Duskfire Glacier and anything before is nothing

technically also a founding thread. all welcome. hover for translation! random event: foxes raided a food cache :(

❝vittu.❞ for the first time in a long time tundrian falls from his tongue in a low curse; as if it were his first nature to speak it. it is this glacier, he thinks. the scent of foxes all over a dug up food cache is all the evidence he needs to know that they'd been raiding it. a low growl rumbles in his chest as he stares at the upheaval of dirt and snapped tree roots; lip curling at the stench of piss and fox hang in the dirt. no doubt, he thinks, it was revenge.

their claim here has gone unchallenged and wolves were a threat; both for resources and to them in general. wintersbane takes small comfort from the fact that there hadn't been much to steal: a few scrawny rabbits he'd caught and buried there but still, it irks him all the same. that meat was for his pack not for the petty thieves that would either have to learn to share the glacier or would meet their end by the sharp cut of his teeth; wintersbane had no qualms about using their meat and flesh to fill his caches.

She arrived, ever watchful of him (as much as she was allowed to be) when he was on their claim, not long after he made the discovery. The stench of fox hung heavy around him. Along with obvious destruction to a place where something had once been.

They have been robbed, was all she could think as she stared at the scene.

Do we run them off now? A pause. Hunt them? Her voice hushed and meek as it tended to be. Although her words were a rather brave statement when compared to her usual lull of comforting words.

wintersbane startles; focusing upon the damage to the just started cache when iana's voice drifts from behind him. still too easily spooked for his liking, he lets out a low hiss of pain as he puts sudden weight upon his injured leg ( for he favors his right leg even when standing still ). sorry, he apologizes to iana, hoping she does not take offense to his easily jumpy nature. i suspect it will be some time before i am not so easily startled.

hm, wintersbane considers. might be better to hunt them. i'd hate to waste food resources by chasing them off.

She tucked her head some, mindful of his jump and hiss. She wished there was some way to soothe his jumpiness sooner and easier. It pained her to some degree. Perhaps she could...travel. See if there were well-stocked medics nearby with things like lavender. If she could convince him to roll in it, carry the scent with him wherever he went. Thoughts for another time.

Of course. Soft, mild reassurance before they moved on to the other problem before them. The pesky vermin that sought to ruin the things they built.

How would you like to go about it? She did not look forward to anything that would strain his leg further.

i image ridding the glacier of them entirely would be an impossible effort. wintersbane muses, mostly to himself; thinking out loud. but if we could decrease the population it might be enough to keep others from considering crossing the borders. though he doubts that, too. they did not respect wolf laws, from what he's seen, and wintersbane does not expect it to stop them in full. even so, something has to be done. the glacier wolves could not allow them to continue to steal from their caches ...even if they were meager and wanting in the first place ( rome wasn't built in a day, he is quick to remind himself ).

my leg presently leaves me as a mediocre hunter. whatever stealth he could manage given his size was gone by the tell-tale limp from his wound. perhaps ...we could lure them with meat. hide in wait and ambush.

She would listen and nod to the things he said. Iana trusted he was far wiser with these things than she was. She had not grown into some master huntsman or a lumbering guardian — hence why she applied herself by tending to his wounds.

I...might have something stashed away. I can go get it and lay it about. If you think they would return here to their own scent and scene? Would they have any interest in a double hit if they had already ripped apart the land here? She did not think that had stopped any wolf before. Besides, an easy meal in winter ought be hard for the vermin to turn down.

she offers something she might have stashed away and wintersbane is quick to shake his head. save it for yourself. though he is grateful for the offer he does not wish her to go without, especially with the meager cache he'd built now gone. hunting those few scrappy rabbits had been trying enough for him, given his current condition. he would not wish to take from her just to catch a few thieves. i don't know. wintersbane admits in a soft sigh.

they may think it's enough to deter us and not return. he casts his glacial gaze from her to the glacier's forest that yawns around them. i'll have to do some more investigating, he decides. there might be a better place to set the lure.

Save it felt like such a silly suggestion. They had already lost something of his which meant surely whatever she had stashed would become available for anyone in need. She was not such a selfish beast to keep it from a hungry mouth.

Yet she does protest out of respect for his wisdom and leadership. Thin lipped and silent as she considered everything. Except it seemed his wisdom that she respected only went so far. Her ears met with the words and sigh of an I don’t know.

What was she to say?

Nothing it seemed. He still had something to offer. I can come with. She answered. Firm, but kind. Perhaps it was a sense of duty or a medic’s worry for him. Iana would not have him wander about and strain himself to a worse state. We might get lucky...find a den and destroy it to stir them.

wintersbane was a warrior king, not a hunter king and is not familiar enough with vulpes, aside from the ( perhaps ) misgiving that they were scavangers and thieves, to know their hunting patterns. to her offer, wintersbane accepts with a curt nod. it shouldn't be too hard to find a den, all they had to was follow the fox stench that hung 'round this uprooted cache like a noxious fog. 

and if they are anything like us, their dens will be closeby. he could not imagine they would go through the trouble of antagonizing the wolves if they did not live within the glacier but perhaps, he considers, as he limps in the direction of their scent trail as it wisps east of the ruined cache, he is giving them too much credit.

She drifted from lead to follow like a trusted shadow. Silently tailed the scent of vermin that snaked through their land. Her tail remained tucked up against her stomach, as it oft did these days, then she crouched some in a stalking motion.

Where he might be the muscle of this hunt, she sought to be their little burst of speed. A quick rush to send them towards his jaws. When they found them.

Perhaps she might tempt him into hushed conversation while they tracked.

Wintersbane? Spoke in a whisper with a glance up towards the winter warrior's face.

for a while they travel in silence; and wintersbane's ears rove atop his skull, picking up every noise from the breath of iana somewhere in-step with him to the whisper of the wind against snow dusted leaves in the trees. to keep the silence from making his skin crawl, associating it with the breathless seconds right before the collision of the flaming sky rock against the spear, he focuses on the sound of his heavy, uneven gait as the snow crunches beneath his paws.

loud and giving.

stealth had never been his forte but it was worse in the healing of this cumbersome wound.

the sound of his name upon a whisper draws a twitch of his ear and a glimpse of glacial gaze over scarred shoulder towards her; monetary. his gaze flickers back to his path of paw-prints to accompany the scent trail.  yes?

He answered, short and calm. She admired such a thing. Not a timid thing like she was. Although that was not why she had uttered his name in her lulled tones.

Why the glacier? She questioned with a soft look towards him. Iana thought she ought to learn more about this place. Along with its meaning to the man she had chosen to heal and ally with. Maybe he had simply picked it for no reason other than he had been here when he had stopped.

why the glacier?

a fair question; though one that wintersbane does not answer right away. instead, he considers it; weighing the circumstance with the ultimate decision. at the time, he hadn't really thought about it but there was something that appealed to him about the glacier.

at first, it was where i stopped. honestly, wintersbane has always felt, was the best policy. there is something about it that speaks to me, though. thinking about it now i realize what it is, a small pause is given to swipe his salmon colored tongue across his jowls as the scent of the foxes strengthens and the hunger for revenge takes hold of him.

i was born in these wilds, he offers for some context. but i have travelled outside of it a few times. one of those times, i led my mother's home pack, enok tundra for a while. he muses; dividing his attention between ( short ) story and path. it reminds me of it. enok tundra. it is like a bit of my mother lives beyond me in these wilds.

She listened keenly, even if she tried to stay focus on their true task at hand. A movement of revenge against the beasts that raided their stocks. However she found herself...perhaps smittenly distracted by his answer. His true reason was a family matter. His mother lived on through him here.

Oh.

It filled her with unexpected emotion. Maybe she would have sunk deeper into it had the stench of fox not been so prominent in her nose. Reminded her brain she needed to focus.

That is very sweet. She answered softly, honest. She did her best to not be consumed by the tenderness she felt.

So she gestured slightly towards where the scent seemed the thickest. Slowed her pace a bit some too as she looked towards Wintersbane to see what he did. Perhaps her best choice here was to simply mimic.

the gratification of revenge, wintersbane knows, may not be instantaneous; and in that he is fine with. just so that the foxes learn that their acts of petty aggression would be met with equal retribution. though he desires to fill the glacier's caches with their meat, he would ultimately settle for chasing from them the territory.

wintersbane makes a small, noncommittal hum in the back of his throat as she mentions that it's sweet. he supposes it is; but then again he'd always been a mama's boy — before unfortunate twists of events had torn him from her and then her from the world of the living in full.

his limping steps slow as they draw near a fox den; his nostrils flaring. he knows them to be nocturnal creatures but they appear to be absent of it he deduces as he sniffs 'round the den's mouth. he positions himself over the den and begins to scratch heaps of earth into it's entrance like a wolf-made cave-in.

She watched him with an intrigued gaze. She imagined he made easy work of moving the earth with his strength. Far better than if she had been the one to do it.

Yet...she figures she should do something.

Iana moved away from his work to a few places where she found it fit to mark. Along the bark of a tree, on a simple patch of snow, over some bushes. Wherever she could manage in a way that felt like it would make the message clear to their smaller intruders.

this seems like a good place to wrap up! feel free to archive as is or archive with your post! <3

wintersbane focuses on his mission, glacial gaze straying to peek at iana for a moment as he watches her marking the den; masking over the fox stench that hangs thick and cloying in the air. when he is finished; sides drawing in sharp breaths and the slight wince he works to hide as his weight shifts for a few seconds to his injured leg, he takes a few steps back to examine his handy-work.

satisfied, he lets out a low huff.

even if it wasn't enough to fully chase them out of the territory, they hopefully would know better than to steal from the wolves' caches. at least, this is wintersbane's hope though he wonders if disrupting one den would be enough.

are you up for searching with me to see if there are any more dens we could destroy? wintersbane inquires after a moment of considering. either way, whether she accepted or declined the offer wintersbane would continue on to see if there was any other little things he could do to ensure the thieves would learn the lesson the easy way.

Closing! <3

When all was done here, she felt...better. Safer. At least to a slight degree. His offer provided a chance to further strengthen that feeling. So she would silently agree, happy to help him along with this work. It was her job as much as it was his. Not to mention the simple logic of that they could make quicker work of the dens as a pair.