Moonspear Ah, decisions

Charon nodded, having heard the urgency for both leaders' presence in Dash' call, so he knew that Amekaze was bound to arrive soon. She was always pretty punctual. Like expected, Amekaze arrived shortly after him. The touch to his flank caused an unexpected jitter to go through him, as if lightning had struck from Ame's nose towards the edges of his body; he'd been surprised by her sudden arrival, Charon told himself, because he could find no other logical explanation for the strangely pleasant feeling. In this mixture of feelings and thoughts Charon completely forgot to greet her back, looking a little as though he was listening intently to Dash (except there were no words to listen to yet) since he stared off towards him.

Soon Charon was distracted by Dash' actual words and he focussed on them instead. It surprised Charon that Dash was surprised by Flóki's promotion. Technically, Flóki hadn't been promoted over anyone's head in Charon's mind, just like he himself: he'd just been promoted to Beta from his puppy rank, which Charon saw, despite being below all adults, as a whole other thing as it was age-related mostly. Coming of age, this was simply ther ank that Charon saw him most fit for and had divided him into. Why anyone'd be jealous was beyond Charon, because Flóki had been his right-hand man through it all.

The talk took a surprising direction however. Dash didn't exclaim any jealousy or desire to be Beta himself. Instead, he said that he wanted to be lower in rank because even Gamma felt too high for him. The surprise was clear on Charon's face. It made sense to him for Dash to be high because he had contributed to the pack well enough, and he'd been here from the start of things. "Lower?" he said in surprise. He glanced at Ame to see what she thought before turning back to Dash. "Being high in rank doesn't mean you can't be yourself and meet others, does it? It just means you deserve to be where you are 'cause you've been contributing to the pack." Perhaps if he'd give it some thought, Charon would have decided to let Dash have it his way, but as things were he was stubborn and went into argue-mode instead. Maybe Ame would help him get his priorities right and see that arguing was pointless, and it was better to just agree with Dash and give him what he wanted.