Otatso Wetlands Redeye Rumble

Haunter was in mental turmoil, fearing both what he was capable of and what he was not. He had made a promise to Fox, and if nothing else he was a wolf of his word—if only because he usually said so few of them—but having never stayed in one place very long, he was equally as unsure if it had been wise of him to make such a promise. Fox was naive as they came, but she was far from stupid, and wouldn't for one second believe that he meant this. She felt better believing that he would leave during the springtime, and she held to this idea like a child clung to their most comforting blanket. Haunter did not blame her, and yet still he returned to her den to sleep.

On the eve of the first day of spring, he pulled himself gently away from her small body, and left. He moved through the darkness like a shifting shadow, going unseen until he had passed the Creek's borders and found himself traveling north from whence he had came. The Otatso Wetlands greeted him, the soil bogged and loamy in most places from the icemelt, but thick enough to support his weight in others. Large paws would sink deep into the mud as he trudged on, and he would veer to more solid ground because mud made walking unpleasant.

He made it to the northernmost edge of the Wetlands, and looked out past where the boundary of Teekon began. He wanted severely to keep walking—to leave before his promise became too solidified or he betrayed her in another way. He still had time; he could still...

The sun began to rise suddenly in the east, and Haunter knew he had missed his chance to escape his binding word. The sun brought spring with it, and though the day would be overcast at best, he could feel in his bones that the season had changed and winter was gone. He licked his chops, narrowing his bright eyes against the sun and turned, beginning his travel back through the Wetlands and towards the Creek—his home.

I steal all the Haunter threads. Especially when I am drunk. :B

Fox awoke, Haunter devoid of her side, and she shivered. His presence in her den had been strange and comforting, yet she could not quite understand it. She was not sure that she ever would. Her wounds ached, but she ignored them, moving herself from the belly of her den to the mouth, where she would stretch and yawn her sleepiness away. The morning was still at least half an hour off, and she spent the first several minutes of her awakeness blinking in the dawn and trying to decide if she was fit enough to travel. Lecter had suggested—no, ordered—that she refrain from patrolling the borders for three days straight, but the girl thought that atrocious. Still, she would take it easy. Today was the last day of her medical imprisonment, and she was willing to push her limits.

Stepping from the confines of her immediate home, the lithe yearling picked up on Haunter's trail and began following it. She had no agenda with him at all, so she did not have any real reason to pester him, but she could not help herself. There was a growing attraction to him, and she would not be able to pull herself away from it. Not until he proved her wrong or did something to push her away. It would only take one push, of course, before Fox was quick to judge and hold a grudge against him. As it stood, she had no reason to do such a thing, so slowly and carefully she began following his scent.

It went away from the creek, toward the wetlands, and for a moment Fox's heart sank. Perhaps his promise to leave Swiftcurrent was the one he had decided to keep after all. Perhaps he had left her to fend for herself all over again. Just when she was about to surrender to this thought, he came into her view, and she perked her ears up. Like a small child, she ran toward him with her tail wagging and her tongue lolling from the side of her mouth. Without a word, she crashed her chest into his, not slowing one bit. Burrowing into him, she felt no words could explain how she felt in that moment.

He had not left her.

That did not mean that he would not ever leave her, for Fox was still certain that he would... but he had decided to stay for the time being.

And I want you in all of 'em, ALL OF THEM I SAY :3

As Haunter walked, he looked up at the overcast sun which at this time looked more like a brightly glowing moon than the closest, brightest star in their surrounding galaxy that should never be looked directly into. At least, this is what he had heard, holding no affinity for astronomy himself, but he found himself interested in the fact that he could stare at it now and it didn't hurt his eyes.

But maybe he should've obeyed the long-standing advice that it wasn't good to stare at the sun—no matter if it was hurting your eyes or not—because when he looked down and ahead again, he thought he was hallucinating the distant figure he recognized immediately. Haunter stopped, confused that maybe all his thoughts of her had projected into some sort of mirage. She was running for him now, and the closer she came, the less he thought she was imagined. "Fox?"

His uncertainty was present in his tone, and he pulled back his one ear, still unsure whether or not his mind was playing tricks on him; but when she crashed into him with enough force to make him take a steadying step backwards, he knew without a doubt that she was real. His first sound was a sigh of contentment (half catching his breath from her small crash) and then his second was a growl of pleasure as he dipped his muzzle into her ruff and began slicking the fur there with his tongue.

He continued for a while, stricken by her wordless joy, and feeling it too without being sure of its source; though her presence seemed a clear indication, because he never felt as relaxed—as close to happy as he'd ever been—as he did with her. "What are you doing out here?" he rasped after a long moment. "He said three days... Not two and maybe-a-half."

As he preened her fur, Fox growled lowly. It was not a threatening growl but a happy one. He chided her from being away from the den too soon, but she would have none of it. “Tch. He’s not my boss. I’m his boss,” she retorted, once she had drawn herself away from his towering form. If she wanted to be out here, she would. Not even a goddamn cougar was going to stop her. For a fleeting moment, Fox thought to tell Haunter that she had come out here expecting to find a lack of him, but she decided against it. If it was his will to stay, she would not pester him about it. For once in her life, the fireball did not pick a fight when one would have been easy to instigate.

She also did not voice her joy that he had stayed, fearing that it would jinx the whole thing. Instead, the yearling commented on the weather. “Beautiful spring day, isn’t it?” she asked, eyes searching the sky for any hint of rain or unpleasantry. She could find nothing, and she turned her attention back to Haunter. Her spirits felt lifted, which was a nice change of pace from the melancholy which had plagued the creek ever since Lethe had let herself fall into the creek.

She responded in a way that was quite typically, undeniably Fox, and Haunter was officially convinced that he was not dreaming. He'd never be imaginative enough to dream up a replica who not only looked like Fox, but acted like her as, so he finally accepted the realness of this situation and found himself wholly appreciating that she was out here with him. It only helped solidify his earlier decision to stay...

He wanted to laugh—which was an entirely foreign feeling that he ignored with impunity—but instead wound up merely snorting and hardly containing a slight curve of his lips that would've otherwise denoted a real smile. He hadn't smiled in years and wasn't planning on starting now (he didn't see where smiling got him), but apparently he would have to work a little harder to collar them around Fox. It seemed she could elicit emotion out of him, even when he didn't want there to be, so he decided that he would have to be careful from them on about how he reacted to her words and presence.

She looked up towards the cloudy sky, shrouding the sun but not making the day any less pleasant or otherwise threatening to rain. It was a nice day, but Haunter paid it no mind. He was staring at Fox, as the leering wolf tended to do, and continued to do so when her attention was back on him. "Yes," he answered, but he didn't seem to be talking about the arrival of spring. He licked his chops and pulled back his one ear, wondering suddenly what she saw in him: the wild wolf.

"Would you like to go back?" he asked instead, keeping his aforementioned wondering to himself. "Or maybe stay out here a while?" He eyed her wounds and knew immediately that he wouldn't ask her to do anything physical with him, like hunting or romping. "I could catch you something.. And we could, uh," Haunter hesitated, romancing having always been far from his mind, if at all existent; "have a picnic."

Haunter did not seem to be enjoying the spring weather nearly as much as she was, but perhaps he just didn't want to show it. That wouldn't be very manly of him to do such a thing. At his suggestion, Fox gave him an incredulous expression followed by a burst of laughter. When she collected herself, all she could do was shake her head. “What? Are we playing house now?” she asked. True, Haunter was now coming home to her den each evening, and she did feel kinship toward him, but Fox was not a romantic. She was not even sure she believed in love. Camaraderie, yes. But all that other stuff was far too mushy for her.

Next year, when her body was flush with hormones, she knew that Haunter would be at the top of her list. Provided he was still around, of course. Fox thought he would make a fine match with her own smaller form, and her pups would be strong if they had him as their other half. It was a logical decision (or so she told herself). She did not reveal her plans for him, and she was not sure how he would react when she finally did. Then again, perhaps some other hunk would come along and steal her away. One year was an awfully long time, and plenty of things could change between now and then. Fox was not going to promise herself to Haunter only to have her hopes and dreams washed away when he decided to leave.

When she laughed, Haunter immediately garnished a completely shocked and slightly disgusted countenance, the most expressive he felt his face had been pulled in years (besides his commonplace snarling). He bristled as the noise died down, and his expression lessened into a contemptous sour glaring as she goaded him verbally. "Playing house?" he repeated incredulously, raising his dark, unseen unibrow at her.

He snorted thereafter, and turned away from her, completely forgetting that he had intended on feeding the little pot-bellied pig just moments ago. "I will never be nice to you again," he informed her in an indignant rasp, narrowing his eyes and casting them sidelong at her. "Caring, perhaps, but I won't be nice about it." He plopped down into a hard sit and stared forward as if he were trying to burn holes in the space around them; Haunter's equivalent of pouting.

Boy, was he moody! If Fox wasn't sure that he would react just as terribly, she would have called him out as being a drama queen (for he clearly was). It was in Fox's nature to tease and torment. For whatever reason her personality had just turned out that way. She could stifle it, of course, as she was doing now, but doing that for too long left her feeling like she wasn't really being herself. Alas, her self-serving nature knew that it was in her best interests not to push Haunter too far, so she kept the nickname to herself.

“Oh, c’mon. I was only teasing. It’s kind of what I do.” If he didn't have the balls to handle one little joke, he probably didn't have the balls to sire her litter next year. To solidify her point, she gave him a quick lick on the cheek. “Besides, you have to be nice to me. Or I'll kick your butt to the curb.” She wouldn't really do such a thing, of course, but she certainly would contemplate it. He was always free to leave, too, even if a part of Fox would be sad if he did.

"Your explanation is trash," he told her, raspy voice languid with such succinct animus that it was impossible to tell if he was being serious or not. It wasn't that he couldn't handle her jokes, he simply needed to learn how to properly react to them given his social retardation.

Her tongue touched his cheek briefly, and he felt a little trill at the base of his spine as he watched the little red girl with interested eyes. "You wouldn't," he said confidently, flopping down onto his stomach and rolling sluggishly onto his side. The older male pawed a heavy foot at the teeny wolf he was coming to adore, pushing playfully at her face, keeping her at bay. "And like I said, I won't ever be nice to you again and you couldn't possibly make me."

Haunter did not seem to like her answer, but Fox wasn't going to complain about it too much. When he flopped onto his side, the yearling nosed his hip briefly, careful to avoid his paws that were attempting to bat her away. The young girl allowed her own body to crash onto the ground, though she was careful not to aggravate her still-healing gashes. Scooting herself over so her back was pressed into his, a content sigh washed over her.

No matter what Haunter said, she had a feeling he would come around eventually. And even if he really never was nice to her, at least he could give her strong children. Fox was under the impression that there was no such thing as "perfection." As long as Haunter stuck around and provided, that was all she would really need.

Fading here <3

She came nearer even though he bade her not to, and plopped her tiny frame right beside his with unabashed casualty. He snorted, though no longer fought her off, deciding that he would leave gnawing her ear off (so they could match) for another day. A day not quite so nice as this one...

Maybe they napped, maybe they actually went and had their picnic at some point, but in this moment Haunter was at peace. He forgot his troubles beside her. He forgot about leaving and forgot about any reproaches or physical aches. The world became a blur and his senses fell into a sort of perfect haze as he lie drunken in little Fox's presence. He didn't know what it was about the blazing yearling, but he could almost say that he was somewhat happy around her. Or content, rather.

Because around her he felt wanted. He didn't feel invisible.