Overture Downs We operate under

The world had gone gloomy this past day or so.  Arbiter didn't mind -- too much, at least.  She wasn't afraid of a little rain, but she still had duties to do.  In a break in the storm in the dusk hours, she wandered from the territory.  They still needed new members so she still would do her best to try to recruit. It would be a few months before the pups were big enough to hunt as adults (even as oversized as they likely were to be in comparison to some of their peers) so a few more able bodied souls would certainly take the pressure off.

The Downs also allowed for her to scope out a reasonable amount of land at a time.  Arbiter moved up to the crest of a the largest hill in the area, a whitish blot against a dim grey sky, and scanned the horizon around her for signs of something or someone to investigate.  If she didn't return with a new member, at least she could go back with something to feed her family.

Sarah was not too keen on the idea of having more members than they did now, but if Terance and Treason deemed it important she at least made an effort to go along. She did not, however, actively seek out lone wolves to ensare though, when she left the hollow behind, it was for more practical reasons such as hunting and scouting and tracking some trails left by nightly visitors. And half by chance she came upon the lady of the forest herself.

She approached Terance's mate, made her presence known with a quiet bark and briefly took the scenery along with her before talking. "Anything good?" she asked.

But no strangers were found this dim day.  The grey figure that approached turned out to be Sarah -- not that she particularly minded.  Arbiter appreciated her loyalty and reliability.  She wagged her tail and spoke, Not that I've seen.  Perhaps the weather makes the world quiet.  Bit too far of a distance to spot small prey on top of it.  She could spot a few deer, but if they killed it, then they'd have to haul it all the way home... And that wasn't fun.  Quiet is fine.  Too quiet is not.  It just seemed weird, or perhaps somehow foreboding.  The world would not be peaceful -- something would happen.

She looked back out across the expanse, Run across anything on your end?  If there was nothing on hand, perhaps they'd just have to head down and investigate what they could only vaguely see from here.  Hares to hunt or or foxes to harass or something.  Maybe pretend to be sheepdogs and herd some deer towards the forest before taking one out...  Something.

"Not that I am aware of," Sarah shrugged. There really had not been anything of interest along the way. Some old droppings, footprints of different kinds and age criscrossing her path, but not a thing that she would consider worth paying more than fleeting moment of attention. 

"There is a fox forest on the left," she beckoned to the nearby line of the trees, but she was in no mood to eat a sister-canine-species today. Those cheeky buggers were left for freezing cold and barren winter months. "I would much rather check out the grove there," she pointed to the forest ahead of them. It was within a comfortable walking distance. And, who knew, maybe the lunch was waiting for them already, even if it did not know yet of it's fate.

Foxes didn't sound particularly appetizing to her either.  They were quick and occasionally entertaining diversions to harass but predators didn't taste as good as prey.  Practice for killing, maybe.  She looked around, scanning the horizon one more time before nodding in agreement.

Mm.  Would be good to investigate.  Even if it's empty today, perhaps it would be good as a sort of final test for my children later -- to catch prey on unfamiliar ground, without much planning... It would be a true sign of their success.  Or a sign that they still needed training if it failed.  Not every hunt was promised to end well, it was just a fact of life, and unless they screwed up in some amateurish way, she could only shrug.  There would always be a second chance. And until then there was still much for them to learn whether they realized it or not. Arbiter started in that direction.

"Have they been lucky catching prey on familiar grounds?" Sarah asked, when they began to make their way towards the grove. Despite her promise to help out in training the kids, she had not truly kept track on their progress. There was always something for her to do and, since she preferred solitude to company, it was no wonder that she had hardly any idea, what went on inside the pack. 

"Hunger is a great teacher. Cruel one, but effective," she remarked in a far-off voice, lost in thoughts for a moment.

A mixed bag.  They're not easiest to keep on task when all together, still.  I think they'll have to be split up to hone their skills further... And get a better judge on where they stand, but they have enough roughly figured out where they should be doing well.  As Sarah probably had realized from her previous encounters, there were two that were eager to compete and one that didn't want to be left behind, and hunting was the one time when their competitive natures would probably do more harm than good.  Too much excitement, too much wanting to win.

Arbiter agreed as they continued along, Mmhm.  Combine it with wounding their egos and perhaps they'll take things a bit more seriously.  Which still seemed to be the issue. They got lucky too often.  At least now they're getting big enough they can also start proper training to fight as well.  Wouldn't be fair if I could just, well, squish them.  The thought seemed vaguely amusing to her, but she did kind of prefer even ground -- at least with them, she would take any advantage she could find versus a stranger.

The more Sarah got to know Treason, the more she liked her sister-in-law's approach to rearing children. There was no doubt that she loved them, but there was a healthy dose of pragmatism about it as well. If she ever had children of her own, which was not very likely, she would take Treason as an example.

"That's an approach as well," Sarah remarked, recalling the outing with Warlock and, how she had managed to scare the hell out of the boy for educational purposes. There had been a moment of doubt later that evening, whether that had been entirely helpful, but the kid seemed to have been doing well ever since. 

With no questions to aid conversation, she stayed silent for a while, lost in her own thoughts, then decided to ask something that had puzzled her for a while. "That Frostfur guy - why was Terance so upset, when he left with his family?" she asked Arbiter. "People come and go all the time."

Well that textwalled.

At this point enough time had passed, she couldn't even remember who she discussed this with in the past.  Probably not Sarah, from the sound of it.  I believe they saw each other like brothers.  They were together in Moonspear before I met them, and Terance had always been loyal to Rannoch and seemed to be willing to give up a lot for him.  When things went sour for Rannoch at Moonspear, Terance going with him burned his relationship with that pack for a while too.  When Ibis' and Okeanos' mother decided to leave and take them with her, he stayed loyal to the pack and Rannoch -- perhaps not a bad choice given some of what she did later, but that's beside the point.  Arbiter hadn't really interacted with her much, but she and Seabreeze were very, very different wolves with different priorities.  I forget the exact timing of your arrival, but when Rannoch got hurt, Terance was willing to let Rannoch be alpha again after he was healed.  To suddenly say, 'Well, we're leaving and taking a bunch of the pack,' -- at what point does bringing that many wolves mean actually moving the pack and shirking a few individuals who you leave behind, including one of the most loyal wolves? She shrugged.  I think Rannoch chose poorly.  He certainly didn't seem to care about anything or anyone he left behind, so what did he actually think of us all before he left?  It seemed to say Rannoch was selfish, thoughtless, and didn't actually respect one of the key tenets of Arbiter's beliefs: loyalty was to be rewarded.

She was also leaving out the whole fact she was -- you know what, forget it, she'd say it, I had tried to suggest to Terance to be less selfless when it came to Rannoch. That had been because he'd been so bent out of shape when Rannoch got hurt and we needed an able leader.  If I had known what was going to happen, I would have encouraged it far more.  It probably would have hurt less.  Instead, a slap to the face.

Sarah had hit a jackpot with this question. Arbiter went on to a lengthy description and she could tell that this was a touchy subject, because Terance's mate did not generally use so many words to convey a message. In that respect she was more like Sarah. Did not waste too many words, when you could say little, but with a more significant effect.

It felt as if in another life she and her brother had been best mates and most loyal friends. Sarah had never been jealous about Terance giving his attentions to other people, knowing now that Rannoch had got all of, what had initially belonged to her. It hurt even more to realize that there was nothing but a ghost left of their relationship, even though she was here. And that Terance could go on hating a man, who was absent, because he still cared.

"You can't change, who he is," she remarked - there are some mistakes that one should make on their own and learn from the directly. "What happened to him and his former mate?" she wanted to know, why had that important relationship fallen apart, because she knew that Terance would never do anything that would intentionally hurt anyone.

She agreed with Sarah, but being unable to change someone didn't mean that one couldn't try.

Arbiter shrugged.  She didn't have all the answers -- at a certain point it was guesses and opinion.  Terance, of course, would be the better one to ask about Seabreeze, though she wasn't sure how much he'd want to talk about her, though perhaps now things had changed with Arbiter at his side instead.  They hadn't been together long.  I think she got impatient.  We had too many neighbors, prey decreased.  She and another woman who'd had pups -- father not in the pack -- decided to leave with their children as soon as they were able without much discussion to anyone.  If they'd stayed even a little longer, they would have been able to move with us to the hollow.  Instead they used our resources to have their children, and ran off into the sunset.   If it wasn't obvious, Arbiter was also not exactly fond of unpaid debts.  Especially one that would have been easy to repay if they'd just stuck around.

She wrapped up the history lesson with a bit of a scoff,  From the sound of it, those two women are mates now.  Where would Terance be if he'd gone with them?  They were keen to kick the pack that supported them to the side and Seabreeze was fine with leaving Terance behind, too -- they'd probably boot him out of the relationship too.  It was pretty bad when Arbiter thought someone was excessively selfish, but perhaps that point when her belief in loyalty overwrote it.  There were limits to blinding loyalty, sure, and even she had been contemplating leaving at that time, but that was more to perceived disrespect than hard times -- especially since Olive and Seabreeze got such preferential treatment merely for being able to pop out some pups, and then everything that happened...

Only after Sarah had asked the question, did she consider that Treason might not like to talk about her mate's ex-girlfriend. But here the piebald she-wolf impressed her again by being very pragmatic in retelling the history and, if there was any hint of emotion in it, then the fact that the two wolves had left with children in tow after being well cared for. She could see, where the resentment came from. And it was yet another proof that her old-fashioned view of the pack structure was working for the best. She would not tolerate bastards being born and raised upon the expense of everyone else.

To the fact that two women could be mates (not to ask about the whole breeding logistics) Sarah had nothing to say. She thought it unnatural and wrong, but if people felt good about living that way - she let them be. "It's good that he is, where he is now," she remarked.

Yeah Arbiter wasn't sure what the pair of women would get out of it either.  It seemed like a higher chance of something getting screwed up and messing things up for everyone.  Whatever, they were someone else's problem now. I agree.  Ups and downs, but I think in the end we'll find it's for the best.  It wasn't like at this point there was much to do about it.  Things were the way they were and they just had to make the best of it.  What would another world have looked like if the same choices hadn't been made?  Arbiter wasn't the creative sort that would think too long about it.

Since she deemed that over, she looked to Sarah and slightly shifted the subject as they went along, Do you have any goals you're looking to accomplish?  Open ended on purpose.  It could be literal and be about rank or skill, or maybe her own family or whatever.  Sometimes it was best to ask a very open question and see how it was answered as it would tell far more about the person than the otherwise might say.  As it were, Sarah was pretty much the only other wolf in the pack that at this point would have half a chance at being granted rights to their own pups (at least in Arbiter's judgement), but considering there was a significant lack of bachelors, it didn't seem likely there would be any right now.  Not that Arbiter minded, honestly.

Sarah realized her tactical mistake too late. She should have ended her part of the conversation in question, thus avoiding inquiries about herself. Now she had a task to either find the most diplomatic and vague answer or lie smoothly. Because Arbiter would not particularly like the truth. That there were no goals that she wished to accomplish, no long-term plans, because she did not know, if she was going to live for an extended period of time. Indifference to everything was her new normal and spread around her like a gray ocean. There were at times little sparks of liveliness or moments, when she was on the verge of demise, but realized that she still wished to cling to her life. A mess inside your mind and soul that you could not make any sense of was not something you shared with a leader or anyone really.

"Are there any gaps that need to be filled?" she asked after giving the matter enough to marinate and having nothing better to say.

Well that wasn't the response she was expecting.  Was there something wrong with whatever her goals might be?  Not being the most positive wolf in the world, it immediately had her wondering if perhaps her trust was misplaced.  Arbiter had always been honest (at least as far as she could recall) that she had expected to be recognized and given responsibility.  Why would she not say what she wanted?  Arbiter kept her expression neutral, but there was still a question in it before she spoke again. 

Only ones that are better not forced on someone who doesn't want it.  Every time we get a healer, something happens and then they're gone. What's her name died.  Others just disappeared.  Or I suppose ones that one person cannot fill unless you can manage to make copies of yourself.  I'm still not entirely happy with our numbers.  A couple of instances of recovery had been particularly short-lived.  Why?  No idea.

Healer's in Sarah's opinion were not very useful. She had yet to meet one, who could bring people back from the dead or heal so well that they did not need to fight for survival on their own. In her world-view, you either fought it through or it was not meant to be. She thought it oddly ironic though that all healers in Terance's pack had met similar fates (she assumed that they had died, which was not far from truth), but which cemented her belief that she was absolutely right. If a healer could not save themselves from early demise, what good were they?

"What is wrong with numbers?" Sarah asked. She saw nothing bad in a small, tight-knit (though from her perspective it did not feel entirely that way) family-pack. It was better to have few very good friends that you could trust completely than a whole bunch that you did not know very well or at all. "My family pack was not much bigger than yours, smaller even and we got on by well," she shared quietly, not used to mention her birth-family often.

Perhaps had things been slightly different, she would have been fine with it too, but right now what Arbiter wanted was certainty in a world that was far less so.  Numbers of trained adults versus prey.  If the scarcity gets worse, then we need to make sure our hunts succeed, not just have them be practice. Would you trust children to jump into a moose hunt if most of what they've caught has been foxes or rabbits?  Or trust them to not have their heads kicked in.  Either way, it was far more likely something would go wrong and they'd all go hungry if the deer numbers ran low.  Winter was always harder, and right now in the fall, it wasn't exactly great a great omen.  She prioritized survival.  At least at the time of this thread, stuff was still around.... Just not as much as before.  She needed to make sure that her children could be a success, but the world itself had certainly thrown a wrench at them all.

"Those trained adults need feeding too. Moreso than children," Sarah remarked. She had done some big hunts in her life, but her survival had heavily relied on the small game. Mice, rats, lemings, frogs, snakes, rabbits, hares, occasional muskrats, minks and beavers. She had tasted porcupine once, but there were far more risks associated to hunting those quilled beasts than there was an actual good in them. When famine had been at it's worst, she had hunted other canines, though they tasted far less satisfying than rodents. 

"You cannot expect skilled adults not to disperse during extreme famine. If there is no moose to hunt, there is no use in numbers," she elaborated on her reasoning. "Small game is more reliable and less dangerous to acquire. You do not waste as much energy, you have no risk of getting injured and won't die," deer kicks were no small feats, and one well-aimed hoof against the right spot on the skull could send even an experienced hunter to meet it's forefathers in the heaven.

"Even big packs with all those skilled adults don't eat moose every day, week or even month. They might not see any at all," again a reference to her own family. There had been many young and inexperienced wolves among them and the small game got them by. "Besides - what do you have to offer in return?" she asked. Out of curiousity, because the conversation had hit a subject to which she could contribute from her own experience.

Mmm, you underestimate how much those growing monsters eat.  And yet most of the ones we've lost left well before then.  So unless you're insinuating they can tell the future, that isn't the case.  Sure, there were probably worse times ahead, but those who left in the early days were certainly weak willed if they were bailing right now.  It was better they were gone, if so.

She seemed to have a different ideal than Arbiter -- or at least desire to plan ahead.  She would not surrender to tough times, nor would she let random encounters escape, that just wasn't her. And if you just want to hunt rabbits, any lone can do that, but they won't last forever in this season if all of us hunt them.  If we bother to be in packs, then we need to take the chances when they appear so that more than one or two can eat per kill.  I don't ask for ten additional wolves, I ask for a couple so we can continue to hunt and protect our territory from those who might be far more desperate.  There was more at stake than just short term food.  Their pack was supposed to be strong.

What was with Sarah right now? Lecturing her or just wanting everything to go wrong, Arbiter wasn't sure which, or which was worse.  She had thought they had a sort of understanding.  Apparently not.  Arbiter assumed that it was obvious that any pack provided security and that sort of thing, so she spoke more precisely, I make sure that my wolves get what they want in exchange for their loyalty, unlike some. Rannoch. Hard to make good on that when you don't answer.

Arbiter's arguments were good, but they did not convince Sarah. Everyone had to take care of themselves first no matter, whether they were in a pack or not. She saw no harm on focussing on small game, especially in regards of growing children. Adults might wish to pamper and shelter them, but the sooner they learned that life was neither fair, nor easy, the better. Lesson of hunger was one of the most fundamental ones to set one's priorities straight and see the harsh face of the survival. 

But they would not agree on this matter, because their respective experiences were very different. Each were right in their own way, but each refused to meet the other half-way. So Sarah focussed on the answer to her initial question. What had Terance and Arbiter to offer? "Hard to meet all those wants, don't you think?" she remarked quietly, because it was too much of a general description and far less of an actual contract between two people that discussed real and achievable things.

"Loyalty is too much of an inconsistent thing to barter on. In the end the only person one is loyal to, is themselves," she told her. "Even those, who believe themselves to be fiercely loyal to another person can make grave mistakes that shake that trust," she thought about her own flight one year ago. "And you have to be far more convincing to make those people want to stay. Loyalty is not born in one day, it appears over time. Or it doesn't," she mused.

You overestimate what people have asked for.  People have simple desires when the days get darker and prey gets scarce.  She wouldn't tolerate outlandish desires, let's be real -- Arbiter's whole attitude didn't exactly condone Disneyesque song and dance daydream sequences or anything.  But at this point, she was done offering Sarah a blank check -- if she was going to be that obtuse, then fine, she obviously didn't want anything badly enough for things to change.  If she was going to complain later on about not being rewarded or showered with honors or whatever, it was her own fault, as it wasn't like Arbiter was dancing around the subject.

Aside from the silent fact that Sarah was managing to wear away at Arbiter's opinion of her, she was also tiring of this loop of a conversation.  Loyalty could shift, yes, but that had been what she was trying to fix, was it not?  Instead, it was the opposite reaction, somehow. Give it a few months and those that are particularly fickle will be reconsidering their choices.  They were probably near their destination now anyway, and soon there would be things to investigate.  It didn't seem like they were going to come to one single answer to this discussion, as they must have had very different experiences in the world.

Good thing that Sarah was not overly sensitive or very inclined for people to like her. She felt that she had annoyed Treason and this gave her an odd sense of joy. What was there not to like? The girl was younger than her and underestimated her sister-in-law's experience in the field. But that was very characteristic for young people. So, she stopped to argue any further and walked besides Terance's mate in thoughtful silence.

Good luck with that. Sarah thought to herself. They had come near Lost Creek Hollow in the meanwhile, which meant that they no longer needed to keep each other's company. Both were done with each other now, weren't they? "I will go and check the borders," she told the leader and headed off.

Last one from me. Thanks!

She responded affirmatively, then turned away to go find her mate and children without further fuss.  They expected different things from packmates, they wanted different things from the future, and that was basically just how things would be.  She would build the upper ranks with those who believed similar -- not Sarah.  


In the future, Arbiter would perhaps be a bit less concerned than she otherwise would have by Sarah's disappearance -- this whole conversation was an omen of her true degree of loyalty.  Arbiter demanded better from her wolves.