Redhawk Caldera Wish I loved and kept the good friendships

In the days since leaving the Copse and establishing their claim on the Caldera instead, Alyx busied herself trying to make herself useful to the pack. She was getting older, and as she did, she began to recognize her own feelings for what they were. While she still held a lot of resentment for Bronco, Fennec, and Meerkat for leaving while she was forbidden to, she understood that it was the feeling of inadequacy that made her resent them and her parents for not letting her pave her own way in life. Everyone was so proud of Bronco, Meerkat, and Fennec. Everybody loved that they'd all gone to serve Moonspear. But no one seemed proud of her, when she desperately needed to be seen and valued.

She'd gathered every variety of remaining plant she could get her paws on before the frost took them and stashed all of them in a small cavern near the Caldera's base on the northern side. She didn't know what most of them were and she had no idea which ones were useful and which weren't, but she'd gathered them all up anyway until she could work up the courage to ask Weird Uncle Eljay for help. She frequented this cave more than anywhere else in the territory, arranging and rearranging the plants while they all dried out and shrivelled up. She had no idea how to keep them alive, but she did her best. Anyone attentive to her efforts would've found her stash by now, but she never talked about it.

When she wasn't there, she was in another tunnel, hunting the huge rats that had grown fat in the absence of predators. Presently, she carried one such rat—a scruffy black specimen that she held up by its worm-like tail with a diva's ginger grasp—up to a cache she'd made in the trees. Setting it down, Alyx began to dig. There were already three other rats stashed here, but she wanted to make it an even four before creating another cache somewhere else.