Whitefish River Feast or Famine

The noise made the wolf straighten up and pay attention. Nynka had to smother a laugh at the comical way it stopped the canine in its tracks; served the rude and stupid creature right. Nynka's roar seemed to bounce around inside the wolf's skull almost as much as the bear's, however, by the way the canine shook her head hard and tried to rid herself of the noise. Dumb wolf: didn't she know that wasn't how soiund worked? Everyone knew you couldn't just dump it out one ear or the other by tilting or shaking your head, or at least, Nynka had thought everyone knew. Her eyes glittered and her grin grew all the more ferocious as she herself paused a moment to watch the spectacle of the wolf whose intelligence score just kept lowering in Nynka's estimation.

That pause even for just a breath proved to be something of a mistake, however. Much though Nynka might have argued against it it was somewhat dubious to assume that another shrieking weasel-roar would have kept deterring the canine for much longer. In fact, it might have been her last attempt enraging the creature that sent it stumbling into a charge straight at Nynka and her precious bear skull. Nynka yelled and then hissed in indignation—truth be told, her own little ears were starting to hurt from all the noise she was generating, but more importantly this stupid wolf was about to try and hurt her recious bearskull treasure! Nynka wasn't at all certain the old thick bear-bones could be hurt by even a fellow bear, much less some much-scrawnier wolf, but she resented the attempt regardless. It was awkward to try and get her face aligned at just the proper angle inside the eyesocket, and there wasn't much time as the wolf came steaming toward her like a runaway locomotive; Nynka whipped back on her brown haunches and tried to get her head coiled back in position to strike snakelike at the wolf when it put its big fat black nose within range.

Perhaps the rattling clatter of bones should have forewarned her and Grezig both, but it didn't. Nynka's own strike was aborted as the ground and skull suddenly quaked all around her; rather than the flash of teeth and black nose with a big imaginary bullseye upon it, she saw a sudden rolling wall of fur and the quick flash of a widening brown wolfeye just before the world went all topsy-turvy about her. Nynka's half-aborted snakestrike instead cracked her own pointed tooth against the wall of bone that quite suddenly was not where it had been a second ago. Nynka yiped and jerked her head back, rapidly feeling the blunted eyetooth with her little pink tongue, but was distracted from this and loosed a hearty guffaw as she saw the wolf clambering uncertainly to its feet and then wandering toward the door in a drunken daze from her concussion. Nynka kept cackling, literally rolling onto her back with laughter inside her now-lopsided bearskull hideaway at the canine who'd gone and injured herself before the weasel could touch so much as a hair. She composed herself just long enough to roll back upright for a moment and victoriously yell, despite her own slightly-aching head: Skreeee! And don't come back! It gave her own thinner pointnosed skull a twinge, but oh, it was so worth it.

By the time she had finally finished laughing herself silly, the cave had only her own empty echoes remaining to keep her company. Nynka gave the inside of the skull a few vicious prods to try and make absolutely sure it didn't want to come home with her, but Grezig's failtastic charge had left it with one side of its muzzle jabbed deep into the soil, and if anything it was even less willing to budge than before. Nynka shrugged and eeled free of the thing, but made a mental note of its location in case she should find herself bored and in need of a fun, wolf-mocking prop for another day.