Sun Mote Copse Women, who run with the wolves

@Towhee 

Being busy kept Wraen's grief over loss of Elfie at bay. At the end of the day she would think about Wildfire's boy and pray for his safety and well-being, but she did not let those sad emotions find their way in her everyday life. The Sovereign scouted and hunted, trained the youth, when the time permitted it and they were interested, did a daily check to know that none of the copse's inhabitants had got lost or disappeared without a trace, and was glad to return to Maia's side in the evenings. 

There were still dead fish resurfacing in the river, though some of them had to be dug or scraped out of the ice, but they kept her belly full and therefore in a better mood and more energetic than a week ago. In fact, on this day she felt so good as to seek out Towhee and have that practical introduction in the mercenary trade. Also a good chance to check out, what progress her cousin had had. So - rather than calling her with a howl and thus letting everyone know, what her intentions were - Wraen walked the length of the borders, hoping to find her relative there.

Replete with fish, Towhee moved slowly around the copse's borders. The contents of her gut sloshed if she moved too quickly, though a leisurely pace lent itself to a patrol; it gave her more time to really scope her surroundings. Nothing much was going on today, which was well and good. She hoped to wrap up her circuit and get back to Sugar for their session. Hopefully by then, her meal would be a little further along her digestive tract and she wouldn't feel like a stuffed goose.

A burp had just worked its way up her throat right as Towhee noticed Wraen. The instant their eyes met, the mercenary hiccuped reflexively and out it came in a smelly plume. She chuckled at the timing, waving away the odor even as she began to close the distance. Towhee couldn't help but notice how much better she felt after letting loose. Her stomach felt a lot less stretched.

"Fishy burps are particularly dank," she said in way of apology, in case the the stench lingered. "What're you up to?"

Fish did not sit well with Wraen either for different reasons. She had not had a solid meal for a while and her stomach had difficult time to digest such an overload. So for her either nausea or cramps in the digestive tract were quite common symptoms. And though she knew that after the board wide plot was over she did not wish to see any fish in her lifetime, she would continue to use this food source as long as it was there to consume.

"Have you ever considered winning a fight, using a poisonous burp on them?" Wraen asked smiling. "Because I was thinking that you could teach me something today, but... your secret weapon works just that well," she chuckled.

Towhee's lips twitched in response to Wraen's comment and she replied, "Funnily enough, I have considered biological weapons before." She chuckled for a moment, then addressed the latter half of the Sovereign's statement. "I'd love to start a lesson. Sorry in advance about the fumes." Because training on a full stomach would surely result in some of those.

She paused for a beat, then very abruptly surged forward, directing a nip at Wraen's right ankle. The best way to assess someone's self-defense skills was to catch them unawares. For the rest of their session, the Sovereign would anticipate the attacks. For this very first one, however, Towhee could get a fairly genuine feel for the leader's reaction to a sudden blitz attack.

Wraen had told Towhee before that she was very good at fleeing, which did not quite cover the extent of that skill. You know that weird feeling after you have narrowly missed hitting a tree, while you were walking and texting (or in Me's case - reading a book) on the street? You weren't even looking, but you all of a sudden avoided the collision? That's exactly, what Wraen did. She missed the moment, when Towhee switched from discussion to attack, but her body reacted first. She recoiled sharply to the side and went down in a play-bow, inviting the mercenary to give another try.

With surprising deftness, Wraen cleared the mercenary's incoming teeth, before just as swiftly dropping into a play bow. The sight tempted Towhee into another blitz attack, though she reeled in the impulse and sprang backward, putting some space between them. The element of surprise was lost now, so she would have to formulate a plan of attack, preferably an approach that would suss out the Sovereign's strong and weak points.

Towhee decided on her next target: the leader's uplifted rump. But instead of going directly for it, she feinted toward the Sovereign's ankle again, diving toward the ground near Wraen's outstretched foreleg before spinning away from it and arching upward. She didn't bother going for a bite, instead simply attempting to tag Wraen's rump with her snout, like someone playing flag versus tackle football.

Towhee had learned from her earlier mistake and quickly changed her tactics. Instead of making a straightforward move she did a little dance to mislead about her plans. When the mercenary lunged for Wraen's outstretched forepaw, she was ready to snap back, only to hear her teeth click in thin air and feel a bump on her hip. She dropped on her belly, tail wagging and eyes smiling, looked over her shoulder at her opponent and grinned. Two could play this game. What would she do, if Wraen pretended to do nothing this round?

She made contact, her snout pressing into the leader's hip and prompting Wraen to drop to her belly. Her tail wagged and so did Towhee's, arching in a mock display of dominance over the prone leader. Some of her seriousness melted away in that instant as she felt suddenly more playful. This was still a serious task, yet there was no reason they couldn't have fun with it. Children learned life skills from games and so could adults!

With a surprisingly deafening bark, the mercenary leaped backward, then pranced from side to side with several more barks. She didn't give the Sovereign a chance to react to her fancy footwork, instead lunging closer again in an attempt to straddle and pin Wraen, teeth aiming to close around her scruff.

Cats have immense amount of patience to wait and observe. Wraen was utilizing the same strategy here, she followed Towhee's ooga-ooga-ooga-chaking around the perimeter with a lazy gaze. She was trying to guess, what was on the weathered mercenary's mind and at the same time made plans of her own. She was not afraid of losing (that would be the logical outcome no matter, what she did), but she wanted to see, if she could surprise her cousin. This she did, when her opponent had made yet another lunge forward, Wraen met it with a leap of her own, paws outstretched and jaws parted to grab on, whichever piece of Towhee's skin she would be able to get.

Her target moved substantially while Towhee was still airborne, though she wouldn't be much of a master mercenary if she didn't know how to think on her feet. They were now coming at one another, jaws wide and forelegs flung out, so Towhee reared onto her hind legs. This slowed her forward momentum and shifted her center of gravity significantly, allowing her to balance well enough to swipe out a foreleg in the hope of whacking Wraen right across the face (like so).

According to anatomy textbooks the sideways range of motion of canine forepaw is way more limited than that of a cats. Therefore Towhee could not have performed that Scar vs Simba stunt, unless she wished to dislocate her shoulder joint. However, batting someone in the face is a freedom of all creatures on this Earth and the mercenary managed not only that, but a little more and less pleasant. Her nails hit Wraen in the eyes, who yelped loudly and recoiled quickly, thus indicating that game was over. 

It hurt like hell and she stood with her eyes closed and head kept low for a while.

She limited the force behind the whack, since this was merely a spar and not a real fight. Towhee didn't want to do actual damage! Despite this restraint, the impact sent Wraen recoiling with a yelp the mercenary couldn't hear. There was a jolt of triumph at striking her target so squarely, though almost immediately, she sensed something really wrong and soon the concern and guilt overwhelmed any pleasure.

"Wraen, are you okay?" Towhee queried, tentatively sniffing closer and guessing, "Ah shit, did I get you in the eye?" She gulped, feeling like a world class asshole. "Can I take a look? Or maybe I should call for Sugar? Sorry," she added, her tone flat but her face remorseful.

"Nah, I'll be fine," Wraen opened her eyes to narrow slits and regarded Towhee, while tears were streaming down her cheeks and blurring her vision. "That was a good move, by the way," she tried to lighten up the situation with a joke and a laugh, but that turned into a wince. "But - it hurts bloody awful," she added and sighed. Yup - she was positively out for the whole day.

It was a horrible time to get a bad case of the burps, though as her guts full of fish churned with guilt, several of them (burps, not fish) decided to crawl out of her mouth. "Oof, sorry, sorry," she apologized, backpedaling so she wasn't so close to Wraen's face. Could she be more of an asshole right now?

Even while waving away the fumes, Towhee managed to catch the Sovereign's words and she smiled ruefully. "I bet. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to ice it. It'll keep the swelling down and it helps with the pain." She was no medic, though she'd been injured enough times to know her way around the basics of first aid. And, fortunately, the season was on their side.

Towhee's gassy eruptions did not improve the situation much, Wraen scrunched her nose and turned her head sideways to get rid of the awful smell of fish and gastric juices that encased her like toxic cloud. Were she not in pain, she would have seen the humour in the situation (she would so later in the evening), now, however, she was rather bent on finding that ice and alleviate the uncomfortable feeling. "Okay, I'll go and see, what can I do about the ice," she told Towhee getting going. "See you around!"

Wraen dismissed herself to go search for said ice. Towhee couldn't decide whether to cringe or laugh at the likely unintentional puns. "Okay, you can pay me back next time," she called after the departing Sovereign. Towhee drew in a steadying breath, then released it in a long stream. She then padded off in another direction, making a note to blunt her nails to avoid similar injuries in her other training sessions.