Firestone Hot Springs making faces in the clouds

They could've made a perfect picture of mutual contempt, the white wolfess with her nose turned skyward and the elk with his nostrils flaring as his head tipped back in kind. She was not hungry, and not stupid enough to make an attempt at a bull elk without assistance, and so he was nothing but a feature of the landscape to her, albeit one with a heavily accented manner of talking back. Which he did now, and much of what he said was so thickly veiled that she barely picked it up; she could make out "missus" and "upset", though she was too busy being amused that an elk, a prey animal, would refer to her as "missus" to really bring herself to spit venomous words at him a second time.

It was kind of like a human, being faced down with a sawed off shotgun, referring to it as "homie".

Of course, the peace that might've existed between predator and prey was rudely broken, as quite suddenly there arrived probably the ugliest wolf Jinx had ever seen. Having been born and raised in a pack of well-bred, fit warriors, fat was as unsightly to her as the thought of no fur whatsoever, and so she watched with evident disgust the swaying of his gut as he approached. He gave no introduction, and Jinx may have been content to ignore him too, but the second he opened his mouth, her ire was redirected abruptly from the elk to himself, for he dared to insult her.

Him! He was as crusty as they came, likely arthritic and incapable of any skillful movement, and yet he had the audacity to run his mouth to a perfectly fit, young female wolf who was, for all intents and purposes, easily superior to him in all ways except age? Even as he crassly thought to command her, the wily Kesuk had turned on him, and her lips were peeling back in a dangerous display of warning and hatred; the pink of her gums and the flash of her tongue across bared teeth more than enough of a sign that he best shut the fuck up, or he'd lose the ability to say another word again. The fur along her spine had risen into thousands of stiff peaks, and her tail lashed at the air over her haunches; it was a fearsome display of her prowess and superiority, and a clear warning to him.

Maverick, it seemed, was equally put off, for he was quick to scuttle back and lower his rack to intercept the old wolf's charge; it was comical, really, that the elk reacted at all, for if Jinx had to estimate, the old geezer probably couldn't have chased him more than a kilometre before his hefty weight and his brittle bones forced him into submission to his age. She reckoned if the bull so wanted he could kill the old man, and secretly hoped he did; nobody called her a six-tit imbecile on the assumption he would receive help from her. If anything, the former Mambo was most inclined to help the elk in this situation, despite her contempt for his haughty appearance; and in fact, she was mere seconds from doing so.