Ravensblood Forest passionflower ibex

i heard these words in a dream. feel free to join, @Behati <3 

his dad had given him the order very early that morning. after a quickly gobbled breakfast that his mother had insisted on feeding him, the boy had set off well before dawn, his rangy legs eating away steadily at the miles. before departing, however, he'd said goodbye to Eilidh and Constantine, searching their faces for any sign of hurt or resentment. and prior to crossing the borders, the boy had sent up a short howl for Behati.

he trotted on, however; he had no doubt she would catch up to him. and so he entered the thick forest with its creepy drippings of red sap. the large woodland emptied near the coast, he knew, from the scent pulled through his flaring nares, and he moved in silence among the quiet trees.

Behati gave in to hunger that morning. Misfortune had leered own on her hunting prowess of late, and a few frogs did not a meal make. Pearl was right — they were slimy, and the young wolf was not about to set off on her first official mission without a belly full of grub.

She raided one of the pack's caches, finishing her meal in time to hear Casmir's howl and bolting in his direction without leaving time to digest. The meal would repeat on her at the edge of Ravensblood forest, and Behati - out of habit, and knowing what it was like to starve - would gobble it down a second time.

There was no trace of the fact to be seen or smelled when she eventually pulled up alongside Casmir, having tracked the boy's scent among the fallen leaves. The ground was red-brown with fallen leaves, and a little mushy. "Sooooooo," the caramel-coloured wolf began once she had caught her breath, focusing her pale eye on the side of Casmir's face. "Where to, boss-guy?" She'd let him have that.

he was surprised by Behati's arrival, but welcomed her with a low chuff. "the coast," he answered, breathing in the autumnal perfume that clung to her lithe body. he didn't know who was prettier, Pearl or Behati, and he hadn't thought of Shego in a short while. girls, girls, girls. "i think we should see what's near the ocean and then turn north," he explained, quickening his pace somewhat.

the forest was growing more thickly together, and the daylight began to weaken and dim. the boy's hackles rose and he peered around them as his steps became more cautious, his frame gathering a breadth that was meant to ward off enemies, should they arrive.

Casmir was a wolf on a mission. He crept through the forest like a creature trying very hard not to be seen, whilst Behati walked with slow and comparatively heavy footsteps. "Are you hiding from someone?" she teased instead of commenting on his plan - it was as good as any. The faint smell of salt and seaweed was stronger here than on the Plateau, and Behati - who had never seen the ocean - was intrigued to know its source. For now, though, she would pour her energies into making her young companion feel uncomfortable.

instead of copying him, Behati tramped like a wildebeeste trying to drudge up a dust storm. side-eyeing her, the boy cleared his throat. "n-no. i mean, i figure we should be careful in case there's danger ahead ... right?" but now he felt dumb, since the older of the pair clearly saw no need for such precautions. the boy decided to relax as they approached the ocean, and his curiosity deepened as his sense of danger waned.

He was right to sneak - Behati did not have a speck of superior knowledge that would suggest they shouldn't. She was just ballsy, and too inexperienced to know that it could cost her more than her life one day.

"Nobody would dare pick a fight with us!" the caramel wolf declared, slaloming between a couple of tall, dark roots that stretched across their path. The ocean was near now, and the strange scent of it made her giddy. "Have you seen it? The, um.. " Balls. What was it called? Ossim? Orson? Something with an 'o'. Behati let the sentence hang in the air, looking at Casmir in a way that suggested he ought to know that she meant 'ocean'.

"ocean?" he asked, waggling his brows at her teasingly as he volunteered the word. "no. i haven't, but i'm excited to!" as if on cue, the woodlands began to thin and the salt-aroma grew deeper. through the interlaced branches Cas began to catch glimpses of the famed saltwater, and his steps grew quicker with excitement. "can you see it?" he asked of his companion breathlessly.

"Ocean?" he teased. Behati pouted at him, but he did not dwell on her mistake and neither did she - Casmir's excitement was infectious. She could not disguise her wonder when the scent thickened. The air was damp and salty, and it was all Behati could do not to lick at it as the pair sped up and rushed to exit Ravensblood Forest.

All of a sudden, the sky opened up above them. Behati's gasp was swallowed by the sounds of the coast - crashing waves and scent-laden breezes engaged in invisible wrestling matches. The tide was low, and wet sand stretched for a hundred meters below the squat bluff they stood on. The ocean was a distant, grey-blue smear - and it was glorious. "Ocean pack," Behati whispered. Then, much louder as she sped down the incline, "I call alpha!"

her little pout was cute, but Cas was more distracted by the ocean. "i call king!" he shouted after Behati, running through the sand after her bobbing tail and swaying hips.  naturally, the sight of her supple, straining haunches drew his attention sharply away from the looming sea, the delicious, interesting scents cascading around the pair of explorers -- and also where he was going.

he bonked his toe on a rock just thrusting its head above the wet earth and yelped loudly as pain reverberated up his leg, clutching it up against his chest. this was a stupid move --- the boy couldn't very well maintain his speed or balance on three limbs -- and so Cas tripped, shouting again as he rolled very swiftly and dizzily down the bank toward Behati's back legs, narrowly avoiding the murder of a small and innocent crab in the descent.

Casmir's first order of business as King of the Ocean was to kiss the floor. He took an almighty tumble, body meeting sand with a hollow thud and the whisper of sand falling back to the ground. Behati ran on a few paces before realizing what had occurred, and doubled back to gloat. "Jester, maybe," she grinned, stepping out of the crab's way as it scuttled away to praise God and join the ranks of born-again believers. He had been hitting the liquor pretty hard after the divorce, and a near-death experience could not have come at a better time.  

Casmir didn't get up straight away, and the way he clutched his leg to his chest melted Behati's smug expression like a hot mouth around a frozen pea."Y-..you didn't break anything, right?" she asked, dipping her slim nose to breathe in his ear - not quite touching.

im laughing so hard

Cas lay on the ground, cradling his throbbing ankle against his chest, and moaning with the dizziness of the experience. his pride was the most damaged -- as Behati's shadow fell over him, the boy reddened deeply beneath his dark fur. however, before he could assure her that he was totally, completely, one hundred percent fine, she put her lips near his ear and his body responded in a horrifying way. this time, Cas scrabbled to roll over, but was unable to rise on his first, second, or third attempt due to his little sprain -- he resembled a turtle flailing sadly on its back in the sand, albeit a turtle with a less than reptilian appendage.

defeat brewed a cold cup of coffee in his soul; Cas lay back with a dour expression and flung his uninjured foreleg across his eyes. "s-sorry," he muttered, thoroughly humiliated.

They had yet to make physical contact - Behati realized it when Casmir flinched away from the threat of her touch, attempting to shield his belly from his pack-mate's virgin eyes (since Ebony's writing is a mystical cloud of suggestive loveliness, Karm is inferring that boner city is going on in Casmir's crotch). It took her a few moments to make sense of what was going on, even though the result of her little whisper was plainly obvious against the youth's dark fur.

"OH," she stated dumbly and without looking away (she was unable). "Uh... that's.. that's OK." What was she supposed to say - or do? She couldn't leave him there in the sand to be victimized by short-sighted gulls. Wordlessly, she moved around The Area and shoved her nose under Casmir's shoulder, nudging the boy onto his side with an almighty shove and a grunt. Her fur glowed hot beneath her cheeks, and whatever feelings had 'lifted' her companion swirled in equal quantity in the girl's own blood.

lmfao correct inference

he was embarrassed as hell, but there was some vestige of another emotion underneath (arousal? enjoyment?) did he like that she was staring at his nethers like she'd never seen anything like it before? Cas raised his foreleg to peer askance at Behati, but swiftly returned to his pit of doom before they made eye contact.

she was kind enough to help lift him, and, dragging the shattered remains of his pride behind him, the boy hobbled a few feet away, cursing that stupid appendage that had twice! shamed him in front of the sugary girl. he wasn't about to admit he couldn't control it, that it controlled him, rather, but instead he stared hard at the ocean, as if the crashing waves would take back what had happened.

With Behati's help, Casmir was soon on his feet again. He hobbled away, fixing his gaze on a distant point whilst the tide of teenage angst made it slow retreat - as did the unruly fifth limb. Behati didn't see it happen, but there was no trace of it when she eventually crept forward to see if he was alright. Like a sexy little peen-focused Spiderman, she was both amazed and a little bit frightened of the power she seemed able to wield. And the responsibility that came with it.

Lol wat no whatever.

"Soooo..." she began, her voice low and cotton soft. Before she could stop herself, Behati assured Casmir that "Don't worry, this actually happens to me all the time," as though she was a seasoned snake-charmer and not a little girl with exactly zero experience.

he had recovered, or would have, was it not for her sultry voice with its cotton-candy insinuations. Cas turned to look into Behati's face, a mixture of shock written onto his features -- all the time? it happened to her? "you -- i thought," he struggled, clearly both intrigued and frightened by the idea. "you -- get, uhum, you get ... hard ... too?"

because obviously that was what she meant and nothing else. and Cas, with his negative zero knowledge of female anatomy, was more than happy to believe that female wolves also got embarrassing hardnesses down south. he stared into her pretty eyes, relieved that she completely knew what was going on. Behati got it.

Behati stared at him, unsure what to make of what he was saying. Hard? Was that some sort of Plateau slang for 'flustered' or 'nervous'? He looked so relieved to hear her say it that Behati just shrugged and nodded. "Sure," she agreed, assuming they were having a nice, platonic chat about feelings. Had Casmir known, he might have been flattered by her candour rather than utterly horrified by the thing she said next. "All the time! Definitely when I met Dante, and your dad." Well done.

if Behati didn't realize their miscommunication now, surely she would when an expression of anguished disgust crept across Cas' face at her mention of his dad. "you're ... you're hard for my dad?!" he repeated in hushed, horrified tones, his eyes falling unbidden toward the place along her belly where they should match, like Mattel dolls. but he didn't see anything, and he was too disgusted by the idea of those same sort of feelings writhing in him stretching their tendrils out toward his dad, of all people.

dante was one thing -- the man was unattached and uninterested in women, as far as Cas could tell -- but his dad. "he -- he has a mate, you know." my mom, he almost added, though that would have made things worse and weirder. "why ... why, uh ... why him?" did he even want to know?

yes.

The look of open horror on Casmir's face was so real that Behati took a step back, searching the last ten seconds for whatever it was that had offended him so. She caught him peering at her belly, and after a few stuttering attempts to figure out what was going on, she finally put two and two together. "Oh," she mumbled, still processing. "OH." Holy char-grilled balls on a stick. Behati's eyes widened to platter size - the fancy kind you would use to serve dressed salmon in the 70's. Yeah. Big. Like show-off-to-your-neighbours-about-what-a-big-fish-you-can-cook big. "NO!" she squealed, head shaking so hard that it threatened to dislodge from her spinal column. "I thought you meant.. like.. no! Ew! I meant like nervous or something! What did you mean?" she demanded of him, wanting it all spelled out in plain English now that both parties had suffered humiliation at the hands of vaguery.

finally Behati caught on, and it was Casmir's turn to look abashed as she began to shake and shout and he realized he had been sorely mistaken. "i thought you were saying you had a DICK, OKAY!?" he responded in a voice higher-pitched than he had intended. "GOD!" he whirled away from her in a tornado of angst and embarrassment -- tears would have sprung to his eyes over his shame -- but he did not let that happen. that would have been the proverbial fork in that 'stick a fork in me, i'm done' saying.

"i just ... i've never ... never seen ... you know," he added in a frustrated huff. "i dunno. i'm stupid." he was really winning at this charming thing.

There was so much random emotion crackling in the air that Behati nearly started crying herself. She quelled the urge with a loud exhale, turning her own head away after Casmir had finished roaring his spittle and explanation in her face. For all Behati knew, she did have a dick - no-one had ever rooted around back there and told her what was going on, and the wild wasn't exactly full of mirrors. She had the vague sense that the area underwent changes in the presence of dapper gents, but guessed they were subtle - no-one had ever commented. Perhaps this was a question for Blue Willow.

"Can't your mom explain?" she ventured in a gentler voice, half hoping for an invite.

no -- she didn't? did she? "are you seriously asking me to go ask my mom? how old do you think i am?" he snapped back, horrified and a little hurt that she thought so little of his manhood (lol). "my mom is a prude, okay? i know she and my dad are busy making the next bunch of pups, but if i walked up to her and asked about these things, she'd turn red and tell me to go ask my dad. then he would give me some stupid, long explanation."

he huffed a sigh. "i'm supposed to figure these things out on my own. i mean, don't you know? i bet your mom didn't tell you." he was being an asshat but he didn't care; his feelings, pride, and mind were all feeling quite sore these days.

Behati had never really felt the loss of the mother she had never known, but she did now. It mixed with the hot shame of not knowing - at all - how a mother-child relationship was supposed to function, and exited her mouth in a rumbled "Shut up." By this point, they were about as comfortable in each other's presence as two sparring cats - backs turned, ears back, and postures hunched. Behati didn't really have a response to anything that had been said; she knew about as much as Casmir did on the subject, and the option of shooting him down with a sob story about her sad little motherless childhood didn't appeal at all. She was older than he was - there was no reason why she shouldn't know these things. "Fine," she said after a moment or two, showing every sign of a woman about to beome passive-aggressive. "If you don't want to ask your mom, we can ask some guy with experience. I bet we can find one - just here on the beach!"

"fine!" he shot back, hackles abristle with indignation. a man better than him, who knew what women had instead of what was between his own legs, and more than likely, how to use it. Cas was hurt anew by Behati's insinuation that there was such a man around, one to put her traveling companion to shame, and planted his butt on the ground with the Classic Teenager Sneer sprawled across his handsome features. "go find one, then. i'll be right here." he glared at her and then glanced toward the roiling sea, annoyed and hurting, wanting to make amends but too proud.

"Fine."

And that was that. Behati stalked off down the beach, heading east in search of a stranger to settle their argument. She was angry enough to ignore the feeling that it probably wasn't a good idea to drag a randomm wolf into such a sensitive discussion. To hell with it - whatever happened would be on his head! Behati could almost taste the moral highground.

The ocean breeze did much to cool her temper. Minutes after leaving Casmir, she couldn't even recall what they were fighting about. Casmir Junior had appeared, there'd been some kind of misunderstanding, and then.. and then what, exactly? They had both admitted to understanding very little about the anatomy, and for some reason that had ended in a fight. It made no sense, but - whatever. Behati was pissed, so none of that mattered.

In the end, they would make their own way back to the Plateau - sort of. When night fell, Behati crept to within spitting distance of her travel buddy. For safety, Behati told herself, when in actual fact she was just terrified of being alone.

Conclude? :D