Redtail Rise Comeback kid

"Yep!" Saena said proudly, wiggling her stubby tail even faster as if to show it off. Given a choice between keeping it long and having it short, though, the female would've preferred the former. Still, it hadn't hindered her yet. She still wielded it the same way she had when it was long, even if now it was sort of moot. Other wolves probably couldn't see it, but it was habit and instinct to bristle it upward when assertiveness was needed, and likewise to flatten it against her hindquarters when deference was in order.

She laughed and turned to look up the ridge's side, then gestured to the sky above. "See those little specks flying up there? They're hawks. There's loads of them here, so we called it Redtail Rise." Junior would probably catch on to the fact that it also matched Saena perfectly, but she hadn't named it vainly after herself, even though Luke's suggestion had partly inspired it. "It's all because of you," she told Junior, "if you hadn't inspired me to do it, I'd still be at the plateau." Probably suffocating, she mentally added. She loved her former family there, but she knew now that she'd made the right decision for herself.

She turned back to face Junior as her sister revealed that Swordfish and she were over. Saena's contact with Swordfish was limited to a single visit, but even so, her ears wilted a little. "Sorry to hear that, Junior," she said, nudging her sister's cheek comfortingly. The dark-haired former Beta didn't seem terribly upset about it on the surface, though, so Saena let the subject go for now. There would be time for details later, surely.

"You're not a flake," Saena tried to reassure her. The truth was that Junior was sort of flaky, but probably not willfully. "You're... an adventurer. Adventurers can't stay in one place forever, you know." She smiled, though it was hard not to keep sadness from twitching the corners of her lips downward instead. That Junior would leave one day was probably inevitable, but Saena wasn't looking forward to it. "I was going to ask if you'd be Beta, actually," she admitted, "but if you're sure you don't want it... I won't push it on you. Just promise if you do decide to go elsewhere, you say goodbye first. I won't hold it against you."