of course). Still, if she proved herself a good hunting partner, it meant that maybe Towhee would come to see her as more than just a cowering weirdo.

She seemed to hesitate here, and Phox too noticed that the scent trail dwindled some with the freshly-fallen snow. He had been here long enough to know where they lived, so he motioned to her. -This way,- he signed, which was really just a lift of his muzzle pointing in the direction he thought they might be along with a shrug of his shoulder suggesting she might follow him. There was a clan of foxes that made their home here, he knew, and they were likely the source of the scent. Perhaps they were out hunting, too, which would make them a more easy target.

He was behind her for a few seconds, but when she paused and looked around she caught his silhouette in her peripheral vision and glanced at him, at which point he motioned at some thick grass standing tall over a burm of snow. It was hard for her to judge the incline because of the slush all around, but given the go-ahead by Phox meant she had to try. The snow was partially melted in a narrow band along the edge of some exposed stone, and with each step she would lift her paw free of the cold mess and shake it off, as if touching the slush was too strange for her. But she pursued the path anyway, and as the earth began to ascend she climbed across the ledge and hoisted herself up to where the grass was waiting. Camilla dipped her head and sniffed at it, and found faint traces of the same musky scent — and for a moment she was pleased. This showed in the slight raising of her tail, a hesitant confidence working like a wave through her body.

As she continued to investigate she concluded that something must have passed along the burm sometime in the morning. Perhaps there was a fox den around here — so she rooted through the grass for further clues, but in the end the scent led her a few more feet along the ridge and then it faded out. Maybe this was the termination point of the trail and the creature was in the other direction — she thought of this and lifted her head, surveyed the ledge that she'd just climbed. For a moment, with the light slanting just right, she looked almost content, her body no longer holding all the tension of her abuse but rather, focusing all of that nervous energy in to a job.

But she remembered Phox when she spotted him searching nearby, and everything seemed to return to her all at once; her tail-tip twitched, and her posture sagged again. She climbed down off of the ledge and sought Phox out for another bump of her nose against his shoulder and then cut across his path away from the scent's ending point, hoping to find something stronger so that she could prove her worth to him.

She moved on her own terms, and Phox was glad to see her breaking out of her shell just a tiny bit. He had a feeling it would be a long, slow process, but he was a patient wolf (for what reason is entirely up to the reader). Maybe all those years dealing with a deaf sister had actually given him some valuable skills. As he watched her, he noted not only her brief confidence, but the fact that she was... what was the word for it. She had a quality he had only ever associated with Towhee before. But that didn't make any sense, because Camilla and Towhee were two very different wolves.

This puzzled him. How were they alike in any way? His brow furrowed as he tried to come up with an explanation, but nothing surfaced. He was in the dark on this, and he could not figure out what was going on inside that pea brain of his. Whatever it was, it was interrupted by Camilla approaching him, touching him briefly only to wander off again in search of their prey. Shaking his head (and his neck and then his whole body and his tail), he tried to forget about the feeling and focus on the task at hand: tracking down a meal.

She was in luck! The trail she followed soon branched in to a gully in one direction (which smelled sharply like soil despite being mostly composed of ice) and through a copse of trees to the left; she chose to go left, zipping along with long strides that made her appear less like a stilted crane and more -- well, like a somewhat graceful heron, which wasn't far off of the original point. Camilla ducked her head as she entered the copse, where the ferns and reeds grew rampant.

Here the scent was the strongest and it really got her blood flowing. She'd almost completely forgotten her motivation at this point; that she wanted to impress Phox, find him something and gift it to him, was important to her but she was so zeroed-in on her task that the concept fell to the backburner. She roamed among the trees and then there came a shriek -- some snarling -- and a death-wrattle.

When Camilla emerged she had a small lump of fur between her teeth connected to a bigger lump dragging through the grass, and its coat was a striking orange.

Phox continued to watch from afar, occasionally moving so that he could get a better look at her technique. He supposed he could have been doing his own hunting, but watching her became the more tempting choice. His eyes flitted this way and that to follow her form, and when she emerged with something between her jaws, he smiled. She held in her mouth a bright red creature, and he was pleased. Proud, even. Fox, he gestured, making the -fox- ptero movements along with the spoken word. It was his name, and it had also been his mother's name. Little did he know his mother had never liked hunting and eating the things.

As soon as she spotted Phox, her posture shifted; she went from being confident and pleased with herself to something much closer to the crescent-shaped submissive that he had found in the forest. The fox was still clutched between her teeth; the shift was so quick she didn't think about it, just assumed the position of a subservient woman — and with quick, slinking steps she dragged the carcass out for him to look at. She placed it against the earth before him and stepped back, casting small glances at it and at him, watching his motions, and waiting, as if expecting judgement.

The instant she spotted him, she went back to her other self (which is what he had decided to call it in that instant). He sighed, wondering if she would ever be able to break out of that shell. Maybe this was just the first small step of many. He did feel responsible for her (he had promised her safety, after all), so he felt it was his duty to fix her. And clearly she needed a lot of fixing.

She placed the fox at his feet, then stepped back. This one's yours, he said, nudging it toward her. You caught it fair and square. Truth be told, he had only observed to see how her hunting skills were. He had been impressed. Phox sat back, creating space for her to eat. He looked at her curiously, again wondering where that feeling had come from earlier.

He didn't want it? The way he deferred to her, gave her the fox as a meal instead, told her that much. Being denied this chance to show her appreciation for him made her head spin, and her heart felt like it dropped in to the pit of her belly. With one thin limb she pulled the dead fox back, closer to herself, but she didn't do anything else to it. Maybe she'd skin it later, offer him the pelt for his den (if he had one), and stash the meat... 

But, then, the longer she sat there with him watching the less and less Camilla thought that was appropriate. He seemed to be waiting for her to do something - eat, maybe. So, in an effort to appease him and to avoid any potential backlash (because she feared he might be just like the other men she'd known), she dipped her snout towards the dead fox and began to tear it in to smaller pieces.

A few bits she nibbled at, and the blood seeped out from the fresh kill to coat the earth, but she didn't eat too much. The rest could be stashed. Camilla did keep glancing at Phox as if to gauge how much eating she needed to do before he relaxed.

She ate, after what seemed like much internal deliberation on her part. Phox wondered what was going on in her head (he often did), but he did not think he would ever know. Camilla seemed as secluded as Towhee seemed... the opposite. Phox felt like he could read every one of Towhee's emotions, but Camilla was like a clam that he would never be able to crack open. And maybe that was okay. Maybe he didn't need to see every little thing about her.

You don't have to eat it, he suggested gently, knowing this would likely cause her to immediately stop. Phox found it so difficult to talk with her or suggest anything without feeling like he was demanding something. Meanwhile, Towhee was the exact opposite, and she would never do anything Phox asked unless she absolutely wanted to.

There was a chunk of fox flesh between her teeth right when Phox countered his order, indicating she need not wolf down the entire thing - or that's how she took it. Her eyes were big and focused upon him as he said it, and the girl had half a mind to drop the morsel of meat immediately. Instead, she lifted her nose and lightly tossed the meat in the air, caught it, worked it with her back teeth, and swallowed with an enunciated gulp.

The rest of the dead thing could be stored now, she surmised. So she took a second to lick the blood off of her muzzle, grabbed it, and with a few glances at Phox for confirmation - began to carrying off, intent to bury the remains for later use if anyone needed it.

Again, he couldn't tell if she was doing it because he asked her to or because she wanted to. Even her body language confused him. He furrowed his brow, but he didn't stop her from ceasing to eat. When she tossed the last bit up to catch it in her mouth, he laughed. Nice catch! he praised. Today, he had seen more of what he believed was the "real" Camilla than ever before. He had to believe that there was more hiding under that submissive mask that somebody else (her husband?) had forced upon her.

When she took off, presumably to store the fox in the caches, he strode alongside her in silence, happy to be there for her in whatever capacity she needed. Phox did feel like he was making progress with her... whatever that meant. She seemed to be opening up... if only he could make Towhee see the same things that he was seeing.