Bearclaw Valley We abandon one-another.

Open to anyone.

With one of the older children injured and the other - well, as far as he knew, preoccupied - Glaucos could only entertain himself in a limited fashion. It was preferable to the teasing and the dangerous games that they played with him, but only for a few minutes. He was tempted to track down @Averna, presuming she would be somewhere in the vicinity of the big rock or one of her little altars, and set off at an amble.

He wondered if @Astyanax was with her. He had not seen his twin for some time and found himself longing for contact. As young as he was Glaucos had some ideas cemented in his mind already: that there was strength in numbers being one such aspect to his survival. Being alone was a curiosity and nothing more; he enjoyed it, for all that it could afford him, but at the same time he dreaded being caught alone by the other children - or, if his supreme unluckiness held strong, an adult.

The scent of the ghostly woman wove among the trees and soon drifted away from him. His attention waned. Glaucos became fixated on a shaft of light cutting neatly through the trees, and the motes of autumn dust dancing within. He shuffled through the copse and felt a brief joy at the destruction of leaves as he kicked them up, then moved on from that too. There were no scents around him that he recognized at this point - only the rotting of the leaves.

But there was a set of silver eyes lurking nearby, watching Glaucos.

Between being injured and the two invaders being shipped off to live with Averna instead of Astara, Aventus hadn't had much opportunity or desire to interact with them. Watching the back of Glaucos' hematite head still put something ugly in the pit of Aventus' stomach. There wasn't exactly much competition between the two, with Aventus approaching his sixth month earthside while Glaucos only approached his fourth, but nevertheless. There was no comradery in him for any pup but his sister.

They were still as prey to him even as they grew, destined one day to eclipse him in size, and he found himself shifting silently in the undergrowth, leveling his stance. He parted his jaws, holding them at the ready as he launched himself at Glaucos' back and sought to bite down on anything that wound up in his grasp.

The boy was appropriately distracted. He sauntered through one small conglomeration or another, kicking and pawing and generally causing mayhem. The sound of the driest leaves crumbling to his desires was incredibly satisfying to him. Glaucos did not consider piling them together in to a proper mound to annihilate, having inherited some level of simplicity from his father, but he left a mess in his wake. The game of find leaf, crush leaf, repeat had his full attention—to the point that any approaching steps were lost in the crunching chaos he created.

The shape of the older boy rose up behind him and he was oblivious; then came the strike, and as Glaucos was swept off-balance he thought it was part of the game. That maybe he had leapt in a manner that caused him to slip and bowl, except there came a scything pain to his nape and before he could comprehend what was happening, he was eating debris. Leaf-litter jammed against his tongue. He felt his teeth grind in to the dirt, coughing and flailing in vain.

His teeth found purchase on the back of the boy’s neck, and Aventus immediately followed through by shoving his weight forward and down. He was pleased with himself when Glaucos’ face met the dirt. Unsure of what to do with the feeling of superiority that his position over the rival pup gave him, Aventus snapped his tail high above his hindquarters and ground his teeth harder into Glaucos’ scruff.

A growl bubbled around the fur in his mouth as he shifted his position, attempting to straddle Glaucos entirely. He wasn’t all that familiar with dominance and submission rituals, and the severity of this went a little beyond the ordinary when it came to that, so he was forced to heed only his instincts. Those were unfortunately muddled so much with hatred that all he really wanted to accomplish by it was pain, misery, and humiliation.

wc: 144

He wanted to get up, get away. The hurt spread across his chest and belly where he was ground in to the dirt, neck straining and limbs kicking even as the rival force found purchase looming over him. Glaucos wriggled and squeaked; whatever passed for childish snarls sounding more like the deflating of a whoopie-cushion than any sort of threat. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt! Get off!

The boy standing over him was older so he was bigger, and that mattered. Glaucos was destined to be as mountainous as his father and as horribly ursine as his mother, however in this stage of his life he wasn't anywhere near that. Slim was his physique, his flesh yielding to any strike that was bestowed upon it.

He managed to get his nose tipped-up enough to shout: GEDDOFF!!
—but what good would it do?

The boy wriggled under him, but Aventus did not relent. Not until he could taste the iron tang of the boy's skin welling against his tongue where a bruise was forming and his teeth were rubbing it raw. Not until he felt the sweet high of securing his victory sweeping through his belly. He'd been immobile in that cave for way too long, and he needed a win after being defeated so handily by Nyra.

When Glaucous grew most desperate, Aventus roughly shoved the pup into the ground and then released him, prowling away with his tail held rigid and high and a growl in his throat. A promise of further violence in the future—forever would he assert his dominance with physicality when it came to these two intruding pups.

A bad omen for his future behaviour around children, if one cared to look close enough.