Meadowlark Prairie Can't see the stars, but we're reaching

At some point in his independent wandering, Ramsay quit haunting the edge of Spiderling's Glen and began to wander through the dark forest at large, largely unhindered. By now the boy had also begun to take a natural interest in the pack as a whole. He didn't understand the uneasy feeling it gave him when he couldn't identify a strongest smell; that would come much later, when he was well-versed in pack structure. On these treks through the woods, he routinely made note of the various smells, not one standing out above any of the others, and filed them away for later consultation. He could recognize many of the scents, and that gave him some comfort even in his solitude, enough that he feared nothing as he went along.

That day, Ramsay quit the woods entirely. He didn't mean to, but his wandering brought him to the bright edge, past scattered bones and scraps of fur and blood long soaked into the loam but still tangy on the air, and out into a wide open expanse unlike anything he had ever seen. Accustomed as he was to the gloom, he squinted his darkening eyes and wrinkled up his muzzle with the makings of a growl, but didn't retreat back into the dark. Instead, he began to take tentative steps away from the forest, toward that open expanse. Instinct tethered him close enough to run back should he need to, but far enough out that his dark, stunted figure was cleanly visible against the stark white snow.

Ramsay is still relatively close to Blackfeather Woods, but anyone who might be passing by is welcome to see him and/or scream at him! <3

indra was eager to quit the spectral forest, what with the morass of sunken skulls and the eerily placed segment of bones that seemingly rimed the perimeter of the forest. it had been the carriom scent that first drew her, yet in horror she realized she would find no sustenance here. not without eating another wolf anyway. 


she never once dared to test the boundaries, they were clear and quite intimidating. just as she was about to turn and leave she saw a small form along the treeline. from its strange gait she could not outrightly ddcipher what type of animal was, though she was certain it would soon be dinner. 

for the second time in minutes her hopes were dashed as she drew closer, for the figure was no meal but a puppy. a very odd moving, deeply perplexing puppy. indra was confused enough that she halted in plain view, her nose held in the wind as she scanned the air for any company. surely its mother would soon notice its absence? indra was not sure what to do and just stared stupidly at the dark furred thing, deeply and irrevocably confused by its peculiar ambulatory motions.

The strong scent of death and decay permeated the entire forest from its outer edge, so Ramsay was used to it. It was thicker and more tangible here, and he stopped every few feet to scent the air with curious jabs of a thin muzzle, but all he smelled was familiarity. There would come a day when he would consider their gaudy display ill-advised, a call to attention that didn't fit with their stealthy lifestyle, but for now he thought of it as completely normal. He had nothing to compare it to.

The next time he lifted his head to sniff the blood air, his gaze snapped to a brilliant crimson creature heading parallel to his pack's borders. Instinct dictated that he should feel affront for this, but he was only a two month old pup, and the excitement of someone new easily overrode his wilder nature. With clumsy, gorilla-esque steps, Ramsay began to pick his way through thick drifts toward the lone stranger with an uncautious, "Hi!"

it was ill advised for indra to be here, in strange and clearly malevolent territory. all the same she felt compulsed by the contorted thing before her, clearly canine -- and luckily for her, clearly friendly. 

her tail remained limp as the little fellow approached, though there hung on her plain face a thin veneer of confusion. the puppy before her was as dark as he was unusual - she was not so rude as to draw attention to his stunted form, yet all the same she was direly curious. 

"hullo," she rejoined amicably, a gentle sway of her tail given in complement. "what's your name?"

The patchwork wolf followed the boy from along the frays of Blackfeather Woods with watchful eye, curious where he was making his way to. Not many wolves within the forest's darkness seemed to care much, but Cicero did, for their stuntedness and imperfection reminded him of himself and it was something to cling onto in the darkness of everything else. Something that kept him here, just like Damien kept him here, except differently so: With Damien, it was a love that kept him close, but with these pups, it was a protectiveness, a feeling of being needed somehow.

Ragged ears swivelled forward as Ramsay made contact with a stranger. She looked harmless, but Cicero stayed close nonetheless. He did not like the brightness of the outside world and he did not like how cold everything was, considering his thin, wiry fur did not protect him as well as Damien or Potema's did. There was little shelter along the prairie so they might notice him, he idly realised as he came closer through the snow with steady and slow pace, but he tried to stay stealthy enough so they may not notice as he came within hearing distance, approaching from the side and hiding behind a snowy patch of what might once've been a bush of sorts, but was now just a white lump.

feel free to skip me if they don't notice him :)

The wide field intimidated him as readily as the crimson-coated stranger intrigued him, so Ramsay hovered close enough to Blackfeather's rotted edge that he could flee back into the shadows if needbe, though perhaps not unscathed if his opposer was quick on their feet. Indra was unlike any wolf he had ever seen. Every member of the Woods pack was black, white, grey or some description in between, so the rich russet of her coat was captivating to the young boy. She was, as far as his limited world view allowed him to think, like him: different.

His short tail wiggled in interest when she replied, and his answer came quick on a breathless shout: "Raaam-see!" And then, yawning suddenly and taking a moment to try and fail to rapidly sit and scratch at his ear with a limb that was far too long for his torso, he considered her from across the way and ever-so-tactfully asked, "what want?" instead of asking her name in return.

All the while, a specter watched him from the woods, unseen and unnoticed.

indra remained unaware of a spectre's stealthy approach through the snow - she had never been a keen scout, and cicero's subterfuge far outshined her inept tracking sense. Indra was simply that clueless that unless Cicero elected to make a sudden noise or grandiosely reveal himself, she would remain blissfully unaware they were being studied.

any trepidation indra clung to was shed as Ramsay's bright and cheery response greeted her. her tail gently rubbed across her hocks as she responded honestly, though she was not hoping he would procyre anything for her. "Looking for food, mostly." the scarlet furred wolf supplied, her gaze falling behind the grotesque form of her companion to the dismal forest behind him. "do you know where i am?"

Food. That was a driving factor in everyone's lives, he would come to learn. Wolves would abandon all their sensibilities in pursuit of something as basic as food. For him it was easy to find; he didn't understand the hardship of living alone, nor would he ever earnestly try to. His life was far more comfortable. "Nope!" he answered with the same amount of bald honesty she'd paid him.

Then, because Ramsay was still just young and his instincts, though sharply intact, were still easily overridden by his curiosity and excitement, the boy told Indra, "food here. You come." and rose to his feet with the full intent of leading her back to the glen, where someone had deposited some day-old meat just that morning.

there was something refreshing about interacting with a wolf younger than her. perhaps it was because their youth meant they had not yet learned to mistrust the world, and time had yet to sully them. with children indra had come to find, they almost never had ulterior motives.

her guard was let down by the cheery honesty of her companion, though there was a pang of pity in her heart that he was so deformed. it seemed not to affect his spirits -- perhaps he had yet to know he was different than other wolves.

she paused as he invited her into the glen; she was ever so hungry, but not enough to forfeit common sense. guiltily she looked about them, her expression unsure. she did not want to hurt his feelings, so she spoke softly: "um.. i better not.." she regretted declining his invitation, but thought it best. "not cause i don't want to! i just don't want you to get in trouble. thanks though."

She didn't want to come with him. Pursing his lips, the boy swung back around to fix her in his sights, wondering what she meant by getting him in trouble. The other wolf who had come to their borders had no qualms about passing over their borders and stealing Euron's plaything, and he hadn't seen the outcome of that encounter to know that was actually a dangerous thing for a lone wolf to do. Indra had more sense in her head than Beruthiel had, and more experience with how things worked than Ramsay.

Her decision was the right one, although Ramsay's ears and expression both wilted when she refused to come. There was plenty of food in the woods, and because he wasn't yet drained of all his youthful compassion, he felt a desire to share it with a wolf in need. Indra also stuck out to him, only because of her fur colour, but it was enough to drive a young pack pup to want to help her. Someday that would all change, but not today.

"Won't get in trouble," he insisted as he shifted from forepaw to forepaw, though he didn't quite understand that yes he very much would if he brought a stranger past the pack borders.

he is so cute ;-;

indra fretted internally, seeing the youth shift from paw to paw in what she interpreted might be a dance of impatience. as much as she wished to comply, she knew better -- and it wasn't just because of the gruesome decorations that marked blackfeather's range. she knew whatever had placed those various fallen figures had done so carefully and deliberately, and indra did not wish to add her own corpse to the bounty.

she did not think ramsay was trying to trick her, he seemed genuinely kind -- but indra did not have any faith that the other denizens would be as receptive.

"i'll get in trouble." she reinforced, a small frown riddling her features. "besides, it's scary there." she finished sadly, casting her gaze once more to the many bones that stuck out of the snow. indra hoped they had died painless deaths, but knew that hope was in vain.

Her correction sounded much the same as her initial reason to him, but before the boy could childishly protest it, she brought up another point. He spun in place, his only means of turning his head to look, and peered at the gruesome displays marking Blackfeather's threshold. Having grown up around such gore and having never been elsewhere, Ramsay mistook it for normal, and when he swung his small figure back around to Indra, his expression laid bare his confusion.

"Scary?" he wondered, remembering when he and Euron had first climbed the hill, and he had fallen, and his brother had asked him how it felt. That had been scary, but this? This was everyday, or so he believed. "Why?" he wondered, taking a tentative and imploring step in Indra's direction. What was there to be afraid of? The woods? He didn't know the reputation of the woods, or what they felt was their reputation. It had never affected him, so how could he understand another wolf's hesitance?

indra looked behind him and shuddered, shaking her head as he turned back around to face her. the confusion was plain on his face -- and indra understood it, for had she been born in this gruesome place perhaps even she would have seen the strangeness bled from it. to him, it seemed normal -- to indra, the entrails and skeletons were anything but.

she gesticulated helplessly at said gruesome tokens, but words temporarily failed her. she scrunched up her brow, brought her paw back to her chest, and then looked at the boy again. she did not want to hurt his feelings or inflict doubt upon him, even more so since he had taken a step towards her in such a beseeching manner. "it's that stuff," she frowned, eyeing a splintered bone with distance. "that.. that came from someone, like me or you. maybe someday that would be me, too. that's scary."

Indra drew Ramsay's attention to the gruesome decorations at their borders. He regarded them as a child who wasn't taught where their food came from might look at a steak: impassively. He had never witnessed where these decorations came from, had never known the canines whose remains litter their threshold, and couldn't form any sort of empathetic connection. None of them resembled Indra enough for him to draw a connection to her, either, so Ramsay ultimately looked back at her and said, baffled, "not scary."

As if to demonstrate while simultaneously betraying just how desensitized he was to the body parts, he shuffled back several steps and aimed a kick at a detached paw that happened to have rolled out of the woods. The force of his kick wasn't impressive and it didn't go far, but after watching it for several seconds for a reaction, Ramsay looked back to the loner and asked, "see?"

Naturally, he missed the point.

indy right now: https://i.giphy.com/media/3o7TKDAh6sXKY2Fnq0/giphy.mp4

indra's soft gaze followed the tyke as he looked from her to the decorations -- she said nothing as he hiked one leg dutifully after the other and strode over to what appeared to be a rotted paw lodged in the snow. indra's expression was puzzled -- what would he do? her ears pulled back at different intervals as she watched and waited --

until he kicked it; with a gasp of god fearing shock indra scrambled backwards as the macabre thing tumbled past. she brought her paw to her chest in a knee-jerk reaction of horror and looked at him, most affronted. "that was a person!" she cried, still upheaved from her volition backwards: "how could you do that?"

she was not angry at him, all the same an immense amount of frustration for his desensitation stirred in her. casting a look about her to ensure there was no audience (she had yet to notice cicero) she stole towards the severed limb and carried it several yards away. she glanced behind her once or twice to see if ramsey was following -- but if he wasn't, she wasn't going to stop what she was doing.

she dropped the detatched paw on the ground and started furiously digging with two from limbs. at first her claws screeched against the crusty layer of ice, and a few times she whined and bit at the permafrost until it gave way to dry and tumbling earth. "they ought to be buried." she said. "it's not right." with a grunt she nosed the limb into the shallow hole she had dug, and started to fill it with the mound of loose dirt besides it.

His eyes widened and flew to Indra's face as she recoiled, playing the part of rearing horse quite well. Her disgust was completely understandable to any sane being with a proper upbringing, but it went over his head, as did her affront. He watched curiously, head cocked in a bird-like manner, as she chased down the paw and hoisted it into the air, and he followed after her as she began to move away, still unaware of his father watching quietly from the shadows.

He didn't go too far from the edge of the woods, just far enough to watch her strike the earth. "No person anymore," he called out, observant in his own way, but unsure of how to articulate his thoughts on it. Sure, that was someone once. Sure, they probably deserved to be treated with a little more dignity than being strewn across the borders. He didn't realize this wasn't a customary thing to do, and hadn't yet realized how unnecessary—and foolish—putting on such a display was. Someday, maybe he would understand Indra's reason, if not her sentiment.

"Why?" he asked when she spoke next, he being wholly unfamiliar with the ritual aspects of death, including sending the corpse six feet under.

indra was somewhat relieved at least the boy seemed receptive to ideas outside of his own custom; at the very least, that showed a sliver of promise for his future. perhaps, he would be different than the other blackfeather wolves. perhaps not. indra knew very little about the forest, and could not make much of a convincing argument that he would grow up perfectly fine either way. she did wonder what the effect of perpetual desensitization to dead bodies could do to a pup -- could it permanently deform their way of thinking about other individuals? would they lack compassion as adults?

indra looked up as he declared it wasn't a person anymore. "it's not a person anymore because it's dead." she reinforced hotly, though immediately softened as she realized her tone had been curt. he had asked her why -- that showed interest -- she was slightly reassured by his curiosity (though maybe she shouldn't have been). "because it's what you do when we die. it's a sign of respect, of love, for the person that is no longer with us. if i die, i hope that someone who loves me can bury me, cover me, so the crows don't pick out my eyes and wolves don't fight over my bones. it's what's right. would you want to be dead like them? would you want someone to toss around your leg like a toy?"

He snatched his ears back against his lumpy shoulders when she reprimanded him (she didn't, but he heard it that way) and indignant denial pressed its hot blade to his ribs. Ramsay had never been reprimanded like that by anyone. It reminded him of Potema, and his warmth toward Indra began to slowly circle the drain. But she was nothing like Potema, who hadn't so much as sought him out or spoken a word to him since his birth, so he lingered because curiosity told him to, and he wanted to like this stranger. Her coat was too fascinating not to.

Fixated as he was, he swayed a few steps closer, eyes dropping to the ground. "Don't know," he answered honestly. Ramsay didn't think anyone would bury any part of him when he was dead and gone—who loved a twisted little thing like him, save his litter mates?—but he also didn't think he would care either way. "Can't see when you're dead," he tried, with a little smile that was supposed to seem hopeful, but probably just came off smug or insensitive.

indra would have been sad to learn ramsay construed her correction coldy -- it was only natural to be indignant to correction, but she did not pick up the barely perceptible change in ramsay. she genuinely hoped whatever knowledge she imparted here would stay with him - he wasn't a hopeless case, but his upbringing and environment caused indra some emotional distress. she would have died if she were born here, surely. certainly his mold was of a different extract than her own -- and certainly, the individuals here and his experiences here would shape him into something very different than the cloth indra was cut from.

his answers came honestly enough, but his quip caused a small frown in indra. she didn't know what being dead entailed, and she didn't like to entertain such morbid thoughts. she met his smile with a brief one of her own but it lacked encouragement or depth. "i guess not." she admitted defeatedly, her gaze flickering to the dark forest and then to the valley.

"i should probably go." she said, casting a worried glance to the gloomy borders. she didn't know it, but she glanced right over cicero then -- who remained expertly hidden and undetected. "will you promise me something?" her gaze slid back to ramsay and there was an imploring intensity to them. "promise me that you won't forget this -- our encounter." she wriggled forward slowly, and if he would allow it, she would lick his forehead affectionately before turning around to leave. he could not help his surroundings, she thought. it was not his fault he was born here, or raised by monsters - and while she kept her judgment of his peers silent, she hoped that the evil within the forest would never corrupt him.

Truthfully, he didn't know the depths of death's mad embrace either. You only knew it when you died, and then it was too late to do anything about it. Maybe you could see when you were dead. Maybe you could see in fifteen dimensions, with different realities along every thread. If such a thing were even remotely possible, then he would have liked to reassure Indra about it, but he was only a little kid and knew nothing about such deep and abstract things.

All the while, Cicero watched their exchange from the trees, perhaps thinking his own things on the matter of death and afterlife. Ramsay would never know; even when he left the scene entirely, he would breeze right by his uncle without ever detecting him.

"Okay," Ramsay agreed. He would have liked to take her into the forest where there was food, but she didn't want to go there, and that was the extent of the pup's ability to help. In time his willingness to do so would completely fade as well. He still felt pulled toward Indra somehow, so he pressed a step forward when she swung back to him, but her exotic allure as an outsider paled next to Blackfeather Woods' pull on him. She planted something like a kiss across the top of his scalp and his short tail wriggled; it was the first and probably only time someone other than his litter mates had shown him such affection. A smile pulled his lips as he brightly chirped, "promise!" and then, as she turned to go, he scampered back into the forest on buoyant paws.