Moonspear Take us down

Wraen had finally run accross the otter-head she had been looking for few weeks earlier. In the same spot, where she had left it and conveniently forgotten about it later. It's muzzle was sticking out from the snow, when she had walked past the area that morning, and after beating a hungry looking fox to it, the girl picked it up and through in the air victoriously to catch it swiftly, when gravity had made it's claim. 

A week before she would have brought it straight to Charon's children, now that she was in an airy state of mind due to the coming spring (no signs in the nature spoke of it, it was just something she felt in her heart), she decided to keep it to herself. While contemplating, what to do with it, other than carrying around and boasting to others, she had come to the foot of the mountain the pack was named after.

After a brief examination, a light-bulb moment came. The girl ran up the gentle slope, put the skull down and after a push with her nose, it began rolling down. She waited it to be far away enough, before chasing it at full speed and making a glorious catch at the very end of the distance. Now that was some game!

Dune to the rescue!

Earlier that day, Dune and Wraen had hunted a fox together. Now, he caught her running full-speed down the mountain, and his heart leaped a second, worried that she might be running from something. After a brief survey of the higher slope, though, he saw nothing. If she had been running from something, the pursuer was far, far behind. He trotted up, waving his tail good-naturedly and spotted the partially decomposed head of... well, he wasn't quite sure.

His head swiveled on his neck, and Dune looked at her with inquisitive eyes. "What it?" he asked, taking a step forward to sniff the thing. It certainly wasn't fresh, whatever it was, and he pushed his nose closer to it. Something about the smell of rotting meat was more appealing that the fresh stuff.

"MRhey!" Wraen greeted Dune without letting go of the otter-head and shifting it around between one set of molars to the other. When it was clear that the rest of the dialogue was going to be very difficult, she spat it out on the ground and watched it roll right to the other wolf's feet. 

"A head," she explained and gave him enough time to examine it, before reaching over and claiming it back.

Her words were muddied by the thing in her mouth, but Dune got the gist of it. It rolled his way, stopping right at his feet, and he sniffed it curiously. Being a canine, Dune was delighted with anything dead. She took it back, and he had to admit he was a little bit miffed. He wanted it all to himself!

"Eat it?" he asked. In fact, why hadn't she eaten it already? Maybe, like the rabbit's foot he had given that one wolf, it was a token of good luck. If that was the case, it was an awfully strange token to keep around. The eyes were all but gone, and that did not seem lucky to Dune at all.

"Nah..." Wraen shook her head after a brief examination of the mauled body part. As noted earlier - eyes were gone, the skull was cracked open at one side and almost all juicy brain-stuff was eaten - all there was left was pitiful and frozen remnants of, what once had been edible. Now you could break a tooth on it, but have a good meal? No.

She picked her toy and backed few steps away from Dune, lied down and then placed it right at her fingertips of her extended forepaws. With that done she looked pointedly away, inviting the man to try and take the head, if he dared.

She rolled the skull to the end of her front legs, and Dune stared intently at the thing. It smelled so good, and he wanted nothing more than to run away with it. Then again, that wouldn't be much fun, would it? Besides, Wraen seemed like a good sport.

Dune pretended not to be interested and began to walk by her. At the last second, he dove down and grabbed the skull, tossing it up in the air and letting it fall a few feet away. He dove for it again, but it was quite possible Wraen would make it there before he did if her reflexes were as good as he thought they were.

The aim of the "pretend-I-don't-care" game had been to show, how sneaky and fast Wraen was, but obviously - when her snap after the skull came a second too late - she had met her match. Or... he did not know the rules of the game, did not care and, since he was a man, who rarely threw words around, it was clear that Wraen should not waste any on him either. 

Therefore she sprang to her feet right after her precious toy had been tossed away with an eagerness of ball-crazy border collie. She made it to the head at the same time Dune did and according to the miscellaneous dice-roll of fate snatched it right under his nose. Now was her moment of fame to parade around with her trophy, but then she spat it out and let land at an equal distance between them. With a wagging tail and a look full of expectations she was ready for the round two.

Minor powerplay! Let me know if I should change it. <3

Dune liked this game. Wraen managed to grab it right out from under him, then pranced around (much like he had done when he'd killed the fox earlier that day). He wondered if this was her way of showing off after that encounter. Dune sure didn't mind! Playing like this was great for his mood.

She tossed the head again, and it landed right in the middle of the two of them. Dune eyed her suspiciously, then once again, he set his sights on the toy and darted toward it. Unfortunately for him, Wraen had gotten to it faster than him again! His tail lashed back and forth, his competitive nature starting to raise its head.

Everything's cool.

It was fun to win once and then twice, but, when it happened the third time in a row, Wraen got suspicious - was he really that slow or he was letting her win? Because as a runt of the litter she had been spared during the rough games her siblings had played and later on people, who counted, had found her too cute and adorable to let her lose.

Therefore this time - rather than letting the toy fall to the ground, she decided to her earlier entertainment and beckoned Dune to follow her uphill. There she would set the head on the icy slope, let it roll down and then dash after it as fast as one or the other could. That would be a fairer competition, in her opinion.

She gestured up the hill, and Dune followed, trotting along and eager to see what she had in store next. The white wolf was still figuring out how to best traverse the slopes, but he felt like he was doing a pretty good job of it. He had grown up on the flat tundra, but the mountains were now his home. If he was going to live here, he was going to need to be able to travel at least in his own home.

They stopped quite a bit up the face of the mountain, and there, Dune gave Wraen a questioning look, wondering what she planned to do from here. She still had the skull in her mouth, so he awaited further instructions, verbal or otherwise.

Wraen wagged her tail to reassure that Dune had done the right thing by following her. She gave him a brief pointed glance, which told "now you pay attention!", then set the skull down on the ground and put a forepaw on to steady it. When the moment seemed right, she released her toy and it began slowly to roll downhill gaining speed and momentum. 

"Go!" she barked and went after the toy full-speed, though nowhere near to claim a victory by catching it.

She held the skull under her foot for a moment, gave him a look that conveyed all it needed to, and Dune watched with bated breath as the round thing started to roll down the hillside. By the time Wraen barked "Go!" Dune was practically frothing at the mouth, so eager to chase after it. Not usually one to ignore his prey drive (he was a hunter, after all), it took an incredible amount of willpower to restrain himself from going after it the moment she had let it go.

With her command, he bolted forward. Unfortunately, he lost his footing only a few strides into it, and he came tumbling head over heels over head over heels over... well, you get the idea! After three or four somersaults, he finally came to a halt, covered in snow and plenty of bruises. Thankfully all his bones seemed intact. So much for his confidence on the mountain.

Wraen had walked the rocky terrain in various different conditions so often, that her feet and body knew, how to manouvre and not to lose balance. Therefore she somehow assumed that, if she could do it (most of the Moonspearans as well), so could Dune. 

She missed the part, where he tripped and fell, but had to make a leap to the side in her run, when he somersaulted past her quite quickly and hit the ground further away. Rather than dashing to him and finding out, how he was doing, the first idea that came to her mind, was the bare fact that Dune had beaten her in the race. He had found a more effective way of, how to go down!

Are you totally out of your mind??? The sharp voice of reason cut short her musings and she padded over to her friend, asking in a worried voice: "You okay?"

Wraen, the sweet friend that she was, came to his aid. He had no way of knowing that she'd at first been flustered about not winning the race. Dune groaned, pushing himself to his feet, testing his weight on each of his four limbs, and shaking the snow that had accumulated on his fur. He blinked once, then nodded. "Yes," he replied, flashing her a sheepish smile, "Okay."

Now that that was settled, he looked around for the skull, but he didn't see it. "Where your toy?" he asked, furrowing his brow and trying to find out where it had gone. Hopefully, they had not lost it. He would have felt awfully bad if that was the case. Dune did not want to be the cause of such a loss.

Dune was well - good God that it was like that! Otherwise, if one of the able-bodied newcomers had got badly injured and Wraen would have to explain all the embarrassing "why"s and "how"s - that would have been awful. 

"Toy?" frankly speaking, she had all forgotten about it, because Dune's fall had been a more outstanding spectacle. Even a little funny, now that it was clear that other than a bit of wounded ego (she liked to think), he had come out unharmed from the whole ordeal. 

"You did not fall on it?" she asked, when she did not see the dark, round object in the vicinity.

She seemed to be confused, but only momentarily, about his question. Wraen asked if he had fallen on it, which was not something he had considered as a possibility. The random roll of dice determined that was not the case when he looked in the indentation in the snow where he had just been laying. Nothing was there except for the snow (and probably some of his smell and shed fur). Satisfied that it was not there, he turned back to Wraen and shook his head.

"Down?" he asked, taking a careful step toward the base of the slope.

It must be boring for the gods to live in the sky only and watch people and their little doings from afar. Therefore they love to gamble and it does not matter, whether it's a big thing or a small one - they will throw the dice regardless. Of course, it is more exciting, when you deal with life-changing stuff - such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis and the likes - but, when there is nothing else to choose from, then even a simple question of, whether the two wolves would find the toy or not, has to be answered.

And they would - in time and not without effort. Wraen continued her way downwards, looking for the missing toy and following the many scent trails it had left from it's previous falls, but was not lucky. Maybe Dune would be the one to take them a step closer to their fate.

Down, down, down they went, but Dune saw no sign of the head. There were several trails, presumably from Wraen rolling the skull down before he had even arrived. He strayed from her, thinking he might have found the toy, but it turned out to be nothing but a dead end. Snorting at the snow, he returned to where Wraen was searching, wondering if she had found anything. Surely it could not have gone that far from them, could it?

Suddenly Wraen caught the faded scent of the skull - half a second ago she had walked over the exact spot and now hastily returned to have a good sniff in the area. The confusing thing was that, though it was very near, it also felt very out of reach. She began to dig the the packed snow, until it gave way and revealed a rather deep crevice in the rocks underneath. 

Before she had any time to tell Dune about her discovery, the apparently fragile surface she had been standing on earlier, gave way and she fell in the hole and landed right next to the skull. The good thing was - she had found it. The bad thing was - she was in a deep hole underground now. "DUNE!" she yelled, hoping that the man was in the vicinity.

One second Wraen was in front of him, clear as day, Dune blinked, and she was gone. A "floomp!" sound billowed up from the ground along with a puff of snow, and Dune scurried in that direction. "DUNE!" he heard, and he panicked. He rushed over so quickly that he nearly skidded right into the massive hole where Wraen now was. He wasn't even sure where the hole had come from.

Dune stood on the edge, utterly helpless. "What do?!" he asked in a frenzy, his panic-stricken voice filtering down to Wraen. He did not know how she would ever get out of there. Was she going to starve to death? He did not think she could jump that high, but maybe he was wrong. If he got down there with her, maybe he could push her up, but then he would be stuck down there.

Initially the situation looked quite hopeless and, had Wraen been alone, she would have definitely panicked. Dune's arrival, however, changed things and let her sigh in relief at least, because - though she was still neck-deep in trouble, she was not alone at least. And if all else failed, then he would be able to get reinforcements. Or in the worst case scenario say a three-word long eulogy for the doomed soul.

"Stay there, I will think of something," she reassured him and began to look around. The first good thing was that she could not fall any deeper - the floor area of the hole was small, but felt very solid and stable. The second - now not-so-good thing - was the fact that there were no side-tunnels that would lead her back. This meant only one way - upwards. She examined the wall of the hole and realized it consisted of packed ice and rocks - the surface was very uneven, if she were to climb, it was possible that she would get out. 

"Coming up!" she announced and began to work her way towards the mouth of the hole, where Dune's head was visible.

Wraen seemed surprisingly calm and collected despite her dilemma. Dune knew that if he had been in her situation, he would have been panicking even more than he was now. She seemed to form a plan in her mind, and with an announcement that she was coming up, Dune stepped back to watch her—with some amazement—climb up the wall. He stood dumbstruck as she did so, unsure how she was accomplishing such a thing.

Sadly, it looked like her toy would be lost to the rift. As long as Wraen made it out alive and well, Dune would consider it a success.

It was difficult to climb for someone, who was not used to moving up nearly vertical surfaces. The snow, ice and stones that were covered with slippery mix of algae and moss did not aid her either. It took Wraen several attempts, slipping and tumbling, before her hind feet found a solid surface to stand on and her head and forepaws appeared above the ground.

"Hi!" she told Dune and smiled at him briefly, then focused, became tense for a moment and jumped half-way out, then using her forepaws to pull the rest of herself (and she noted, how heavy her rear end was as she did this) out. "Phew..." she said, when she had got to her feet, shook her coat and returned to the hole to peek down. "I guess that head found it's grave. May it rest in peace. Amen!" she dipped her head respectfully and retreated from the place. She did not wish to fall down there again.

"Fancy to take a rest? I am tired," she told her companion and yawned. All this hunting, running, racing and adventuring had exhausted her. With this settled, she returned to her cozy den and took a long and well-deserved nap.