Ouroboros Spine do your best or do your worst

hoping for @Peregrine!

When he was being very honest with himself, Valiant could acknowledge the real reason he didn't love the idea of Peregrine as second hunter. And, mainly, it'd been seeing him walk up with little Galana. Galana, who's already been led astray once by older wolves — wolves who should've known better. And maybe part of it was all the indignation surrounding Ariadne and Kigipigak. A young girl spirited away by an older man. Wasn't that just a nightmare?

(He did not think about himself and Vairë through this lens. She seemed so wise to him — he often forgot their age difference.)

But really, @Peregrine had given him no real reason to dislike him. So Valiant was doing his best not to.

He called for second hunter from the borders, hoping for a bit of help and a bit more understanding.

what valiant perhaps did not know about peregrine was that he saw himself as no older than galana. he was no man, hardly even a boy; no husband nor father, and certainly not much of a second hunter. at least not yet.
but he was trying. he was learning! and so, when valiant called for his aid, the redhawk man came to him coolly through the winding shadows of the tree line, evidently intrigued and somewhat suspicious. in his mouth was a twig which served as a toothpick, and upon his face, a brow quirked.
you rang? he greets as casually as he can, giving a soft swish of his tail to dispel any awkwardness.

Unfortunately for them both, 'awkward' was Valiant's middle name. He, too, tried to make things seem fine and normal with a swish of his tail. He wanted to like Peregrine because that would be easier. Ideal and even necessary, the way things were looking. It shouldn't be such an undertaking as he'd come to feel, but now that he'd found himself up at that edge of dislike, he was finding it hard to talk himself back down.

"Yeah," he agreed, gesturing to the ground between them. Deer tracks. "That big herd is wandered off again. I could use some help moving them closer to the territory."

He hadn't explained this goal to anyone else yet, so he explained it to Peregrine now: that he wanted the deer to live safe within their borders for a rainy day. That he'd been using scent markers and sometimes physical appearances to encourage them closer to the center of the territory. That, lately, something seemed to call to them from the outer reaches.

"I think they're gettin' suspicious," he said, contemplative. "'Cause they've got all they need here, don't they?"

oblivious to valiant's distaste for him, peregrine simply assumed this was merely a first-and-second-hunter-fun-bonding-day. while he wasn't much of the chatty type when it came to someone he did not find particularly appealing to his loins, he was content to at least make an attempt to cooperate.
well, he shrugs his shoulders as he glances down at the neat pair of hooftracks littering the ground, dragging a paw over one of them. it's their calving season, isn't it? same as ours. but they wander, admittedly, he knew little of their patterns and why they went where, but he was not about to admit this. they like to stay at low elevations when they have babies, i think, 'cause there's more grass. maybe that's what it is?
we could try to herd them, his brow furrows. but i don't know if we could convince them to live here, like, all the time. if there's anything i know about deer, it's that they kinda go where they want.