Blacktail Deer Plateau i don't care at all

Kick-starting my Pura muse. Pura is obviously a little older now.

The after-effects of Junior's disappearance and burial were still rocking Blacktail Deer Plateau. Like his sister, Pura had withdrawn, but unlike Saēna - who was legitimately going through the various stages of grief - the grey pup's absence came about as a result of a bid to avoid the hurricane of wildly confusing feelings that dressed every face he looked at. Peregrine and Lasher shared looks that he had no hope in hell of deciphering, and he got the feeling that Blue Willow's actions did not match up with what her brain was doing behind the scenes. Everything was confusing, and Pura was not a fan.

He spent the majority of his time by the small, clear spring that he and Saēna had discovered on one of those rare occasions when Junior was not running the show. Today, his front legs were completely submerged in the water, and Pura was half-snoozing in the light let through by the canopy of leaves. July was hot, and he reserved the majority of his running around for the evening - mostly patrolling or hunting, both of which he was starting to get rather good at (for someone his age, at least). He could not remember the last time he had spoken.

I'll play! :D

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Finley tended to spend a pretty good deal of time away from her home. There was a tiny part of her that felt like she should feel guilty about that. After all, she hadn't been a member of the pack for all that long and she had risen decently high in the ranks regardless. It probably wasn't very pack-like of her to keep running off day after day. But at the same time... she really, really liked running off.

As the silver fox wandered the plateau, it was this that she pondered. She very much wanted to do something new today for she had to admit (as guilty as it made her feel), pack life was a little boring. It was the same thing day after day, wake up, visit at the mutual meeting grounds, talk about this deer herd and that fox den, oh there's caches here and here and here and look out for bears everyone! Then they'd all wander off their separate ways until it was time to come home and fall asleep again. Finley wanted more in her life. She wanted... I dunno. Something.

It was about then that she stumbled upon Pura. The drama of the alpha's daughter disappearing and some other girl dying was all well and good, but that had happened before she had arrived. She felt empathy for their grief and sympathy for their loss, but she also felt more like a curious fan that hadn't actually been invited to the movie premiere. She was an outsider to all of it--a cheerleader standing on the sidelines while the team won the game. So when she stumbled upon one of the Plateau's pups, the wily Blackthorn saw not a wolf, but a small grey bundle of adorable opportunity.

"Hey there," Fin called as she approached the little man, "You're mighty short, did you know?" For as adorable as she thought puppies were, she had absolutely no idea what to do or how to interact with them.

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Woo!

One note - Pura is nearly 4 months old and apart from being a bit lanky still, is actually adult-sized. http://www.wolf.org/learn/basic-wolf-inf...velopment/

"Hey there."

The rest was lost. Pura woke with a grumble and turned his expression-less, metallic eyes in the direction of the sound, blinking sleepily. Apart from occasional appearances by Saēna (far less during this trying time, which she had not coped well with), nobody had disturbed him at this fortress of Fairy Kingdom before. The intrusion made him feel a twinge of.. nervousness? Anger? He was too sleepy to tell, but turned one sleep, grey ear back and cocked the opposite brow. The girl in front of him was small, but her awkwardness suggested that she had already transcended into the adult world.

"I d-don't.. know you well," Pura stated, nostrils flaring to catch Finley's scent. It was his way of prompting older wolves for more information.

CRAP sorry I'm often not bright

As the boy turned his attention to her, she stopped in her tracks and watched. He actually was rather a lot larger than she had thought he was when she'd glanced at him a moment ago. His sleepiness was rather endearing, even though the look on his face left her ever so slightly unsettled.

"That's alright," Finley replied as she was told that he didn't know her very well, "I don't know you either. But we can fix that." The silver woman settled down onto her haunches and wrapped her tail around her back paws. "My name is Finley," she said, "I assume your parents gave you a name as well?"

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Dude it's totally OK - I've added it to my signature now to help people out. I know Junior has the same problem! :D It does say puppy, after all.

Finley sat down, curled her tail about her legs, and asked for his name. "Pura," the boy responded stiffly, shuffling slowly out of the water. It looked like he was wearing dark, thigh-high stockings.

He stared hard at her for a good long while, unashamed of his lack of social graces. Apart from a pair of soft, brown eyes, she was colourless - like Pura, but with much more contrast. Kisu's boy had a face-full of freckles that also covered the back of his neck, but other than that he was a uniform blue-grey.

"Wh-what do you do?" he ventured. Every Plateau wolf had a job - or ought to have a job. Pura patrolled, Peregrine hunted, Junior died.

Fin kept still as the boy climbed out of the water back to the shore, admiring his exotic coloring. The little freckles on his face were adorable and the steely blue of his coat a shade she had not seen before. Paired with the lightness of his young eyes, she was quite impressed with how well he matched. Her own eyes didn't match her at all. Gray and brown? Ew. Just terrible. Way to go, parents.

She failed to notice his overly-long stare, being too wrapped up in self-deprication to pay attention even when he had told her his name. Besides, she was used to be stared at. She was PHAT (pretty-hot-and-tempting, do you remember when that was a thing??)--everyone let their gaze linger for longer than it typically should. When he spoke again, her ears perked and her attention was actually grabbed. This was a question towards her, after all, and Finley didn't often miss an opportunity to talk about herself.

"Um... I dunno, walk around a lot," she replied. No one had really told her much about any trades, for if they had she probably would've been all over it just to get the extra fancy title. Rank might not matter to her, but having a particular job that made her stand out even more certainly did.

"I don't know if you call that a job or not, but I do like to explore. What about you? What's your job? Official pack duck? Get it, cause you were in the water?" She chuckled softly. God she was funny.

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Pura's faced scrunched up when it turned out that Finley was a talker. The flurry of statements and questions hit him like tiny, irritating pebbles. "Walking i-is patrolling," he told her slowly when the chat died down. What use was mere walking? Did she not stop to sniff the air, or start the walk with a suitably full bladder to mark their territory? What a waste! But if exploring was her true passion, she was made for the Outrider trade. Pura knew all about the jobs. In his eagerness to share these facts, however, he tied his tongue into a fat knot: "I-i-i-.. expl-... you can be a-an outr-rrrrr... outrider," he stuttered, and gave his head a hard shake. Frustration was building in him like a rainstorm pressuring a dam.

Fin, being the oblivious creature that she was, failed to notice as Pura's agitation with her began to spike. Too distracted was she by the trails of thought his comments lead her down to actually pay attention to the kid's feelings. Walking was patrolling? Hm. Well, Fin supposed so, but she wasn't exactly keeping an eye out for trouble. Well, she was. But not because she wanted to drive it away. More like she wanted to partake.

And what was this outrider thing? "What's this outrider thing?" she asked. Her gaze moved from empty space in the distance to the boy's face, her head canted to the side as though her curiosity weighed half of her head down. That sounded like a pretty neat title. She did enjoy neat titles, after all.

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Uuugh, sorry!

He expected her to comment on his stutter, but Finley said nothing about it at all. Surprised - and relieved - Pura took a moment to compose himself before he started to explain. "Y-you explore, and tell Peregrine," he informed her, curling his tongue around the syllables "Y-you tell him facts and h-he makes.. makes decisions. It's-s.. important."

Fin listened quietly as the young wolf explained to her how to be an outrider. His explanation was disjointed and strange, and it really didn't explain a whole lot at all. But Fin was not the kind of wolf to realize things like that. Especially not when she wanted to believe that something that sounded so fancy could really be so simple.

I feel like I could totally do that, she said finally. I mean, I explore all the time. And he's always asking how my day went. All I'd need to do is just give him an actual answer instead of just saying 'fine'. She wasn't quite sure what sort of important decisions he'd make after she told him things like "It turns out there are no ghosts in Neverwinter Forest, bummer right?", but apparently it was important, so who was she to question?

Conclude? :)

She understood. Good. A 'Yes, I understand' would have sufficed, really, but Finley seemed like the wordy time. Pura stared at her whilst she rambled on, impatience growing like a vine in his chest. When it reached the back of his tongue, he opened his mouth and in a firm, important-sounding voice told her to "Go find him now." If she wanted to become an outrider, she would have to make it known to the Alpha - that was the rule!

Sure thing! :D

Fin was lost in her thoughts, almost unaware that they were spilling out of her mouth and causing a rise in Pura's ire. She had turned her attention skyward as she began to wonder if a visit to Chuckles the Wolverine might be something Peregrine would consider to be outrider-y. The grumpy old critter wasn't very talkative, but she gleaned little tidbits about the area based on his mood and the scents around his den of his recent meals. She never really thought much of it before, but now that she actually put her mind to it, she supposed she could start paying more attention to that sort of crap. If it would make Peregrine happy.

Speaking of Peregrine. Pura's sudden command made her turn her head to give her attention back to him. She didn't think much of his authoritative tone, but wasn't in the mood to do any reprimanding for his disrespect. She was too consumed with her thoughts and her plans, and she really wasn't a big fan of displays of dominance and didn't wish to partake in anything that would dampen her current mood.

So, instead, she just gave the lad a cheery grin. I think instead that I'm going to do what I want to do right now, Fin responded slowly, But I appreciate the suggestion, kiddo. Resisting the urge to give him a pat on the head or a kiss on the nose, she simply gave him a wink and turned away to start of pointedly toward the towpath that would take her out of the territory. It was a passive aggressive move, but she was confident that her defiance of his little "order" wouldn't go unnoticed. The thought brought a cheeky grin to her face. She was so clever. She was going to be the most cleverest outrider the Teekon Wilds had ever seen.