Wild Berry Meadow Island breeze and lights down low

Celephais' mood as she progressed across the sprawling flatlands, with its straggling patches of woodland, was carefree. Compared to the doom and gloom of the forested vale of her origin, this wide open valley was radiant despite the clouds overhead. She couldn't help associating it with positive things: sunshine, warmth, prey, and family. Real family, not the sort of crazy kooks she'd grown up with. Celephais was probably as crazy as the rest of those wolves deep down, and she did believe in the same monsters they did, but she had a very different outlook on the world. She appreciated the openness of the flatlands and found beauty in even the pebbles strewn about the banks of rivers and streams.

She smelled the berries before she saw them, but when she crested a hill and found an incredible field of bushes spread out on the other side, Celephais wagged her tail and grinned. She loved berries, and since coming inland she had lost all of her sickness from traveling down the coast. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn't had a solid meal for a while and that dessert before dinner was a really bad idea, but the yearling did what yearlings did best: ignored her better sense.

She barreled down the hill in excited leaps and bounds and fell upon the nearest plump cluster dark berries, completely heedless of what type of berries they might be. The only berries she knew of were the edible kind, after all!

@Raven

Whenever Raven wasn't in the caldera's vicinity, it was generally a pretty safe bet that she could be found at Wild Berry Meadow. She loved it here, where a wide variety of her favorite medicinal plants were easily found, the air was thick with the scent of wildflowers, the sun drenched the rolling grasslands with its warm rays, and the bushes' limbs hung fat with sweet, plump berries in summer. It was definitely her favorite spot to hang out, and she knew it almost better than she knew her own packlands.

She was there today, of course, having spent the morning collecting a few different types of plants to stock up her stores before winter. Now, she was simply roaming and enjoying the afternoon sunshine, its warmth on her glossy black fur inspiring thoughts of a nap in the soft grass. As she passed a copse of bushes, though, she heard the telltale rustling of some creature helping itself to the berries. She grinned, wondering if it was that young black bear again. She had seen him a few times in her trips out here, and had always been happy to share her sweets with him. A peek around the side of the thicket, however, revealed a wolf rather than a bear, and Raven smiled and greeted brightly, "Hello!"

Celephais hardly even tasted the berries as they soared over her tongue and down her gullet. She chomped them frantically, intent on filling her stomach with them to make up for the lack of meat that came with being alone most of the time. By no means was she starving, but Celephais had definitely seen fuller days. She wasn't bothered too much by it yet, but autumn was only just beginning in these lands. There was plenty of time for her to experience real hunger. Until then, she would stuff her face with anything in sight just to ward off the inevitable for one more day.

She wasn't sure if she spotted Raven's head or heard her voice first, but either way, the reaction was the same: Celephais' ears pricked fully upright and she pulled her head backward on her neck to lean away with wide, shocked eyes. Who was this glossy, neatly groomed creature, and how had she snuck up on her so easily? The yearlings' cheeks puffed out with half chewed berries and she slowly slid her tongue back into her mouth as she considered the smiling wolf around the corner.

"Ehhhhm," she muttered with her mouth full, then gulped down her mouthful of berries (only elder berries, lucky for her) and thumped her tail on the ground several times. Her muzzle was sticky with berry juice but Celephais didn't even spare a second to clean up. She was already a complete bedraggled mess next to Raven anyway. "Hi to you! Where'd you pop up from?"

Given the ravenous manner in which the wolf tore at the bush, Raven guessed that she was very hungry and regretted that she didn't have any meat to offer her. Had the caldera not just recently clawed its way out of a famine, she might have filched something small from one of their caches to fill the young wolf's belly. Sadly, though, all of their pack's caches stood desolately empty. But Raven was well acquainted with intense hunger -- the effects of it were still evident in her skinny, wraithlike appearance -- and she motioned for the she-wolf to continue to eat while she answered, "I was just passing by and I heard you over here. I thought you were a bear. You sure make a ruckus like one! When's the last time you ate anything?"

When Raven gave her the go-ahead to keep eating, Celephais took her up on it without a second thought and continued to rummage for berries. She tipped her tall ears in the pack wolf's direction and couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up through her full mouth at the image of being as noisy as a bear. Truthfully, Celephais had never seen a real bear before, but she'd heard highly exaggerated stories. Bears bellowed louder than anything in the world as far as she knew.

"I'm not that loud, am I?" asked the loner, feigning embarrassment and failing to hide the hint of true insecurity that leaked through. Celephais wasn't really one to care about that sort of thing, having been raised by wolves who had no manners, but having it stated so plainly made her hyper aware of it and she slowed her berry chomping marginally.

As the stranger laughed, Raven couldn't help giggling herself. Laughter tended to be somewhat infectious for her, but there was no mockery or derision in it. She was genuinely glad to meet a new face, no matter when or where it might be. To the she-wolf's question, she merely shrugged and said conspiratorially, "Hey, nobody heard it but me, and I ain't tellin'." Her tail waving, she approached a bush close by the one the stranger ate from and began to nibble some of the sweet berries herself. They really were very good. "Whass yur noom?" she asked through a mouthful of berry goop, blissfully ignorant of her own bad manners.

Manners, schmanners, thought Celephais as she chomped another cluster of berries from the bushes and noisily gulped them down. Hell, if it was meat, wouldn't they both be slurping on intestines and macerating kidneys without a second thought for their behaviour? Shady Vale's banquets had always been even messier and darker than the average wolf's chow down, so Celephais had learned from the best how to be the worst eater ever.

"Sesphase," she tried to say through a slurry of berries and juice, then repeated: "Celephais," after swallowing thickly. She paused for a moment from massacring dozens upon dozens of innocent berries to peer around at her companion, noting Raven's sleek black coat. It was darker even than her own. "What's yours?" she asked after sparing a moment to clumsily lick berry remnants from her lips.

Celephais. It was an unusual name, though not unpleasant to the ear. Raven had certainly heard stranger ones. Her own seemed somewhat plain in comparison, and -- remembering her manners this time -- she swallowed her mouthful of berries before replying, "Raven." A few more berries went down the hatch before she commented, "I would ask if you're from a pack around here, but as hungry as you are, I'm guessing not?" Then again, she herself had been half-starved to death only a few short weeks ago. But generally, she knew that pack wolves tended to be better-fed than wanderers. She smiled at the girl, suddenly feeling a blob of berry goop slide down the side of her face. A quick swipe of her paw took care of it, and for the briefest of moments, she was glad that her coat was black -- all the better to hide the berry stains!

"Nope!" was her quick and honest response. Celephais could sometimes do with giving her head a shake—giving that information to the wrong sort of folk could end poorly for her—but she was stupid honest most of the time, if little else. So she didn't even stop to think about the consequences for a second before droning on: "I come from a pack way south. We worshipped the Oldest Ones, only, well, my family made it kind of extreme. I called it quits when they decided to eat someone alive. Been heading away ever since."

Hey, at least she hadn't partaken, right?

Celephais's comments about her home pack took Raven by surprise, and her face made it pretty clear. For a single, fleeting moment, images of her father murdering her half-sister and tearing her head off flashed across Raven's thoughts, but she banished those ugly memories to the dark where they belonged. She did that weird, awkward sort of laugh that people do when a really messed-up subject comes up in conversation, and shook her head. "Uh, wow. Yeah, that's about where I'd have to draw the line too." She might have wondered how someone seemingly so down-to-earth as Celephais had come from such a batshit crazy background, but...who was she to judge? Her own past was pretty darn weird, too. "Are you hoping to join up with another pack around here? Or just travel for a while?"

"Yeah they're kind of freaks," she concluded, reaching her head out to snip another clump of berries off the branch with her teeth. Okay, so maybe Celephais was one of them too. After all, she had once slept inside a dead bear's body cavity because mother had told her it would please The Gods or whatever they were. But that wasn't as bad as killing and eating one of their own, right? Right.

She was about to answer Raven's question when an ominous rumble quaked through her body, and she froze in place. Oh no. Oh no. Was eating too many berries bad for you? "SorryIreallyhavetocrap," Celephais blurted through her mouthful of berries as she suddenly rose to her feet, attempted to turn and find a private place to dump, and made it only halfway before ducking her hindquarters. With an apologetic glance back at Raven for this horrid front row seat, Celephais whined while her bowels loosed Hurricane Unhappy Belly on the unsuspecting grass below.

Despite loving them, Celephais had never eaten so many berries at once, and never on an empty stomach. Now she knew why that was a bad idea.

O-M-G lmao XDDD EDITED 11/29/17: I see Celephais has been marked inactive, so I'm editing a quick ending on this and archiving it. Thanks for the thread! :)

As a wolf, and even more so as a medic, Raven was unbothered by poop or the sight of someone dropping a load right in front of her. A most amusing scene unfolded as Raven gazed serenely off into the distance, admiring how nice the autumn colors looked on the treetops as the aroma of parfum eaux de dookie permeated the air around her. The tinkling, cheery music of birdsong was quite lovely, punctuated as it was by staccato blasts of machine-gun artillery farts. But Raven sat, unfazed, through it all, feeling a bit guilty that she hadn't warned her new friend about the side-effects of eating that much sugar on an empty stomach, particularly if she wasn't accustomed to eating berries very often. She caught Celephais's apologetic glance and flashed her a reassuring smile, commenting, "Yeahhh, I should've warned you...that can happen if you eat too many berries on an empty belly. My bad."

Celephais finished handling her business a few moments later and the two resumed their chit-chat. It was a little weird for a few minutes, having a perfectly ordinary conversation with this person while the aroma of her large intestine still lingered around them. But soon they were laughing and having a good time, and later on, Raven went back home knowing she'd made herself a new friend.