Heron Lake Plateau guiding light

Woot! Glad to have you both join, hehe. I'd send Owen over to hug you if he wasn't all over mud now.
And yessss... Rebel!Kite = <3.  :D 

Owen's teeth were starting to chatter, half out of fear and half from the icy waters swooping far too quickly up his toes, and then his legs, and nearly up to his elbows as he splayed his legs out and tried to arrest their momentum and find some sort of purchase in that unbelievably cold mud. He overrode his chattertooth instincts to try and clamp his mouth shut all the more firmly, squinching his eyes shut in the process as he held on with all his might and kept trying to yank Kite back. She didn't weigh that much less than him; Owen was no muscle-bound weightlifter, and in fact very much the opposite. Usually that wasn't something he had cause to regret, but boy did he regret it now, as he felt himself being dragged inexorably deeper into the water along with Kite.

And then help came swooping in—of a sort, at least. Eljay hurtled into the long-legged pups at speed, and knocking her out of Owen's loosening grip fortunately tumbled Kite up onto dry land where she was safe, at least assuming her legs held her there properly this time. Owen— couldn't check properly to make sure, a little too focused on his own less-lucky position, with only his left forepaw reaching land of the quartet, although fortunately the water he crashed into wasn't deep. He screeched anew and flailed and managed to get himself a lot wetter than the pond itself did, though, as he heedlessly flung a random mixture of water and mud all about while trying to get his legs back under him to propel himself away from the cold cold cold water. And Kite...wait, where was Kite?! As he managed to wallow upright, the last he'd seen for sure of his sister she'd been slipping into the icy pond's embrace, and then... then the sequence of events got a little confused in Owen's mind. All he knew for one panicked moment was that he didn't see her in front of him anymore, and far too far beyond stretched the endless, ice-rimed waters. Owen made an inarticulate noise of fear and unhappiness as he splashed out one determinedly large step deeper—he shuddered as the chilly liquid splashed up onto his chest—and then a flash of movement caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head to see Kite scooting her butt well back onto dry and warm and safe earth. Oh, great— yeah, that was real fair. He didn't see what she had to yowl about: Eljay had gotten to her in time, while her brother had to deal with the awful half-swim she'd almost taken for herself.

 Owen's open mouth grimaced as with a grumbled, Gwwwargh, he shambled his way back up onto the mud and then onto the less-slick and less-wet patch of ground nearer his sisters and Eljay, where he plopped his own shivering rump down closer to Phoebe's right side than he usually tended to settle. Not that he wasn't grateful that Kite was obviously okay, and even still mostly her proper colors from what he could see at a quick glimpse rather than half pondmud-brown like him—which, well, he somewhat grumpily supposed probably looked better on him than on any sister, at least. (And despite the danger of putting himself within such easy range of their mischievous teeth and paws, his sisters would put off some body heat, hopefully...right? Ugh, the sooner he could get himself heated up and dry once again, the better! Right now his bones felt like they might never be warm again.) He tilted his head first to one side and then the other, swearing he'd somehow managed to get several scoops of pond inside his disproportionately large ears. It was only after this that he properly registered what his wobbly little sister was saying.

Owen's head snapped upright. What?! he said to Kite, his brow furrowing as he stared at her in bewilderment and tried to figure out what had brought this on. He wasn't used to this bizarre wild streak she was displaying now—hadn't on some level even been aware that little Kite, Kite of all people! was capable of such daring and deliberate misbehavior—and somehow the concern she voiced now had never quite crossed his mind. W- w- whaddaya mean, Kite?! He'd just sort of...assumed that all wolves were hunters of one stripe or another. Some were better and some were worse, sure, but... did Kite really think she was never going to improve enough to help the pack in such a way? This was a boggling revelation for Kite's brother, who simply hadn't thought that far ahead, and been rather too wrapped up in mastering his own inept and clumsy attempts at hunting even those random inanimate objects scattered about the packlands that always seemed to get the better of him. But his eyes and ears matched, as they skillfully deciphered even her less-graceful furious signing, having had considerable practice at this point. Her signage and spoken words both matched, so that there could be no doubt he'd really heard her say what he thought she'd said. And it did dawn on him now that yeah, maybe it really was true... maybe Kite wouldn't even manage to make her legs work obediently enough for her to ever join a pack hunt, or go bounding after an escaping bunny. Never? thought Owen to himself with aghast awe, hardly able to fathom such a thing. Never ever?! He gawped stupidly at her and tried to collect his thoughts. Buh... b- b- but Kite... he started, and then stopped. His teeth really were starting to chatter without the intercession of others' fur to cushion them now. But he reached out a goopy paw inarticulately in her direction, trying to reassure her despite having no real clue what to say to any of this just yet. Someone else would hopefully have something a little more useful to respond to her with, meantime, if all that Owen would offer up was this helplessly mute gesture that even now dropped a large glob of cold mud onto the dirt below. This was what inner craziness had sent her racing toward the pond today, though?! Owen would never have imagined it, not in a million years. And even now she was experiencing difficulties holding her agitated form still.