Broken Antler Fen it's a sunny and relaxing holiday

this is shitty but idc @Maty @Mumble @Cali @Sprig Accorsi @Tanto

They had traveled and traveled; why, Smudge did not know. And yet she was eager to accompany her makeshift family. Since she had left Onyx behind, a hole had developed in her heart, which was promptly filled by new friends and guardians. Another yearling might've felt restricted by being under a watchful eye all the time- might've desired to break free and establish themselves as an adult. Smudge was not that yearling, and the accompaniment of older wolves who treated her like a child to be protected was fine by her, even brought her joy. 

For now she had scampered ahead of the group, unknowingly entering a new region in the process. Smudge practically skidded to a halt as something caught her eye in the half-melted snow. The rendezvous spot for deer was perfect in presenting her with the splintered stick of antler which she gathered between her jaws excitedly, whirling around to show off her trophy to whoever had followed mostly closely.

Maty picks through the slush like she does anything else: thoughtfully, with a good amount of teenage apathy. She kicks over small branches, upturns rocks, leaves behind pockmarks in the wet mulch.
Hey, she says absently, as the sound of Smudge's footsteps grow louder. What's up? Then she notices the broken antler she has and her mouth tightens to an inquisitive oh. She whistles. Nice find. Inspecting it with all the melodrama of a trophy hunter, she says, This'll be a fine addition to our collection, if I do say so myself.
Now, if only low-effort jokes could warm her feet up.
Dad! She calls back, hands cupped around her mouth. Look what Smudge found!

Everything was cold and wet and slushy and gross, and to be honest? Alessio despised it. The boy was not used to living in luxury anymore - and hadn't been for a while - but he was certainly born into it. His father, for all of his massive, horrible, murderous faults, had cared for his children well and did everything he could to make sure they were always presentable and comfortable. It was all about appearances, and right now, Mumble had mud all over his fur. 

Papa would certainly not have approved.

"Dad! Look what Smudge found!" The call came from one of the girls - Maty - and Mumble rolled his eyes. These names kept getting worse and worse. First Mumble, and now Dad? When Alessio was hardly more than a teenager himself? The male shook his head fondly and padded toward the source of the sound.

A breathy hum left his chest in approval at Smudge's find. It wasn't really anything special, but damn if he wasn't going to encourage the girl. 

Maybe he really was a dad.

YAY! Everyone loved it! First came Maty, her sister who praised her find most casually, and then Mumble- or daddy, as she sometimes lovingly called him, whether or not he really liked it. Not very old himself, and still with all the aura and care of an aged man- giving what she assumed was a hum of approval. She danced for a moment on white paws stained darker by mud, careless as to her appearance, before setting the trophy on the moist soil before her. 

daddyyy, She whined dramatically, tail flicking impatiently. where are we going? It was a rhetorical sort of question, she knew he couldn't answer anyway, and promptly turned to Maty to complain some more. my feet are sore and i'm tired of walking. she moaned, throwing her paw against her forehead like an actress in an old movie.

Mumble catches up to them— he's covered in mud and it's beginning to dry, leaving his hair in quirky spikes. She raises an eyebrow. Going all punk, I see. Midlife crisis? She would punch his shoulder affectionately if she could.
An ear flicks back at Smudge's whinging. She couldn't help but inwardly agree though. They'd be trudging across at a snail's pace for miles and miles now and still there was no destination in sight.
Not that they could ask Mumble and get a clear-cut answer. Not that they would know what to do with the information if they'd got an answer anyway. She was enamoured with the camping lifestyle at first. It was pretty romantic, not knowing where you would be from one day to the next, but it was starting to grate on her. Instincts.

Mumble released a longsuffering sigh, both at the nicknames and the midlife crisis comments. He wanted to say I'm only having a midlife crisis because you girls have cut my lifespan into a third of what it would've been! but of course he couldn't. 

He was hit with the sudden desire to get all three of them spotlessly clean. The mud was highly annoying. 

The boy nudged Smudge with a soft snort. Stop complaining. It wasn't like he was feeling any better than they were, either. Sharp eyes flicked between the two and he shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. He wasn't sure where they were going either, just that they were traveling. But he felt good about this place. Maybe they were close to where they needed to be.

She laughs in fluttering giggles at Maty's little fun-poking at Mumble, who can only sigh in response. Smudge sure loved him, and yet oftentimes ended up overly insensitive to his lack of ability to speak up- it was just tempting. A friend who you could always joke with who could never really stop you. She totally wasn't an asshole... right? 

No responses came to her question except Maty's ear-turn and Mumble's little nudge and shrug. Neither response was good enough, and she frowned pointedly. fine, then! i'll lead the way, she huffed with mock-exasperation. She had already been leading them, after all, she was the first to come across the antler- which she soon recollected in her jaws- and she didn't mind leading again, as long as they got somewhere interesting. With a tentative glance back at sissy and dad, and a further look to the others that trailed behind, she turned forward again, quietly carrying onward albeit at a slower pace.

Captain Smudge! The exhaustion, the frustration, it all washes out of her. She sticks her tongue out at Mumble, crosses her eyes, and trots forwards to catch up with Smudge.
Maty makes as if to adjust an imaginary brim on an imaginary sailor's cap. Where will this expedition be taking us, captain? It's a seadog's deep and gritty voice. You could almost smell the wintergreen and seasalt coming off in waves. To the dark and treacherous waves of the open ocean?
She adjusts her voice again. This time, the twang of a hardboiled treasure hunter. Temples which have gone buried and unnoticed for centuries? She lets out an exhale and her shoulders slump along with it. She'd sucked all the entertainment she could out of that bit. It was time to let the joke die at least a humane death.
Oh, there was the frustration. There was the exhaustion.

Just tagging for reference; Sprig's a worrywart and therefore obligated to fret about the lack of tracking devices on everyone  ;P  If only y'all had cell phones he could put those spy apps on! Hah.

Restless paws had turned from white to brown, with the proliferation of mud all about. But unlike Mumble Sprig had other preoccupations. Most of which seemed to be skyward, from the direction of his frequent glances. Frequent enough, in fact, that his mud-slicked paws stumbled into and then over an antler-like branching stick of his own; he might have caught his balance if it wasn't for the smooth brown goop coating his rough pads. As it was, it was probably a mercy that no one was close enough to watch him go splat.

A somewhat disconcerted Sprig pulled himself up again with a bit of a grimace and looked hastily around, and then up again. Okay, yeah, no signs that he'd been spotted, at a quick glance... He tried to give his forepaws each a quick shake, but how much grippier and cleaner he managed to make them in the process was questionable. It was certainly more than made up for by the liberal spread of mulch across his bony chest. He didn't want to waste any more time, though; he picked up his pace and trotted posthaste in the direction of the others, black-backed ears flickering as they quickly started to pick up the comforting sounds of his family's voices.

Thought maybe I could find @Tanto, he said, flicking his eyes toward the party's rear flank again. That bird seemed to have been developing a little more of an independent streak than Sprig was entirely comfortable with of late, at least in the nervous wolf's mind. Golden wolf-eyes skittered across the budding branches overhead on one final pass before turning from one familiar face to another. The smile that began to cross his face as he relaxed and looked at Mumble evaporated even more swiftly as his eyes went past his fellow "elder" and then scudded more hastily from one canine to the next. And wait, where's @Cali? Sprig managed to stop himself from biting his lip but it was a near thing as his eyes roved restlessly among the trees again, this time nearer the trunks' base where a young coyote presumably might be more likely to be found. His paws couldn't stop themselves from unhappily lifting and shifting his weight uncomfortably from one to the other however. At least until he placed his left forepaw down and it skidded a little across last year's dilapidated leaf litter—though at least this time he didn't pull another faceplant.

Sprig took a deep breath in and jabbed his front paws out before him more firmly into the earth. There, that was a heroic and confidence-inspiring stance, right? One hoped. I think we should stop here for a little while, he said, raising his voice to project well out across the entire group, and in particular Smudge who looked apt to let her paws carry her off elsewhere next. He wouldn't put it past one or another of the girls to claim that oops they just hadn't heard him otherwise. He suppressed a bit of a shudder: I think treacherous waves and buried temples can wait for a bit. Or maybe, y'know, forever. Just the mental image of such hubs of danger sent chills down his spine and put his fur on end, after all. No place for vulnerable youngsters to be hopping about recklessly expeditioning, especially since they apparently couldn't even keep together in open woods when he took his eyes off them for a few measly minutes.

As much as Tanto loved his ragtag flock of wolves and half breeds, there was a downside to travelling with a bunch of quadrupeds — their distinct lack of wings. While he sailed and soared effortlessly above them, the poor canines down below had to trudge through mud and snow alike, their travel made ever so painfully slow by their anatomical disadvantages. Still, the bird loved his adopted family, and so that was why he scouted far ahead of the group, above the trees and over the stretches of grassy plains in search of a place they could finally rest (away from the muck and mud of the fen).

However, the place he did find was much too far to walk in a single day, and he was sure Mumble and Sprig were already growing tired of the girls' constant complaining of sore paws and choruses of are we there yet? So with a wide, sweeping U-turn, Tanto made his way back to the group, arriving just in time to hear Sprig's call for a pit stop.

The bird let out a warble to announce his presence, flying in low over Smudge and Maty who seemed to be leading the group (as they usually were), before circling around Mumble and alighting upon his head — one of his favourite perches. "Sprig right," Tanto chirped, beginning to preen the twisted, dirtied hair behind Mumble's ears. How did mud get all the way up here? "Fen stretches far, much far-er than wolf legs go." At this, he gave a soft trill of a chuckle.

Shit, Mumble was worse at this than he thought. Sprig approached and listed off two of their family members that weren't with them - that of course the mute wolf had assumed weren't they with you? But his initial anxiety was swept over a bit when Tanto flew over and landed in between his ears, which flicked in a sort of greeting. 

So, they were missing Cali. Just one. And, to be honest, Cali was the one Mumble often worried the least about. But that didn't make her exempt from his concern, so he let out a short, anxious little sigh. 

They did need to rest then, he agreed, and promptly sat on the ground. His tail thumped once behind him when Tanto began to groom the fur on the top of his head. 

Mumble frowned a bit and flicked an ear again. If we stay still for a while, maybe Cali will be able to catch up, he thought, hoping the others echoed his sentiment.

Mumble assented readily and obviously enough to the suggestion of a rest. Probably smart, if the extent of this muggy expanse of mud really did stretch as dismayingly far as Tanto claimed, and the bird wasn't just exaggerating. Sprig was really starting to doubt the wisdom of having come here at all, especially if the place might have swallowed Cali up entire... but no, he couldn't think of that right now. Forcibly he pushed even the hint of such a possibility from his mind. He had heard Mumble's little sigh, and went over to give the dog-wolf's ear a quick little nuzzle if affectionate reassurance. (The ear that was furthest from Tanto's busy beak, that was, of course. Sprig didn't want to dislodge magpie from perch. But—) All right, Birdbrain, said Sprig affectionately, giving his nose a quick little flip in the direction of the feathery one as well. Thank you for checking. Not all of us can have wings instead of legs, after all. Much far-er than wolflegs go indeed, pffffft. Though Sprig couldn't help but add a quick little somewhat plaintive query: That's true in every direction?

Sprig had to say, he didn't much approve of the landscaping choices hereabouts. But, well. Obviously it hadn't dissuaded Cali, or at least, not enough. Right, he said, trying to keep the strained combination of worry and fatigue from letting his voice crack. You lot stay here, then. I think I'd better go have a sniff around and see if I can spot her.

He pulled in a deep breath, bracing his legs and rotating ever so slightly up onto his tippy-toes as he did his level best to look severely down his long nose at the gathered "children," a stern teacher peering down over his black spectacles to put them on notice that they were all in big trouble if they even so much as started to think about getting into anything. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the furrow of worry he couldn't erase from his brow, and the jittery tendency of his eyes to stray behind them as they hoped against hope to spot Cali suddenly popping up there, and besides, he couldn't hold the pose for long. With a hefty whoosh of breath of his own he turned and prepared to go.