Redhawk Caldera A-nos-MIA

Peregrine's heart thudded in his chest as he returned from hunting on the plains just east of the caldera, decidedly empty-handed. He swallowed thickly as he began to climb toward the rendezvous site. The instant he got there, he called out, "Rave! Rave, are you here?" Without waiting for an answer, he instinctively sniffed the air. He didn't smell her. He felt panic threatening to build and burst within him. "Raven!" he shouted again.

There was no answer. He loped toward the badger den but there was no sign of her. If his nose had been working properly, he might have begun tracking her, only to realize her scent was several days old. But that was the problem. Peregrine had hoped the young medic might know what might be afflicting him and how to fix it. But there he stood, both his yearling daughter and his entire sense of smell having inexplicably gone missing.

*collects Kat threads*

Elwood heard the shouts and picked his chin up from his paws, blinking in the frosty winter sunlight. He'd had a lot on his mind as of late -- particularly Finley's plans to take Eljay on an excursion beyond the caldera's borders -- and what he had intended to be a nap had turned out as just a quiet period of contemplation. But as he glanced around, ears swiveling on his head, he recognized Peregrine's voice and heard the concern in his tones.

The Beta picked himself up, stretching his hind legs in a catlike manner, then briskly trotted across the rendezvous site. Various clues -- pawprints in the snow and Peregrine's scent -- led him towards Wildfire's badger den, where he found the distraught father. "What's wrong?" Elwood asked with a knitted brow as he approached, failing to realize that it had been much too long since he had seen Raven.

Thank you for rescuing this. I'm super sick, so this post may suck. <3

He was down an eye and a nose, though his ears still worked perfectly well, thank goodness. When he heard footfalls, he swung in that direction, hoping it was Raven. Instead, it was his trusty Beta, Elwood. Peregrine stared at him for a few beats, trying to steady himself. He was definitely panicking a bit but didn't want to appear completely spastic in front of his longtime friend.

"It's my nose. It's broken or something. I can't smell shit," he explained. "It's been going in and out for a few days but it's officially down for the count now." Was it the recent cold? Or was it related to his vision loss? He had no idea. "I was hoping Raven could help but I can't find her," he added. His homebody of a daughter going missing was almost as strange as his nose stopping working.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," the Alpha began muttering under his breath, shooting glances at Elwood even as he began to pace. "I already lost one eye, now my nose is dead too? What the fuck am I going to do, El?" Without a sense of smell, he couldn't hunt. If he couldn't hunt, he couldn't provide for his pack and family—including the unborn pups currently growing in Fox's womb. If he couldn't provide for his own, how could he rule a pack?

The bleakness threatened to overwhelm him, though Peregrine focused on the second issue at hand, which could possibly help resolve the first. "Can you help me track down Rave?" he queried, freezing, jaw clenched as he gazed at his pewter comrade.

I hope you feel better soon! <3

Elwood felt alarm as Peregrine's level of upset escalated. Not only was his nose not working, but Raven wasn't there to help diagnose him -- and that presented a whole new problem. He tried to think back to the last time he had seen the Alphas' dark-haired daughter, but it had been some time. She hadn't even visited Eljay recently, he realized with a frown.

After a moment, Peregrine made a request, for which Elwood was thankful. He didn't know what he could do to help with his friend's olfactory problems, but he could certainly try to track down Raven. "Absolutely," he agreed with a firm nod of his head. "Come with me," he said, hoping that it would reduce some of Peregrine's distress, at least temporarily.

Brushing his own, operating nose against the ground, he inhaled. There were traces of Raven here, near the badger den, but they were faint. It was hard to determine where she had gone last. "Let's go this way," he suggested, heading out across the rendezvous site and towards the borders. He moved slowly, keeping his snout near the snow. "Is your nose still stuffed up from the sinus infection?" he asked, looking up at Peregrine out of the corner of his eye.

Thanks! Still sick but feeling a tiny bit better today...

Elwood agreed to help. Peregrine could only watch helplessly as the Beta sniffed around for a scent trail, then began to move. The Alpha fell into step behind him, then found himself sniffing at the ground purely out of habit. But he couldn't smell a damn thing. He felt his blood run cold, then hot, then cold again. What if it never came back, just like his vision had never returned to his right eye? What if Raven couldn't help him, once they found her?

He had no reason to believe they wouldn't track her down eventually. He hadn't seen her in a couple of days but that didn't mean anything, did it? As a matter of fact, Peregrine hadn't gone a single day without at least bumping into his youngest child at least once or twice. Worry began to really gnaw at his heart. It was exacerbated every time he tried to catch her scent, only to be reminded that she wasn't the only thing that had gone MIA.

"Anything?" he asked Elwood as they continued tracking. He felt so completely impotent. Peregrine hated it.

After a few silent, tense moments, Peregrine pressed for more information from Elwood. The Beta stopped, his brow furrowed as he straightened. "Her scent just isn't very strong. I can't pin down a fresh trail," he admitted worriedly. He wanted to suggest that maybe Raven had been bitten by the wanderlust bug -- like her sister, the outrider -- but knew that she was too much of a homebody to want to go exploring alone. In that regard, she was quite similar to her godfather.

"When was the last time you saw her?" he asked, turning to face Peregrine with concern etched on his face.

Only belatedly did he realize he hadn't answered Elwood's earlier question. But the fact that they couldn't find a recent scent trail for Raven really eclipsed everything. When the Beta asked when he'd last seen his daughter, Peregrine's face screwed up in thought.

"Maybe... three or four days ago?" he finally said, only just now realizing how long it had really been since he had seen the young healer. Peregrine's face looked stricken. "That's a long time for us. We see each other every day." There had been nothing particularly telling about their last encounter, either.

A wild thought occurred to him. "What if she went looking for Pan...?" he whispered barely loud enough to hear before abruptly and wildly throwing his head into the air to howl, "Raven! Rave, where are you?" His heart thudded in his chest as his voice tapered into silence and he pricked his ears for a response.

None came after several minutes. Raven was not the type to leave the caldera. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he repeated his earlier mantra, not sure what the hell to do at this point. So he found himself babbling, "I can breathe just fine. My nose isn't plugged up at all. I don't know what the fuck is going on right now."

Everything had been so quiet and peaceful lately. Now—BLAM! Everything was blowing up in his face. Pan was gone, Raven was now missing too and if his sense of smell didn't return, life as he knew it was over.

Elwood's question caused Peregrine to speculate, wrinkling his nose thoughtfully as he tried to remember the last time he had crossed paths with Raven. It turned out that it had been more than a day or two -- which Elwood knew was odd even before Peregrine said it. His ears tilted back with worry when the Alpha suggested that she had gone looking for Pan. Since they didn't know Pan's whereabouts -- or what had happened to him -- there was no telling where Raven had gone if she had decided to search for him.

Peregrine howled for his daughter, and Elwood tipped his head back to add his voice to the urgent call. Their message would carry into the neutral territories, but if Raven was out of earshot it would be fruitless. As for Peregrine's nose, it apparently wasn't congested; he had just lost his sense of smell.

"Okay. We'll try to figure out what's going on with your nose later. I wish I was a doctor," Elwood said ruefully. For a moment, he briefly considered taking up the trade, but then realized sadly that there was no one in the pack who could teach him. "Let's focus on Raven. Is there anywhere else in the territory she could have gone? What about the tunnels?" he asked, thinking of when Wildfire had gotten lost in the maze beneath the mountain.

Peregrine bobbed his head mutely when Elwood said they could focus on his nose sometime later. "Don't mention it to Fox," he murmured. Ordinarily, the Alpha male would never keep something from her, yet she was working on the buns in her oven and didn't need any unnecessary stress right now. Hopefully this issue would pass and she would be none the wiser.

The Beta's deliberate questions helped keep Peregrine anchored so that he didn't go swirling down the drain. "I don't know," he answered honestly. If he'd had them, he might have wrung his hands. "It can't hurt to check though, can it? Maybe she did go down in a cave to find some special fungus or something for her medicine cabinet..." he mused aloud, voice sounding strained even as he began to move.

"I won't," was Elwood's faithful reply. He wondered what he would do in Peregrine's situation; would he want to share that information with Finley right away, or wait to see if the problem corrected itself? Losing one's sense of smell was no joke as a wolf -- that would severely impede Peregrine's ability to hunt. Dread brewed in the pit of Elwood's stomach, but he convinced himself that this was just a temporary issue. It had to be -- right?

Peregrine grabbed onto Elwood's idea to search the tunnels and the two males turned in tandem, changing course and setting their sights on the caldera's slopes. Although Elwood didn't know if they would really have any success, it felt better to have a goal rather than aimlessly wandering the borders. "I'm sure we'll find her soon," he said in an attempt to be reassuring as they picked up speed and loped towards the mountain, heading for one of the large openings near its base.

When they neared the mountain's base and approached one of the many fissures leading into its hidden subterranean labyrinth, a shiver of trepidation washed over Peregrine. He forcefully shoved it aside. Finding Raven was much more important than some irrational fear. Even if he did somehow get separated from Elwood and lost in the catacombs, well... his children had found their way out once and so could he if it came down to it.

"Raven?!" he hollered the instant he thrust his head inside, listening to the darkness swallowing his echoes. "Are you in here?" he shouted at the top of his lungs, wondering how far his booming voice would carry into the bowels of the earth.

They reached their destination and Peregrine promptly called out for Raven, his voice echoing down the long cavern and disappearing into the darkness. Elwood paused at his side, his head canted and his ears pricked as he strained to hear something, anything, that would indicate that Raven was down there.

A few breathless seconds passed, and there was no response. He felt a weight settling onto his shoulders but he took a deep breath and did his best to force it aside. "Do you want me to go in and take a look around?" he asked, glancing at Peregrine. It would be hard to see, but he would be able to use his sense of smell to determine if she had passed through the tunnel recently; he winced inwardly as he realized that this was something that Peregrine wouldn't be able to do, even if he did want to venture into the maze.

I hope it's coo' if I sort of fade this for us. :)

No one answered him, unless you counted his own echo. It bounced a few times before the earth swallowed it into silence. Peregrine frowned, the expression deepening when Elwood offered to go in alone. The Alpha turned toward him, his eyes pensive. He didn't much like caves, nor could he really help in any way, but there was no way he was going to send Elwood ahead alone.

"I'm coming with you," he said in way of reply. He wouldn't be much more than a useless tag-a-long but if his Beta was going to get lost, then he wouldn't let him get lost alone. Peregrine drew in a deep breath, then stepped forward, the black belly of the earth quickly swallowing him.

Luckily, they would both surface again later to see the light of day again. But they would do so empty-handed, with no signs of Raven. That's a good thing, he would tell himself, because it meant she most likely hadn't disappeared into the tunnels. But her case was only going to get colder as days passed with no leads, no answers, no nothing.

Like his sense of smell, she was just... gone.