Blacktail Deer Plateau Magic, madness, heaven, sin

A red fox ran full tilt past the dark trees of the Plateau, and in hot pursuit was a white female wolf with her tail whirling madly behind. Her tongue lolled from her mouth, but her ears were thrown forward and her brow furrowed in serious concentration. Snow flew from her paws as she tore across the pack land, chasing down the fox with the intention of capturing it for the pack. The vulpine was swift, but Saena was swifter.

She bowled into it, sending it screeching into the underbrush in a tangle of limbs and bushy white-tipped tail. Snarling, the juvenile followed it, and was pleased to find that in the chaos, its leg had turned around in the wrong direction. No doubt a Healer would recognize the dislocation of its hip joint, but Saena saw only an opportunity. The fox screamed and yipped as the wolf fell viciously onto it, practically wringing its neck as she lifted it in her jaws and violently shook it.

It was likely shock that stopped the animal's heart, though there was a fair mess of blood around her when Saena finally dropped its body. Panting, she lowered herself to her stomach and threw an arm over the warm cadaver. She looked up, her bloody muzzle opened wide as she caught her breath, and then let out a series of yips to summon any nearby pack mate to share her meal with her.

Following his return to the Plateau, Pura had withdrawn - again. Junior's disappearance had changed the air, and even after Saēna told him privately of the girl's location, her absence from the pack-lands plagued him. An influx of new faces made things worse. Pura kept to himself, patrolling and cataloguing the furthest reaches of their territory.

It was the balm of Saēna's presence that kept him from disappearing into the mountains. He would catch her scent or see her going about business, and that would soothe him. He rarely engaged, but today, when she called for company, Pura was quick to join her.

Saēna was painted a dark crimson and breathing clouds when he arrived. Against her pale fur, the colour shone like hot coals. Pura squeezed past a burst of naked shrubbery and slid silently to his belly in front of his sister and the kill, reaching his head forward to smear his muzzle with blood.

"Twins," he announced through a stiff grin when he raised his painted head - his first joke since farting in one of the girls' faces.

She watched and listened intently for others to arrive. When it was Pura who pushed pass a tangle of branches and laid himself before her and the kill, she smiled warmly. Saena had spent too little time with the brother she'd been close to in her youth, and it was a relief to see that he hadn't disappeared like the rest of their siblings. She hadn't questioned it—his scent was still around, at the outskirts as it had been when he'd withdrawn the first time—but worry had risen nonetheless.

His joke, however mechanical and uncertain, made her giggle. She craned her neck to nudge the fox toward her brother, then settled back, allowing him to take the first bite if he wanted it. There would come a time in her life where Saena would debate whether or not to shove everyone away from a kill (or try to, anyway) or not, but that time wasn't now.

"Where've you been hiding?" she asked in a tone that was curious but not judgmental. Pura handled things differently than she did. It never did occur to her that all the changes had shaken him and that, like her, he'd taken time to himself; to her, he was an unmovable boulder, sturdy even in the strongest and most tumultuous gales.

"Where've you been hiding?"

Saēna pushed the kill towards her brother, and he happily accepted. Within moments, the fox was without its little black nose, which Pura seized and pulled off to chew on. It had a peculiar texture - like rabbits' ears or the soft, gooey eyes of larger kills. It would not sustain him, but the peculiar sensation of holding another creature's nose in his mouth was almost thrilling.

"The outskirts," he told his sister when he finally swallowed, eyeing the cream-coloured beauty. As far as he could tell, she seemed settled, but Pura was not the most perceptive of beasts. He liked Saēna for that reason; when she showed emotion, the rest of the pack knew about it. But they were getting older, and as Pura's view of the world became more complex, so too did his sister's. "Do you like it here?" he asked, eyeing her blankly and without judgment.

Saena didn't question Pura when he went straight for the fox's nose. It was weird, all right, but nothing about her brother was quite normal. That had never bothered her before and didn't now, despite a permanent, almost hypocritical distaste for weirdness in anyone else. Her choice was always the organs, her taste driven by evolutionary preference or something equally mysterious and inexplicable. They were also soft, warm, and tasty... tastier than a nose, she imagined.

Pura distracted her from her studious observation of his chewing with a question. Saena was taken aback not only by the forthrightness of it, but by its content. "Yeah... why?" She couldn't really imagine herself anywhere else. That nice little canyon she'd discovered so long ago on her solitary adventure sometimes came to mind, but it couldn't support wolves, not in the same way the Plateau did. She wouldn't want to leave this pack for any reason but mandatory ones, and supposed that meant she liked it, bad memories aside.

"Yeah... why?"

Pura shrugged - a careful learned gesture. He wasn't entirely sure why he had asked the question. Words came more easily to him now, some of them involuntary. Like farts. He supposed that this was casual conversation, and marveled at the lack of control and direction. "There will be more of us," he settled on eventually, reaching his muzzle into the cooling carcass to lap at the blood whilst it was still warm. The flow had slowed and the blood coagulated, so he didn't get much. "More puppies," he clarified, eyeing her again. "Maybe they will become Alpha instead."

The siblings' previous conversation had sparked an obsession in Pura. He eyed Dante's throne with the same hunger that his sister eyed the empty spot next to him. In time, she might rise to fill it... but Pura would have to fight. Although he rather liked Dante, the thought of deposing a king held an allure that was unmatched. Either that, or strike out and settle down elsewhere - also an option, but it felt wholly passive in comparison.

There will be more of us.

This was even more chilling than his previous question, if only because it immediately made her think of Junior, and how she'd left to join the sirens because Peregrine and Fox were going to have kids to replace them. But Peregrine and Fox were far away, and kids they had would be no family of theirs. She'd never even meet them, and she couldn't be happier about that. She was about to tell him so when his clarification indicated he wasn't talking about siblings, but just pups in general.

"They won't," she said, pretty confidently. "They can't until they're a whole year old. We'll be Alpha long before they get there." She didn't mean to say it conspiratorially, but it certainly came out that way, ushered on the breath of abrupt panic. What if Blue Willow named her children the heirs of the Plateau, now that Hawkeye's natural children were both departed? What if the truth of their birth to two lower-ranked individuals placed the pack far beyond their grasp? For Saena it was a secret ambition that only Pura knew about, but even if it was unknowingly given away because she hadn't spoken up, she would be gutted.

Unbeknownst to her, Pura had the same aim, and probably would be just as bothered by new cubs taking what they both felt was theirs by right.

The siblings' minds converged on the same track. For all his autistic tendencies, Pura sensed the fear rising sharply in her. He, too, thought of Blue Willow. Chatty, noisy, sweet Blue. She was one of the only Plateau wolves to predate Dante, and insofar as he could, Pura had a soft spot for the soppy, mild-mannered Beta. But there were children in her belly, and he instinctively knew them to be a threat. The certainty with which he felt it was a refreshing break from his blurred impressions of more nuanced emotions - it shone bright and true before him, utterly clear-cut.

Both of them paused to think. "Maybe they will go away," he offered enigmatically, looking at the corpse between them. Fox and Peregrine had departed the Plateau to procreate - perhaps Blue and Lasher would take their brood elsewhere before they came of age, voluntarily or driven out by Dante's natural desire to fill the ranks with his own flesh and blood. There were other means to remove a threat, of course, but Pura was acutely aware of advice - nay, a reading of the unspoken law - that he had received from Peregrine no less than twice in his short life.

Saena couldn't help but to round her ears forward and knit her brows with a mixture of concern and uncertainty. While her brother viewed Blue Willow's upcoming brood as a direct threat, or so it would seem, Saena was excited for them. She wanted them to be raised here, in the oldest pack in the Wilds, far from the influence of wolves of other packs. She wanted to play a role in their up-bringing, maybe teach them to be Naturalists and Gamekeepers and even Outriders. She didn't want them to leave, and she didn't want Blue Willow or Lasher to leave either.

"I hope not," she said firmly, glancing away as though slightly disappointed with the suggestion. "This is their home. They're the closest to family we have. And... I want to meet the puppies." But did she want them to grow up and exhibit ambitions like their own? Did she want to battle them someday for rank? Her inner self faltered, but outwardly she managed to be convincing. "They won't be Alphas. They have too much growing up to do and... we can beat them if... if they try."

Saēna didn't seem convinced. Pura watched her wrestle with the idea of allowing another bloodline to take root at the Plateau whilst he calmly considered how he might crack a newborn's back. But his sister was adamant that the unborn threat could be kept in check, and he nodded to show his support. "We can beat them," he agreed, assuming she meant physically, and returned his attention to lunch with renewed vigour. Their conversation had forced more words out of Pura than he was accustomed to giving up in the space of a single conversation, and he needed time to ruminate on the exchange.

In the same moment that Pura thought she meant physically, Saena thought he meant mentally. She would never harm a hair on Blue Willow's children, even if they rose and attempted to take what she felt didn't belong to them. They were children of the Plateau just like her and Pura and Junior and Tytonidae, and would get all the protection she could muster. She assumed her brother had that in mind was well—juveniles and yearlings were often appointed the task of watching pups and exhausting them with play and false war games. Surely he was excited to teach them sparring, as excited as she was to teach them of the sky and of prey. She thought he'd make an excellent Warden and an excellent teacher of Wardenhood, or Wardenness, or whatever the hell it was called.

She glanced sidelong at her feasting brother, then mischievously fell over onto her side and stretched out her legs. She wiggled her toes in his general direction, then began waving her limbs through the finer layer of snow, forming a crude outline of herself (with balloons for legs). There was no reason for it, just the sheer joy of having a pack she adored and the relief of finally admitting, though not outright, that she hoped one day to help rule it.

The siblings lapsed into a comfortable silence. Saēna began to draw in the snow, and Pura fastened his gaze on an innocuous point and began to think. He understood the hierarchy, but had never given much thought to how he might traverse it until now. It presented itself to him like a vast mountain that he now had to scale - one awkward conversation at a time. The sheer magnitude of the task ahead almost made him smile.

Fade?