Swiftcurrent Creek hidden in the footnotes

Bones. :) I read through the cougar thread and couldn't see anything to suggest that the carcass had been removed.

A sparse cloud of flies buzzed over the carcass, reanimated by the smell of decay. It couldn't have been there for longer than a couple of weeks, and had met its end well within pack territory. Bazi picked her way through the aftermath of the battle with her nose close to the ground, cataloguing blood, guts, and tufts of hair that still clung to the downed animal's claws. Her forensic efforts revealed that both pack leaders had been involved, but she didn't recognize the others (and even if Lecter had played a part, his particular scent would quite frankly have been impossible to distinguish from the rot).

A few brave scavengers had picked at the body, and what remained was only fit for insects and the earth. Bazi was surprised that the pack had not consumed their kill - given the season and inherent risk of targeting an apex predator, it seemed a frivolous waste. The cougar's deflated, cloudy eye followed her around the battlefield, and the jittery female nearly jumped out of her skin when insect activity in the area made it look like the animal was winking from beyond the grave. The sudden fright put a good 20 feet between them, and she took it as a sign to move on. There was a gloom about the place that made her skin crawl.

Subdued by her find, Bazi started back the way she came - walking, trotting, and soon sprinting north.

My thread with Atticus hasn't even begun to play out yet, so I'm going to be weirdly vague about it...

The youth's visit to the plateau had preoccupied her so completely that Bones woke up one morning on the cusp of April and realized nearly two weeks had passed in a blur. She'd scarcely participated in the creek's goings-on since discovering Atticus's whereabouts! Suddenly anxious that Fox might think she'd abandoned ship, she pushed thoughts of her father out of her head and set out along the creek in search of the pack's captain. She would tell Cap'n Fox about locating her dad and reassure the little red wolf that she had no intention of departing the creek, at least for now.

Instead of Fox, she crossed paths with a white-furred stranger. "Ahoy!" she called to grab the other wolf's attention, her gangly legs carrying her closer to the pale female. "Me name's Bones! Who're you?" For the moment, she didn't take notice of the bloated, decaying corpse just beyond the white wolf's shoulder.

"Ahoy! Me name's Bones!"

At the speed Bazi was going, it took a split second to find the source of the 'Ahoy' - a dark, spindly spider of a wolf with over-sized ears and legs like black reeds. She announced herself with confidence, and - the newcomer hoped - an open mind. There'd been quite enough defending of one's right to exist over the past few days. Jinx, Lecter - and even Björn were not wolves that trusted easily, and the tone of those conversations had (at least to begin with) not been in keeping with the bright and hopeful season they were approaching.

"Bazi!" she barked back, changing down (apparently wolves are manual) to a brisk walk. They were still close enough to the cougar for the smell to waft over when the breeze picked up, but Bazi figured she ought to exchange a few pleasantries before diving straight into corpse talk. "New here. Are you a native, born-and-bred?" she asked, pointing her thick, fluffy ears forward. Bones was quite obviously a pup, meaning one (hopefully two) of the creek wolves must be her parent(s).

They met in the middle, each looking at the other with bright-eyed curiosity. "Good to meet you!" Bones said enthusiastically, then shook her head. "Nope! I'm from Tortuga originally. It's just down the coast," she explained. She considered bouncing the question back to Bazi, yet the answer was pretty obvious, so she asked, "Are you new? Where'd you come from?" instead.

Even as the words left her lips, a bracing breeze rustled the budding trees overhead and the greening grass underfoot. Bones tipped her hoary muzzle into it, enjoying the refreshment, only to pull a face when the scent of rot washed over her. Her spring green eyes had closed partially but they flew wide open again as she turned in the direction of the odor, finally spotting the cougar's remains lying a dozen yards away.

"Augh!" was her only comment before her long face snapped back in Bazi's direction. "We killed that slovenly rapscallion a few weeks back. It was quite a fight!" Bones's tail twitched, then her face fell a little when she recollected Jinx's spontaneous miscarriage in the midst of battle. The fight had certainly come at a high cost. "We should send him down to Davy Jones's locker," she observed, eyeballing the repugnant remains and the nearby creek before glancing at Bazi's face and adding in an explanatory tone, "We should feed him to the fishes."

Edit: I forgot to acknowledge the pirate-ism!

After days of surly, serious meetings and high-pressure questioning, Bones was a delight. The pup's quirky demeanour had an instantly positive effect on Bazi's mood, and soon the yearling's cotton-candy tail buzzed over the dry grass like a highly ineffectual trimmer. "Very new - from the north," she replied smilingly, deciding not to reveal exactly how far north or why she was now so far out of her natural habitat. Judging by the colourful pastiche of origins, genders and beliefs she had seen so far, "where are you from" would take up 98% of social interaction if it wasn't occasionally ignored.

Bazi threw a glance in the direction of the stench, wrinkling her nose. Bones was awfully young to be dragged into battle with a wild cat that size. "I did wonder about the cougar.. seems like a stupid, or.. risky battle to get dragged into," she corrected, snatching the less diplomatic word back with a vague grimace. "Did it attack someone? I've only ever seen them intimidated away by force of numbers, never killed. I went for a look, and there's fur caught in its claws; I recognized the alpha and that sour white female.. was anyone hurt? What are their names, exactly?" Bazi had arrived dazed and confused in the dead of night, and the fear that she might carry disease distracted Jinx and Fox both from formal introductions. A thousand additional questions queued up on her tongue, waiting for their chance to dive. Day-vee Jones? Bazi flashed the youth a blank look, which she gallantly pre-empted. "And what's a Day-vee Jones lockin?"

"Aye," Bones replied in the tone of one eager to relay a fanciful tale, "it attacked Cap'n Fox." The youth didn't know that the Alpha female had actually instigated the fight; when she'd arrived on the scene, she'd interpreted the situation as described to Bazi presently. "Aye, there were a few wounds, though none too dire..." She trailed off uncertainly, thinking of Jinx's lost litter. "Jinx—pretty sure that's her name—lost her sprogs in the middle of it," she added, charcoal ears flattening as she relayed such terrible news. The young scalawag did not delight in this part of the story.

She didn't answer Bazi's other question directly, firstly because young Bones wasn't entirely sure of who else had been there—the battle had been confusing and everyone had fled almost directly after they'd collectively dispatched the big cat—and secondly because the query about Davy Jones's locker distracted her. Most wolves 'round these parts didn't seem overly familiar with her dialect, so the question didn't surprise her.

"Davy Jones's locker is at the bottom of the sea. That's where you toss the bodies of your enemies. I think it'd work in a creek too," Bones added, pastel green eyes skirting sideways for a moment, then back to Bazi. "That cat deserves a watery grave, where it'll be nibbled by fishes!" she said with sudden vehemence. "It hurt Cap'n Fox and First Mate Jinx and..." She trailed off again, shaking her head and shooting the cat's remains a quick glare.

But when she looked back at Bazi yet again, her expression was pleasant. "Wanna help me dump what's left into the creek? It'll be smelly and gross!" Bones said this as a sort of warning but there was a gleeful note in her voice, as if the juvenile wasn't at all deterred by the thought of doing such dirty work.

Bones made no connection between the wolf that had miscarried and the Creek beta, but Bazi's heart would have ached for her all the same. Her face fell visibly at the news. "That's awful..." She joined in the baleful staring, and began considering the logistics of hauling the corpse into the river - its gut was in tatters, and the blackening sludge drying into the ground represented only half of the total volume of viscera. "A fishy feast it is, then! How about we turn it on its back, to keep all the goo in, and grab one hind leg each? They still look tough enough to bite into without a mouthful of rot.."

Bazi bounded over to the corpse, treading carefully now that she knew that cougar stuffing wasn't the only thing on the ground. The animal had fallen on its left side, so she latched on just below the right hock and yanked until its legs splayed in a most undignified way.The rank, gelatinous mess wobbled dangerously in the bowl created by the body cavity. Bazi signalled to Bones with a muffled bark, eyes on the now reachable left left, and waited for the pup to get a good grip. "A'e o 'edy?"

Bazi didn't seem fazed either. Soon enough, the pair of them had clamped onto two of the cat's withered paws and begun to drag the remains toward the water. The body began to fall apart, for lack of a better word, as they moved it, leaving a pulpy trail of sludge behind it. Somehow, though, they towed it to the edge of the creek.

"Good riddance!" Bones shouted after unlatching. She dug her silver paws into the damp ground and squatted down to butt her head against the corpse in order to dump it in the water.

The smell was unbearable. Whatever membrane had been formed over the cougar's decaying liquids by the heat of the sun was ruptured, setting the stench free to rampage. It brought tears to Bazi's eyes, but spurred her on to do the job faster. Whilst Bones pushed, she stepped into the shallows to pull, and soon the bag of goo and bones that had once been a predator was buoyant. Bazi gave it one final nudge, then plunged her face into the cold creek water a few times to clear the cloud of rot that muzzled her. "Well - that was disgusting," she declared, and looked to Bones for further instruction. "Do we say something now, to Davy Jones?"

As soon as the deed was done, Bones bounced lightly into the water herself, letting it cleanse the stray bits of blood and gunk from her pelt and rinse away the stench of death. She always enjoyed an excuse to swim anyway and paddled around in the shallows like a happy little duckling.

At Bazi's question, Bones wrinkled her nose slightly and shook her head. "Good riddance," she repeated, staring balefully at the bobbing corpse as it began to float downstream, partially sinking as it went. "Yer fish food now." She snorted to lightly punctuate this remark.

Turning back around, she dipped her nose in the water and blew it, trying to get rid of the rotten smell currently clinging to her olfactory tissues tenaciously, like glue. Bones then gave her silvered head a shake for good measure, then sprang back onto the bank and began to lick her wet, spiky fur back into place somewhat.

"Good riddance," the elder wolf echoed, watching Bones paddle in circles before returning to the bank to groom her freshly washed fur. Bazi dunked her face into the water a few more times, and exited the creek to do the same. The fur around her knees was still grimy from a recent meal - it had become habit to use either side as a napkin, and it left a most unsightly stain each time. "Why did you come here?" she asked absently, gnawing at the stubborn stains until her skin felt raw. "Why did you leave Tortuga, and all the other Davy Jones wolves?"

Although she'd told her tale half a dozen times by now, Bones answered with tireless enthusiasm, perhaps because the story now included an awesome new chapter. "I left Tortuga to get out from under me strumpet mother and find me father. And I did! He lives across the mountains and a bit closer to the coast, at a place called Blacktail Deer Plateau." The youth paused, then admitted, "He'd like if I went to live there but... I just don't know!"

Something strange happened to her face then. Sometimes, it was victim to a wince or a frown, yet these expressions were always fleeting. She smiled almost always. But just now, her façade twisted into a truly unhappy, anxious look. She swallowed. She'd come all this way just to find him and she was so happy she had! Yet Bones had become attached to the creek and, anyway, jumping ship didn't feel right to her.

"I actually don't know what to do about that..." she admitted at length in a strangely small voice. It was the most torn Bones had ever felt in her entire life and it was certainly the greatest problem she'd ever before faced. And even the most upbeat attitude in the world couldn't solve this quandary.

Bazi stared. Her question had released a torrent of angst that she was ill-prepared to handle, but she nevertheless did her utmost to soothe (at a level appropriate to new acquaintances, she hoped, but boundaries weren't Bazi's forte).

"Can't he come live here?" she asked, extending a now clean, viscera-free paw and placing it next to Bones' darker one. "Or maybe it's alright if you just visit! I'm sure you've got friends here - and I'm your friend now. Body-dumping friends. I don't think you'll find many of those at the plateau, right? He'll understand." Well, maybe. Leaving a pack wasn't something that happened by choice in Bazi's mind - and maybe that was something she could tell Bones to comfort her, if slightly edited. "I think this pack needs you," she went on smilingly, "Not everyone comes back from a cougar attack with their life intact. You should be a warden here, or a warrior."

"Aye, I told him he could!" she responded with strangely muted vehemence, as if hearing another suggest it made her more confident of this possibility. Bones lapsed into silence as Bazi kept talking, assuring her that she could always visit; that Atticus would understand; that the two of them (Bazi and herself) were now friends; that she (Bones) should consider becoming a Warrior or Warden; and, perhaps most importantly, that Swiftcurrent Creek needed her.

"Aye aye," she said slowly but firmly, a steely glint in her pastel green eyes. "I can't abandon me ship or me crew. I can't let down Cap'n Fox. Dad—Atticus—Dadicus will understand. And we'll visit!" Young Bones nodded her head vigorously, her smile returning with youthful resilience. It was clear that hearing Bazi say all that was just what she'd needed to hear.

Time to wrap up? :D Maybe we could do a scouting thread together, or the girls could have a Serious Conversation about the Vale now that Jinx has come back and started spreading slander about Xi'nuata.

"Exactly," Bazi agreed with equal enthusiasm, celebrating the pup's return to confidence and smiles with a yip of excitement. Though she was a wolf grown and a veteran of disaster, the northerner clung to the hopefulness and vigor of youth with all her might; she believed every word of her own assurances. Of course this Atticus wouldn't mind - as long as Bones was happy, healthy, and thriving, he would be delighted with whatever choice she made because everyone in this strange summer country was just wonderful. Shar-Kali would sooner have slit a wolf's throat than allowed them to abandon the pack - but so what, this was the Teekon Wilds!

"Come on," she urged, getting to her feet and giving her plush, white fur one last vigorous shake. "Let's go patrol the borders and make sure there's nobody suspicious skulking around."

Sure, I'm down. This will be my final post. :)

Bazi's sudden invitation took her by surprise, in the best possible way. "Aye!" Bones yapped enthusiastically. She thought about what the other wolf had said about being friends. She was all too happy to count another in the group and spend time fostering the friendship. "Let's go drown some bilge rats!" she crowed, falling into (rather springy) step beside her paler counterpart.