Golden Glade and it's always been the same, the same old story

AW <3

it was the third time-out that morning that broke the straw on the camel's back, and caused sionnach's parents to rudely eject her from the den because of all the unnecessary noise and drama she was causing. dragging the stick she had been terrorizing her siblings with behind her, sionnach victoriously marched out into the open with her little chest puffed out ahead of her.

once in the idyllic sunlight, she cast her shrewd gaze about her -- no doubt looking for her next victim. it had been a while since she had seen @Breccan, and unaware he had ABANDONED HER TO THE WOLVES, sionnach started nosing through the tall grass. whenever she wanted her older siblings (or when she was playing hide and seek and was sick of not being discovered), she'd often start chirping brightly to herself in tiny half-barks. the noise, one of the few friendly things to come out of sionnach, was invitation for her brother to come and find her and play, STAT.

Liffey too was thinking of Breccan at that moment, wondering where he was and what he was doing. Unlike her daughter, she knew that he was gone from the territory, however she did not yet realize that her other children were unaware of that fact. Her heart ached over the way they had left things. She fretted over the things she had said and the way they had likely made him feel. Her only regret over saying them, though, was that they had not worked to dissuade him from his intentions, just as Fin had failed to dissuade her once upon a time. All she could do was hope that things worked out as well for her son as they had for her.

Life would not pause to allow her to wallow in her misery, though. There were other children to attend to, as well as a pack to lead. With Raven and Quixote busy now with their newest litter, Liffey knew it was up to her and Rannoch to keep things running. So, run them she did, as best as she could anyway. She was just headed towards a cache to stow a squirrel she had just caught when she heard a familiar voice not far off. Curious as to what her daughter was up to, making that odd half-bird half-wolf sound, she turned and headed off to find the girl instead.

"Sionnach?" Liffey called, her voice muffled from the squirrel still in her teeth. She couldn't spot the girl through the grass, but knew she was somewhere nearby. She didn't realize she was likely setting herself up as a target, though she obviously ought to have foreseen something along those lines after having raised the girl. But nope, she padded forward, naively unaware.

ah ha! he was here! sionnach's ears perked; she could hear someone rustling through the grass. from her vantage she could see exactly nothing, because a big fat green fern obscured both her entire body, and her entire vision. she wriggled her bum, settling deeper into the dirt like a small house cat preparing to pounce. heck, even her pupils got mega-wide as she honed in on breccan.

"GOTCHU!!!" sionnach roared, bursting from the cover like a keg of dynamite -- only to slam on the brakes inexpertly and crash into liffey's leg. that's not who she thought it was. bashfully stepping backwards sionnach looked up at liffey awkwardly and then looked away. um. i totally meant to do that. but then she noticed the squirrel and perked right back up. "SKWIRL!" sionnach informed her mom, wriggling between liffey's legs and entirely forgetting her game with 'breccan'.

Liffey could hear the pup shuffling around in the grass, but seeing as she'd never been a good tracker, she didn't pinpoint exactly where Sionnach was until she was suddenly shouting in her face. The alpha jumped a good foot and yelped in surprise, nearly tripping over her daughter who had slammed into her legs. Somehow, she managed to keep hold of the squirrel through all of his, though she had quite forgotten that was the case when she blinked down at her daughter, bewildered and heart still hammering.

The alpha dropped her catch to the ground beside Sionnach and settled onto her haunches, trying to still her nerves. "You know, I think I need to teach you how to greet people," she commented, torn between amusement and anger over her daughter's behavior, "There's a much nicer way to say 'hello'. It involves just saying 'hello', and not scaring people half to death."

sionnach didn't feel sorry at all for the reaction she caused. liffey nearly jumped out of her skin, and in that moment sionnach was more concerned for the squirrel (DON'T DROP IT, MOM!!) as it flounced through the air, mercifully still in her jaws when she decided to come back from her startled orbit.

super dramatic, but like, whatever. sionnach eyed liffey with an indolent expression of disdain -- maybe it was her fault, not sionnach's, that she was so damn jumpy. all she could think in that moment was that breccan would never scold her like that. she exhaled through her nose in a loud gesture of exasperation, totally unenthused with this prospect of a lesson in manners. that really wasn't her forte, so, she wasn't interested. "but squirrel." sionnach reminded her ditsy-headed mother, hoping to shift the conversation from the choppy waters of "teach-sionnach-manners" to more favorable territory, like "share with your daughter". that's manners too, right??

Her daughter was too preoccupied with the squirrel to pay attention to the scolding. Liffey has a feeling she wouldn’t have paid attention to it even without the squirrel, though, which frustrated her to no end. She loved her daughter dearly, but she did not appreciate disobedience. And when it came to Sionnach, disobedience just seemed to be her MO.

”Promise not to scare anyone like that again and you can have it,” Liffey requested sternly, ”It’s mean to scare people, and I don’t want to hear about my daughter being mean to her packmates.” She knew that even if the pup complied, it would be a lie. Worth a shot though, to at least give her some satisfaction in knowing she had tried.

sionnach was very invested in getting her way; so invested even, that the idea of lying to her wonderful dam did not come across one whit as immoral, untenable, or unthinkable.

pulling herself up with a firm scoot of her booty, sionnach adopted her most innocent expression. fluttering those doe-like chestnut eyes to the max, sionnach looked as if butter would not melt in her mouth. "okay -- promise." hopefully her mother would be just as gullible as the rest of the world, and sionnach would score a free squirrel and forget all about the lesson behind liffey's scolding.

Liffey saw straight through her daughter's act. Unfortunately, it didn't really matter. She loved her little girl, no matter how devious, ill-behaved or deceitful she was. There was something in Sionnach that actually reminded her of her mother, which was both endearing and unfortunate seeing as Liffey had never gotten on with her own mother particularly well. But she still appreciated Finley for all that she was, even if it had never been what she needed.

"Liar," Liffey accused, smiling as she nudged the squirrel onto Sionnach's paws. She knew she was making it okay for the girl to misbehave like she just had, but what was she to do? Liffey was hopeless when it came to her kids. And Sionnach had clearly inherited something from her blood that Liffey had never been lucky enough to have herself--a fire she had no wish to distinguish, no matter how poorly mannered it was.

you wouldn't think this little dove was a liar, by the sweet way she smiled when she got her way -- but that was the charm of sociopaths and mavericks alike, wasn't it? sionnach lunged for the pie (read:squirrel), that charming smile gone in an instant as she ravenously dug in.

having eaten her fill in a matter of seconds (she hadn't really been hungry anyway - she just wanted something that wasn't hers, and wanted to see if she could get it -- mission accomplished), sionnach licked her lips in satisfaction, hiked up her tail in triumph, and composed a brief victory gallop around her mother before diving into the bushes with a barbaric, undulating call that announced the little savage was once more at large.