Bramblepoint Like A Bear From Slumber

AW but mainly for @Āzon.
Setting: Mid-Afternoon. 60F. Slightly windy.

It happened again. Though she couldn’t blame anyone for what had happened...just cruel fate. Kaistleoki, the proud kingdom, had fallen … Once the word of Easthollow’s fate reached their ears everyone took it hard. Especially Ira, maybe she blamed herself and felt that if Easthollow - out of all the packs - had fallen, it wouldn’t be long before Kaistleoki would follow suit. Then the proud Moonspear and its sister pack, Firefly Glen had crumbled as well - it was a sign. And with one last meeting, Ira called the dispersal of Kaistleoki right then and there. Aliana was the last to leave as she felt a bit attached to the territory but without the pack eventually, the scent markers had faded. It wasn’t long before she saw scavengers crawling out, digging up caches, and taking well-earned meals … and there was little she could do.

So she left…

But her timing was horrendous, a massive snowstorm kicked in and everything quickly became a canvas of pure white. The landmarks she knew by heart were gone and she was left, stranded. She wandered for a while until common sense kicked in and she settled down in one place and waited till the snowstorm passed. And once it faded, she found out she was...really lost resulting in even more wandering until she decided to try and retrace her steps and still that ended with her half wandering for several suns falls, hunting when she could, scavenging where she could.

Then spring came and with it … Heat - the yearning and want. Her body craved to be touched, craved to bear pups, and for the briefest moment, her mind thought of Azon. Though their relationship hadn’t gone far, being something in between acquaintances and good friends… yet she couldn’t help but think of that as something more. Overall, she did her best to keep to herself...

Once it generally passed a month ago, she was able to focus on her belly as she hadn’t eaten a real meal for a bit now. Aliana wandered through the patch of forest, occasionally stopping to carefully pluck blueberries off of a thorny bush. She occasionally gave a glance around to be sure she wasn’t being approached. The last thing she wanted was to be suddenly attacked by a roaming territorial bear or an aggressive stranger. Though she could get away with being mistaken for a bear from a distance, so she might be left alone today.

She couldn't help it when her mind wandered to the coast. Was her mate's reunion with his family going well? Was Phox still roaming the seaboard, ever searching for Niamh and the kids? They would be about the same age as her own, who had never met their "Phother." Despite largely coming to terms with her losses, that thought still stung.

Evidently her paws had wandered too. She came to a stop in the woods a little north of the caldera and glanced over her shoulder. Towhee should turn back, though why not meander a bit first? Shaking off those dreadful thoughts, she tried to shift her mental focus to... her grandchildren. They were more precisely Phox's grandchildren but she was happy to step up to the plate.

Maybe she should start with some fresh game for her pregnant daughter. Towhee still didn't fancy herself a hunter, though she'd polished up her skills a bit this year. Dropping her nose, she began to scent along the forest floor.

Aliana picked one last blueberry, the bush shuddering slightly as if angry at her for stealing its hard-earned work while a sigh escapes her lips. As tasty and sweet as berries were, they were not really as ...hearty like meat was. And the meat was hard to get...at least the freshly killed variety was… Licking her lips, she got ready to turn away till ...she heard something. Her round ears tilted, focusing on the sound of paws padded through lush grass some several feet northeast of her. Her head rose to cast a careful gaze around her surroundings until she spotted something. It wasn’t a bear, she was sure of that by the size. So it had to be a wolf. Aliana couldn’t see much of them - all she could see was the bits and pieces of a black pelt stalking along only a dozen feet or so away from her.

Ah boy, here we go.

Her mind was reminded of the she-wolf that trespassed on Kaistleoki’s land, stealing their food. Then another black she-wolf that she ran into on their Hunting Ground trying to coerce her into hunting with her on a bet before rudely marking on their land. Lastly, the no-tongue she-wolf who had attacked her for no good reason over a field full of food. It had to be that one she-wolf, the one that had rudely scent marked on Kaistleoki Hunting grounds. Aliana hadn’t seen her for a while and with the wind against her, she couldn’t be too sure if it was her or not. Though she wasn’t too keen on meeting her again. Not now. Not in her position. As a loner, she had no standing, no position….nothing. And she wasn’t in the mood to hear her rub it in her face.

Aliana quietly turned to slip away, only to hear a slightly muffled but still quite audible snap! under one of her large paws. A broken twig under paw. Rookie mistake. She quickly ducked using the bushes and brambles to tuck away most of her mass behind the foliage.

"Damn it..." She looked around to see where she could scoot herself far enough to dash for it.

The forest floor was flush with odors, so Towhee attempted to suss out the most promising among them. She isolated the trail of a groundhog, rejecting the plethora of rabbit and squirrel scents in favor of it. She wasn't at all adept, so the slowest prey was her best bet.

Somewhere nearby, a stick broke and someone cursed. But the Sovereign remained utterly oblivious in her silent world, all her attention attuned to the hunt. That was the case until she tracked it forward and suddenly her nose filled with the scent of another wolf, in close proximity too.

Towhee raised her head, stiffening, orange eyes scouring the surrounding brush as her flaring nostrils tried to pinpoint the source of the smell.

Take it nice...and slow. Aliana’s belly dragged along the dirt while she scooted back, slowly she maneuvered her large body turning and scooting away. After a bit, she made it a good way, scooting a whole three feet...until she saw movement to her left. Aliana glanced over to see something lithe and green, its body coiled in an `S` shape, beady slit eyes looking back at her and immediately her mind puts it together...

Snake.

Her eyes widen. She didn’t know if it was venomous or not and she didn’t want to know firsthand. So when it suddenly lunged at her, hissing, Aliana quickly leaped back with a yelp, stumbling backward. Bushes and undergrowth rustled and crackled at the sudden movement and her position was exposed. She paused on the spot, frozen like a statue before looking back, expecting to meet the eyes of the stranger.

Before she could possibly narrow down the stranger's location, a body came crashing through the brush. Towhee instinctively jumped to the side to avoid impact, her body bracing into a defensive crouch when the figure came to a stop. The two she-wolves stared at each other, her swarthy face slightly contorted into a look as she mouthed, "What the f..."

Like her, the stranger was solidly built for a female. With her coloration, she looked quite a bit like a bear. Towhee sized her up openly but decided her body language wasn't currently threatening. If anything, she looked like she was on the lam. She looked a little spooked and as the Sovereign straightened out of her fighting stance, she wondered why.

"Um," she said, not sure what to say in this situation. She paused before deciding on her immediately previous question, "What the fuck?"

Aliana saw the black….then autumn orange and white on their pelt and immediately knew that this wasn’t anyone she met. Now she felt, well, silly and if a blush could show it, there would be one streaking across her muzzle. For now, her ears pulled back slightly, eyes fell to the ground a bit to show it. “O-Oh…”

Aliana turned around fully to face them, “Sorry. I thought you were...someone else.” She said, eyes glancing away, eyes searching almost as if she was looking for someone, before looking back. “I hope I’m not ... interrupting anything…” It was then that she realized… She was so busy thinking about bears and aggressive wolves that she didn’t think these woods could be the Hunting Grounds of a Pack. " Or intruding upon anywhere?" She quickly added.

Though that made her think...if they were of a Pack then she could join them...? Most of her meandering wasn't purposely due to the Snowstorm that had rushed through Teekon months ago. Then again, her slinking around their Hunting Grounds then trying to slip away could have made her look suspicious. But she could recover from this.

OKAY IM HERE ASDEFYFJJVV- (Āzon hasn't completely arrived yet, but Is slowly approaching if that makes sense. Feel free to notice him from a distance tho! ^-^

It had been a while since Ruenna and Fennec had accepted him into their ranks -- and now he was officially apart of the Redhawks. It should be cause for celebration that his homeless ass finally managed to join a group after months -- and yet Ignis still wasn't too sure how to feel about it all. It had been too long since the pale sire had actually joined a pack, not since the Glens fall, and ecspecially not since his escape from the Imperium, and moving beyond the borders of somewhere he'd only seen in passing almost felt surreal.

Angsty details aside, the Tundrian still felt like this was what he needed in his life -- a brand new start, and work to keep him busy from memories and regrets that'll eat him from the inside.

Today he'd set off to look for Towhee -- the dark yet firebanded woman he'd met once on a scouting mission back when he was still apart of the glen. It was the only time they'd seen each other since, and Āzon questioned whether they'd even recognize his face.....'Pro'lly not, who th'hell knows...' the male thought to himself momentarily. Whatever the case may have been, she was now his leader. He'd need to introduce himself one way or another.

So he'd set off, strangely not finding the Sovereign in the Caldera and leaving to see if she'd been in any of the outer territories nearby. Then came the sound of loud yelping nearby, followed by a pair of farmiliar scents he couldn't quite put his finger on at this distance. Still, both of these factors tying into each other set off alarms in his head, and the Phoenix would surge forward hurriedly to seen what this was all about....

The stranger’s discomfiture continued and Towhee had to quell the urge to snort. Although she’d technically interrupted Towhee’s hunt, she shook her head in response to the latter question.

This is no man’s land, though I was— Her voice cut off as her teeth sank into her tongue in the same instant she noticed a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye.

She turned toward it, hackles bristling a little. Now she would be outnumbered by strangers. But as the figure came closer, she realized she actually knew him... Barely, Towhee thought, orange gaze tracking his approach.

Her mouth parted halfway to speak when Aliana heard the movement as well. Her ears and head perked up, focusing on its direction and that niggling fear of being attacked and chased off came back. But when she glanced back to see the she-wolf with her hackles partially raised, she knew that it couldn’t be someone she knew. Then she saw it...white fur against a stark contrast of greens and browns surrounding him, her brows furrowed slightly, head leaning forwards to see if she was correct in her assumption.

“...Azon?” She wasn’t sure at first but once the winds began to favor her and blow in her direction, she was sure. Her tail began to wag a bit. It had been a while since she had last seen the white wolf. After being lost for so long, it was nice to see his face again because that meant she was still in Teekon.

Eventually, his steps would slow to more of a jogging pace. The closing distance made it easier to make out the features of the two women before him, and as the Tundrian slowed to a more reasonable pace to take it in, things all came together. The first one he'd recognize was Towhee, in which he'd greet with a chuff upon his arrival at her side. He would've greeted her more thoroughly (since she'd been the one he was looking for after all) if his forest fire gaze wasn't trained on the other woman. 

The yelping he'd heard from earlier triggered his guarding instincts, especially when one of the wolves present was his leader -- though his hardened gaze slowly began to soften when the deep-sea visionaries he bore into began to feel familiar.

"Ali?" the Tundrian remarked softly -- half a whisper, half a relived laugh, and he too would begin waving the tassel behind himself. Again was Azon starting to feel like he was in a lucid dream, because it had been so long since he'd seen the ursine woman. What had she been up to while he was gone?

He had half the heart to approach and bump his muzzle against the brown she-wolf's shoulder, happy to have seen a friend of his after so long, but he minded his manners and instead turned towards his Sovereign first with an inquiring whine. Did these two know each other?

She didn't hear his sound of greeting, though Towhee shifted her weight as her pack mate came to stand beside her. She licked her chops, trying to recollect anything about their one conversation so far, but before she could delve deep into her memories, she picked up on the exchange between the other two.

There seemed to be some sort of recognition between the pair. Towhee didn't actually catch them saying one another's names, though the looks they exchanged were unmistakable. She glanced from Āzon to the strange she-wolf and back again, vaguely curious. She suddenly remembered what she'd been doing before the interruption.

"I have a pregnant daughter to feed," she cut in, "so I'll leave you two to catch up...?" It came out like a question, albeit very wooden as did all of Towhee's speech. She didn't depart immediately, attention lingering on Āzon in particular in case he wanted her to stick around for some reason.

Aliana, however, goes to gently bump her head against Azon’s with a wide smile, chuckling, “ It's been a while! I thought...I’d never see you again … after Kaistloeki fell and that sudden snowstorm... I thought I had been just wandering blindly through unknown lands...” That’s when she pulled away and saw his marred face. Her brows furrowed, a mix of concern and anger, “ What’s with the scar...? Do I have to tear into someone’s hide?”  Aliana half-joked but in reality, if it was caused by some wolf, she had some idea who they could possibly be but didn’t outright say anything. She wasn’t going to jump to conclusions just yet.

Then the she-wolf, possibly a pack leader judging by how Azon was posturing and whining, cuts in about having to feed a pregnant daughter. And at the mention of food, Aliana perked up, “ You need food? We could hunt together…? All three of us. ” She suggested innocently, “ As tasty as berries are, I want a real meal. The last time I hunted something sizable was a deer and it was only me and one other wolf. I’m sure we can take down something just as good.”

She didn’t know about the she-wolf, she seemed...prickly like her Mother but less so. Personally, she didn’t see the harm in the three of them hunting, they could turn up something good.

Azon was trying to keep things formal for the time being, at least until he could process what was going on, but it wasn't until Aliana came surging towards him that those formalities seemed to melt away like ice. Their foreheads collided, and a stupid grin found its way onto his dark lips. The tail that merely flickered before now fanned ferociously in pure elation at the feeling of his friend's touch, and for a moment Ignis allowed his muzzle to slide sideways to press against the ursine woman's neck. God, the Tundrian hadn't felt this happy in a while. He'd fucking cry if he could too -- seeing Aliana's face again after all that happened felt too refreshing to be true.

Most of the stuff she said to him fell on deaf ears at the moment, but when she pulled away to look at him would he actually pay attention to the words. She asked him about the scar on his face, with an expression he couldn't read too well, and a heavy sigh escaped his lips in return. "Full story's a long one, but in short I got my shit knocked pretty hard this winter." he said with a shrug and an awkward side smirk. Similarly, his tone was half-joking but filled with something else unpleasant in actually recalling what happened. 

Remembering that his leader was still present, the boy's forest fire gaze switched back to where Towhee was, just in time for her to offer her dismissal from the scene. There was an apologetic look in his eyes as he opened his mouth to tell her that she didn't need to leave, as he'd been meaning to look for her today anyhow, but Aliana swiftly shut him up with her invitation to hunt as a trio. Hunt what? He couldn't hunt shit to save his life. Though with the help of two women who probably held more skill in the field, it didn't sound like a bad deal....if he didn't fuck it up for them, at least....

So the Phoenix looked to his sovereign, eyeing them curiously to see if they'd actually agree to the offer...

"No," Towhee replied almost immediately, "I appreciate the offer but the truth is, I'm a shit hunter who can hardly manage small prey. And the whole 'can't hear' thing really makes communication and coordination difficult when it comes to organizing large game hunts. I don't know about you two but I don't know either one of you well enough to pull it off. So," she concluded, "I'ma do this on my own."

Her tail twitched as she looked between the two, hoping they didn't mind her frankness. "You two, though... go for it. I'll see you back at the caldera, Āzon." To the she-wolf whose name she hadn't caught, she added a curt nod. Then Towhee moved away, keen to get back to business.

"Okay...?"

Aliana’s head went full tilt at the She-wolf coupled with an arched brow but otherwise lightly bows her head to her in return. ‘Can’t hear’...? What did that mean?? She was reasonably good at reading body language and tone of language so it didn’t sound like … an insult. But if she was bad at hunting as she said she is... then why refuse help?? It made no sense in her mind…especially if she was hunting for her pregnant daughter. Ultimately, Aliana chucked it up to bias as she did speak about how she didn’t know them. It was understandable but thinking like that had its Cons and it was in full display.

Aliana wouldn’t stop her from leaving them, bias like that was hard to weed out of a wolf and she wasn’t going to probe. Instead, she looked to Azon, smiling, “ So… is she your Alpha?” Aliana was finally able to smell that the She-wolf was a pack wolf and she could smell the same scent on Azon though very faintly. She turned in the opposite direction the she-wolf trotted to and began to walk,“ She seems….friendly…?” Friendly was said in a ... loose term being that she hadn't been insulted or snarled at...neither was she greeted with a smile and cordial small talk.

The offer to hunt was ultimately rejected, and it was done in a blunt way that made him internally cringe. Yikes. 

Either way, her exit was met with a respectful nod on the way out. Who knew -- In a way, Towhee was right about not knowing much about each other, so perhaps the problem was the level of trust held between them -- he was still a new member of the Caldera, after all. Not to mention that the woman didn't know Aliana like Azon did, so she'd basically be surrounded by strangers had she agreed.

But most of all, Ignis was just relieved that he didn't have to make a clown out of himself in front of Towhee with a hunt of all things. He sighed.

The Phoenix turned his attention back to Aliana, shooting the bearish woman a cheeky grin and a snicker in response to her question. "'Guess she is, though I don't really blame her. Don't know either'us too well..."  He replied, trying to put emphasis on how new he was to the pack. Though, now with the two of them alone together, the large wraith became more self-aware to who he'd been talking to. A capsule from his past.

His snowy tassel slowed to a limp, and his expression changed into something softer -- melancholic.

"How've you been, Ali?"

“Yeah…” She agreed, “ But if you say you’re not good at hunting, you want to get food for someone and a wolf offers to help you hunt. What’s better to get? A squirrel or a hearty deer leg thick with meat? “ Aliana asked, not expecting an answer. She just ...didn’t understand it. Azon was a part of her pack so she

“Maybe I’m too opportunistic…”  Then she heard Azon and her head turned to look at him.

“I’m doing okay...? I’m just glad I found a familiar face.” She smiled softly at Azon, tail wagging gently then looked around the woodlands, “ … I don't remember this area... I may have passed through before when I traveled to the Valley …? But I didn’t stay long enough to remember any of the landmarks...” That then reminded her of the Valley... Would she ever return there? Probably not anytime soon... Not if the crazed no tongue she-wolf was still there... Not with Ursus still possibly striving. And if she did, she'd do it just to see Stone Circle and pay respects to the proud Easthollow, despite how they made her feel the last time she met them...

"How about you? What have you been up to?"

Aliana said she'd been doing okay, which wasn't really much of an answer as he'd been expecting it to be. The mention of Kaistleoki's fall just moments ago was more or less what he'd been referring to -- it had been Aliana's home when he'd went to visit her that winter, right? So what had happened to make it just....fall out of existence like that? 

And suddenly the thought of what had happened to Firefly Glen crossed his mind like a bullet through the skull, blood running cold. Had the bear made its way towards Aliana's stead as well? He was silent for a moment, eyes still trained on her with worry in his gaze, but would huff out some tired, hybrid chuckle after a while. "Glad to hear it then...."

A moments pass later and Aliana's words mutter the same question in regards to him, and Ignis answer with a sigh and relaxed haunches that plopped onto the grass. "Y'know, the usual. Eating, sleeping, shitting, gettin' myself into more stuff than planned -- it's a livin'." He joked dryly, keeping the same tone along with his next words, but with a little less humor. "I wouldn't mind sharin' the details If you don't mind sharing yours though..." 

"Tell me.....what happened to Kaistleoki?"

Aliana was silent for a moment, " It was disbanded. I don't know why Ira did it... I guess after being told of ... Hiero's death...and then Easthollow fell. She just felt like she wasn't up to it and she didn't have anyone she thought right to hand down the title of Count to so she just...decided to disband Kaistleoki altogether." 

She was still a bit upset about the whole thing, Aliana thought she had found a home and a pack. She defended to, killed, and spilled blood for Kaistleoki because she thought it would stand forever. And no less than a few months after she joined, it was disbanded and she was left standing there without a home again. " This is the second pack I've joined that ended up just falling apart several months after I just joined

Aliana turns fully to a snow-white companion as he sat down, "... Am I cursed?? I feel like I'm cursed! I mean, any pack I join ends up crumbling on me. And...And I..." She lets out a sigh, " I just don't want to be Packless forever..." She wants to be in a Pack, wants to be part of one, but if every pack she joins ends up crumbling on her... Then what's the point? She didn't want to drag another pack down because some inexplicable cruse is tailing her wherever she goes.