Redhawk Caldera I'm leavin' tomorrow, whatdya say?

Set for a couple weeks ago, sometime after Azon's arrival but before relocation to the rendezvous site. For @Towhee, but pups and others are welcome too.

Rue had plopped herself down right at the front of the Hobbit Hole. Creating a physical barrier with her body was the only way to keep the three most rambunctious Redhawks inside. Perhaps once Towhee came back and there were two adults present to play shephard, they would allow the tide of puppies to spill out onto the lawn beneath the hill. It was a nice afternoon for it. 

For the time being, the children had made a game out of trying to scale the giant obstacle that was Auntie Woo. When one would attempt to clamber up her side, Rue would give a shake or a nudge, and they would lose their footing and tumble back down to the base of Mount Rue. Each tumble did little to curb their enthusiasm.

Soon Reyes would be on his way to Sapphique, leaving the caldera down an able body for a week or two. Towhee did have concerns, though she thought they were in good shape. Otherwise, she wouldn't have suggested he go ahead. Making a mental checklist of their current adult members, the Sovereign returned to the Hobbit Hole not long after wrapping a patrol.

She came home to the children crawling all over their Auntie Woo. Towhee smirked as she flopped nearby with a sigh, bending to lick at her paws. She hoped the kids were too busy scaling Mount Ruenna to notice her, at least right away. She'd recently kicked them off the teat but they tended to try to latch on anyway and she and her sore nips were pretty tired of it.

Towhee came home and flopped down outside the Hobbit Hole, making no attempt to squeeze around Ruenna to get inside. Rue's prone body, while creating a barrier at the opening of the den, also served as a shield to block the tired mama from the little ones' view. Rue turned to the Sovereign with a sympathetic, knowing smile.

"Hey, while you were out, did you happen to run into that new recruit, Āzon? Fennec and I accepted him in the other day. Big guy, arctic, says he's a fighter. He's got the scars to prove it." Plenty of wolves had facial scars, but it had been the one red eye that really set the man apart. 

"OOF" Rue emitted, taking a surprising sock in the side. Apparently, one of the children had tired of climbing on Rue and decided to execute a full force-charge ending in a headbutt to her stomach. 

Rue swung her head around and closed her jaws around the little scruff of Caracal. His mischievous grin fell from his face in an instant as he was lifted, and he was clearly expecting some form of grim corporal punishment. 

Rue simply settled him down on the other side of her body-barrier, allowing him to run free on the lawn in front of the Hobbit Hole. He beat a quick path toward Towhee, looking for a protector in case Auntie Woo might have it out for him.

Her eyes continuously flicked upward as she groomed her sore feet, just in case there was anything to catch. When Rue opened her mouth to speak to her, the Sovereign paused her ministrations and raised her head to read her lips. It was a little more challenging from any sort of distance, though she was so familiar with the Regent, she managed to catch it all.

"No," she admitted, "but I trust your guys' judgment." Towhee did feel a prickle of apprehension at the idea of a big fighter of a wolf roaming the caldera with Fennec in her condition. But her daughter could handle herself and woe upon the wolf who so much as looked at her sideways. Doubtless her Regents wouldn't have permitted him into the ranks if they had any concerns like that, though. "I'll seek him out when I can," she mused aloud.

Caracal's approach pushed much of it from her mind as she righted herself to keep her teats out of reach. But he didn't try to nose his way toward the milk bar, instead crushing against her chest and peering back at Rue and his sisters from beneath his mother's throat.

While he was there, Towhee arched her neck (a little severely) to lick the fur between his ears. This prompted her son to tilt his head and lick at her chin, then her cheek. She allowed it with a smile, a little disappointed when his affections ended too soon and he gamboled back toward Rue and the twins.

It took all of about ten seconds for Caracal to forget his fear, and soon enough he was barrelling back towards Rue. He climbed up Rue's shoulder and stood upon her back triumphantly, chattering something down to the other pups in that baby-speak language of theirs that Rue didn't understand. He stuck out his tongue. 

Rue laughed, and as her sides heaved up and down, Caracal toppled from his perch. 

Their competitiveness reminded her of something, actually. 

"Oh, there was something else." Rue made sure to catch Towhee's eye. "A messenger came by, inviting our pack to the Teekon Highland Games. Some kind of interpack competition going on in the quarry to the north. It's taking place around the summer solstice." 

Although Rue wasn't much of an athlete herself these days, it seemed like a good opportunity to strengthen bonds with their allies and gather a little intel about some of the newer packs in the area. She hadn't left the Caldera since she'd joined up, and it was about time for her to stretch her legs.

While she watched Caracal live up to his namesake by climbing his aunt and balancing on her back—Towhee winced, wondering if that hurt Rue—she suddenly realized that she knew the name her second had mentioned. But before she could ask again about Azon (or Azionol, as she knew him), Ruenna raised another subject entirely.

Towhee blinked at this information, then pulled a face. It didn't sound remotely appealing to her, nor did she think it was a good use of her pack mates' time or resources. But as she watched the trio of pups monkey around, the Sovereign's lips pursed. Maybe it was something the kids might enjoy, although they'd still be pretty young by the summer solstice. And which packs were involved, anyway? She felt a twinge of heartache over their fallen allies.

"Huh," was all she said in the end. Her orange eyes drifted over Rue's face, wondering if she was interested. She shifted her expression, a nonverbal cue for the Regent to elaborate about it if she wished. Towhee was listening (well...).

Towhee didn't seem all that interested in the subject, which was a little disheartening. Nevertheless, Rue continued. 

"I think we should send someone. At least an ambassador, if not an athlete." Rue missed her ambassador days, but with her back the way it was, she couldn't really picture a day when she would be able to travel like that again. With that in mind, this was an opportunity that was difficult for her to turn down: all the packs in the area gathered in one place, negating the necessity to travel to each one to pass news. 

"I'd like to go," Rue added, since she was now doing the whole ask-for-what-she wants thing. It had worked for getting her the Regent position, hadn't it?

Her knee-jerk reaction was to disagree, though Towhee didn't say so right away. Instead, she gave it some thought. Who did Rue have in mind? Who could they spare for such frivolities? The word "ambassador" immediately made her think of Meerkat and she wondered if the yearling might be interested.

But then Ruenna volunteered as tribute. This earned a cock of Towhee's head. Could she make that trip? And now that she pictured either one of them—Meerkat or Rue—was it really good idea for them to go alone? Well, there was an obvious solution to that quandary.

"Maybe you and Meerkat could go," the Sovereign thought aloud after a few more beats of contemplative silence.

Ruenna nodded. Meerkat would be the perfect ambassador athlete. A small smile tugged at the corners of her expression; she was also glad for the go-ahead to attend herself, even though there was probably very little that she could do that Meerkat couldn't. The young Redhawk was already a master-level ambassador, wasn't she? 

"She'll be great," Ruenna assured Towhee. She would look forward to spending more time with Meerkat, particularly time in which the youngest children weren't the center of attention. Meerkat deserved some time to shine herself, and this competition seemed like the perfect place for it. 

Now that her mind was on the kids thing...

"Are you excited to be a grandmother?" Rue's smile grew. Fennec hadn't made any formal announcement that Rue was aware of, but Rue was an observant woman. Fennec's size and gait closely resembled Towhee's at mid-pregnancy.

That suggestion appeared to appease the Regent. Towhee still had some misgivings about the whole thing, though there was plenty of time to plan and prepare if these games weren't even being held for weeks. Maybe she would even float her earlier idea past Reyes. The pups would still be young, but they were discussing a trip to the coast soon, so maybe this wasn't an outrageous thought either, depending on who was involved and where it took place. All details she could suss out later.

She would've been happy for any subject change, though Rue touched on something that particularly tickled the Sovereign. Gods, yes, she was beside herself. She probably should've considered whether Rue would approve of how Towhee was handling the entire thing, but the only room in her head and heart was dedicated to loving those unborn children.

She opened her mouth to say as much when an errant thought passed through her mind like a single rain cloud in an otherwise sunny sky. It was actually a memory: a despondent Niamh reacting to the news of Towhee's pairing with Reyes. -"Just makes me feel old, is all,"- she remembered her friend saying. Her mind tried to fly even further backward in time, though Towhee pressed her lips together and shut down that whole train of thought before it could go off the rails. No one and nothing was going to spoil her joy about this.

"Oh heck yeah," she said, smiling softly, "I've been looking forward to grandkids since the day I first realized they were a distant possibility." And that was not an exaggeration. Even years on, Towhee would never forget how the whole notion had buoyed her up during a particularly bleak time in her own life.

Rue smiled softly, glad to hear Towhee's enthusiastic affirmation. Grandmother-hood had a way of hitting different wolves in different ways, but of course Towhee would embrace it fully, every inch of her the Caldera's matriarch. 

Certainly, the ambiguous timing of Fennec's litter had crossed Ruenna's mind. If Fennec had indeed conceived before her promotion to leadership, that merited a bit of a frown perhaps, but what could really be done at this point? It had all worked out smoothly enough, now that Fennec was a Regent. Ruenna imagined that any mother passing down the Redhawk name would be granted a little more leeway than, for instance, someone like herself. Such was the way of things, for the outsiders in a familial pack. 

"Who knows, Figment might show up at the border with a couple more kids in tow," Rue joked, although such an event was in the realm of possibility. Who knew what he was up to, out there with the Frosthawks? Rue hadn't forgotten Towhee's suggestion that Rue procreate with the young Redhawk (shudder). Rue still struggled to conceptualize Figment and Fennec as anything other than the children they were when she met them, despite Fennec's impending motherhood.

Towhee's head reared back a little at Rue's playful musing. She let out a playful growl. "If that boy knocks someone up, he'd better send word long before they're actually born," she replied, her orange eyes twinkling. She also recollected her prior suggestion, which made her cough out a laugh, though she didn't mention it aloud.

"Speaking of being a grandmother, I should probably swing by to see Fen. You got things under control here?" She snorted, then laughed, when the kids either took that as their cue or coincidentally decided now was the perfect time to begin climbing Mount Rue once more.

Of course, she knew Auntie Woo could handle them, though before she turned to go, she said sharply, "KIDS! Don't be too rough, she has a bad back." Towhee had told them this before but who knew if they understood? It bore repeating, in any case. She punctuated the worlds with a low growl to make sure they took the command seriously.

Would you like to wrap this one and have another immediately soon?

The way Towhee spoke about it, Ruenna wondered if she received regular news from the Frosthawks. The ambassador within Rue was interested, but it would have to be a conversation for another day. It seemed that Towhee was getting restless. 

"We'll be okay," Ruenna assured Towhee. She turned her attention to the pups, who likely had very little concept for what it meant to have "a bad back," having yet to struggle through any lingering injury themselves. 

Caracal took Towhee's departure as an invitation to pounce for his aunt's ear. Ruenna ducked, and then she placed a paw lightly on his shoulders to keep him in place while she swiped her tongue over his ears. 

If it was up to Rue, these children would never know what it meant to have a bad back. Or a bad anything.