Northstar Vale And pluck till time and times are done

Saena smoothly arched an eyebrow when Rhys changed his tune, and adjusted her stance to something just a little more authoritative. She'd had no intention of inviting the serpent into the vale, truth be told. She didn't like what she'd seen of his attitude, for one, and him thinking Warbone was a waste of time inevitably implied that he would think the very same of her and everyone else. Her intent had been to simply drive him through the vale, like cattle, and see him off on his journey through the mountains. Saena never expected him to ask to stay.

She couldn't very well drive him off when Warbone had made an offer and Rhys asked after it, though. "Only if you change your mind about what a waste of time it was to meet Warbone at all," she decided. "You'll find we are not a waste of time here." That was her hope, anyway. Some wolves, the more civilized and less wild wolves, might consider Duskvale a sort of primitive waste of time. They were inefficient about protecting their borders by the standards of others, lazy about enforcing their territoriality, and being around each other all the time was sure to get old. That's what she would have said in her past about Duskvale.

But she knew now that traveling together throughout the vale was the most efficient way to enforce their territoriality and their borders. They were never spread too thin to take on a threat and easily overpower it, yet they would never have to deal with a threat if it didn't wander near to them. It kept them safer. Out of necessity, they buried their food only in the area they were already in, and consumed it or unearthed it for the scavengers before moving on. There was no incentive for trespassing into the vale, for to find food, you had to find the pack. To hunt in land currently unoccupied by the pack didn't put a dent in the pack's food supply, since they were elsewhere. Nowadays, Saena thought it was simply genius, and she expected Rhys to come to think similarly, rather than viewing them as any sort of waste.