Redhawk Caldera wanna feel in love all on me

@Finley and @Elwood!

terance had never officially joined a pack before. he had never had to bow down submissively to a stranger across a border-- but he knew the concept. dante once led a pack down here, so he taught terance and sarah and wraen all of the basics about pack-life. before terance had left, dante made sure he knew how to properly approach a border. though terance was pretty positive that his uncle would let him in (osprey had spoken so fondly of him) terance kept these rules in the front of his brain.

step one, lower your posture-- check. step two, lower your tail and your head-- check. step three, call for the leadership-- he threw back his head and made a loud, clear call for peregrine-- check. step four, wait... check.

he couldn't quite remember peregrine like he remembered charon, but he was pretty sure he'd met the man before... pretty sure. he got enough of his personality and personal accomplishments from osprey, but that was the best he could do. oh well. terance remained how he was, submissive and patient, for peregrine to greet him.

She didn't hear the call of her dead father's name, yet it wasn't more than five minutes after it went up that Towhee spotted a stranger lurking near the borders. Ignoring all his efforts at proper etiquette, the mercenary-in-training shot like a bullet from a gun. As she rapidly closed the distance between them, her ears flattened to her skull, her lips wrinkled back from her teeth, the fur all along her spine bristled and her puffed-up tail lashed up over her hips.

She was sorely tempted to simply bowl into him and chase him away from her pack's territory. But at the last second, Towhee dug in her toes and halted, albeit glaring daggers and growling lowly at the interloper. "What do you want?" she demanded in her slow, muddled-sounding speech, everything about her demeanor dripping with animus.

towhee appearance !!!

terance saw the pup coming-- unaware that this was his cousin. the boy was sort of excited to see a puppy, it'd been a while since he'd interacted with one. his tail began to wave, showing his enthusiasm, until she actually got close enough for him to really see. he wasn't truly concerned until she muttered something he didn't fully understand and shrank in her aggression. i do not like this child, he thought decidedly. there was no need for aggression, and he had followed all of his father's rules. plus, she seemed sort of stupid, if he wanted he could practically eat her in like two bites... but that was not proper joining etiquette.

though her speech was weird, terance got the gist of it. "i am here to see my uncle, peregrine, and to join the caldera," he told her, voice clear and smooth. he was proud of that, dante had taught him well in the ways of speech, but he made sure he didn't seem to cocky-- dante also told him that that was frowned upon.

It was always a little more difficult to read a stranger's lips, yet Towhee kept her eyes focused like lasers on the stranger's face as he spoke. They narrowed even more when he mentioned Peregrine's name, her expression freezing a little when she belatedly processed the word "uncle." This outsider was... family? The Xi's processors tripped a little over this information. But she didn't miss the part where he mentioned joining the Redhawks' ranks.

"Peregrine is dead," Towhee replied brusquely, unaware that she badly butchered her own father's name. "Elwood and Finley are the Alphas," she continued. "Do you still want to join?" she wondered. Although her voice didn't convey much in way of tone, Towhee did not bother disguising the hope on her face hat this information would prompt him to turn around and go back to wherever he'd come from.

"what?" he questioned, a little dumbly. he hadn't even notice how badly she'd butchered the man's name, as he was way more concerned with the sudden plot twist. now he had fifty questions to ask, but the proud boy couldn't stoop to such a childish level-- to spew constant questions was irritating, and he wouldn't dare get on his own last nerve. he wasn't in any way attached to the man, it just sort of sucked. he knew his mother would be upset too, and that alone made him a bit wary. "no-- i just came for peregrine. can i ask how he died? my mother would want to know." he decided one question would be enough. osprey deserved to know. he couldn't tell her right now, he was not strong enough to do all that and then return... and to return without sarah? it was not possible.

"then i'll be out of your hair," he added, noting the look of clear disapproval written on her face. what a bitch, he hoped he'd never see her again, because somewhere else he might rip her tiny little head off.

She kind of enjoyed the look of confused dismay on his face as he reacted to the news. Towhee wondered if he had personally known her father but didn't care enough to ask. The stranger had a question for her, however; he wanted to know how the former Alpha had died. She blinked, her jaw tightening. He was an outsider and it was none of his damn business. Right then and there, Towhee decided it didn't matter to her if he—and the mother he mentioned—were somehow relatives. They were still outsiders.

But it was sort of fun, seeing his facial reactions to bad news, so Towhee decided to twist the knife she had already thrust into him. Actually, she abruptly decided to use some of her burgeoning storytelling skills to trick him. Bursting into sudden crocodile tears, the Xi tearfully let him know, "I don't know. My dad died before I was even born." Towhee would never know that she sounded like a cat being chopped in half by a renegade garage door.

whatever the tiny fiend said, terance made no sense of it. he let out a low mumble of words-- that his cousin (what the fuck) probably couldn't decipher, and shook his head. "okay," was all he said. did he feel bad? maybe. she looked like she way crying, and that made him think of his own tiny siblings, and what would happen to them if they didn't have dante. but they had osprey, who was a great mother, clearly, whoever peregrine had made his wife had done a horrible job raising children. terance felt little pity.

wanting the noise to s t o p, terance left. he said no words of sympathy or guilt, merely left. this was a waste of his time and energy, but at least he learned about some weirdass cousin he had.

as he padded quickly away, he frowned, thinking of sarah and how hard she'd laugh at how terrible this girl sounded.

His reaction this time was horribly anticlimactic. The false tears and pretense stopped immediately as the stranger turned and began to lope away. "That's right," she couldn't resist shouting at his back, "get lost! And don't come back!" She bared her teeth for good measure, even though he wasn't even looking this way, and stood stiffly on the spot until he became nothing but a speck in the distance.

Snorting, Towhee swiped a foreleg across her face to dry the fake tears. As she was busying herself with this, she suddenly realized what she had done: she had chased off an intruder! Although she hadn't killed him, it still felt damn good. Her heart leaped in her chest. She couldn't wait to tell her godparents, brothers and sister. Of course, she probably wouldn't tell them the part about the stranger being a relative or looking for Peregrine (Towhee was still oblivious that the rest of the pack had likely overheard the howl...).