Sleepy Fox Hollow spaziergang

maybe @Dusty Rose? <3

paleo was settling into a rhythm. still mahler knew that wintertide in the mountains could be quite harsh, and he was grateful for the high stone walls which cupped the hollow.
today he was determined to make a full tour of it, having visited the carcass for a meal beforehand. chewing on a bit of gristle, mahler began a bouncing song in german, one that carried through the cool air.

Mahler had a tail.

Okay, so he had two tails, and one was rather closer than the other. Dusty Rose was keeping his distance from the man — not because it was his preference, but because it seemed more polite than gluing himself to the leader’s side. He’d save that sort of behavior for Emmerich, but even then, Dusty showcased his clinginess as sparingly as he could. And following Mahler seemed like the most unobtrusive way of fulfilling his unusually high social needs.

When the older wolf started singing, however, there was no way Dusty would remain unobtrusive for long. The buoyant singing directed him as surely as if he were a song-seeking missile, and soon enough, he popped out of a nearby bush with his big ears quivering atop his narrow skull. His mouth formed soundless melodies in return, until a high-pitched sound warbled out of his throat. His dark blue eyes were terribly contrite, but noise-making had always been a group-activity for him, and it was hard to quell the learned response.

mahler had just finished the verse about a crab caught on top of a mountain when movement caught his eye. the young man who had joined them emerged from cover, and with him, a sound of his own. knowing amethyst met the darksea gaze, and the gargoyle indicated that dusty rose should come along.
the song continued. this time the crab had found a cave and crawled inside it to escape the look of the ice giants. mahler paused, the tones fading and lifting again, as he marked here or raked there, and they went on.
he was an eternal musiker, after all, happy enough to wind his notes around that of the other for their time together now.

The invitation was accepted without demure. Dusty bounded out of the bush with his limp bottle-brush tail wheeling at his hocks to fall into step beside the leader. This was not done without fanfare; his legs briefly jellified in the excitement of acceptance, and he wallowed in the dirt for a second or two before leaping up again and prancing on his tip-toes to catch up.

As wide as the cultural divide was between them, Dusty at least knew how to go about making a strong scent border. There wasn’t as much emphasis on it in the desert, since the sun tended to bake away most scents rather quickly. They used their voices — loud and often — to reinforce the idea that they were many and fierce. But they were still canids, and scent was as important to coyotes (and part-coyotes!) as it was to purebred wolves.

So Dusty spent a lot of time wallowing, actually. He looked rather like a dog fresh out of the bath at times, rolling around and rubbing his face and shoulder against every available surface.

His contributions to Mahler’s song were no less substantial, but more questionable in their helpfulness. They had very different voices, for one thing. And Dusty didn’t know the language, for another. That meant most of his interjections were of the ai-ai-ai! sort, sounding more like sobbing or laughter in turns than the kind of music most wolves were accustomed to. And although it might be beautiful in its own way, Dusty had come across plenty of wolves who found his voice rather grating.

But if there was music, he had to sing. It was the law, wasn’t it?

“What kinna words are those?” he asked when his performance anxiety reached its peak. He interrupted to save both Mahler’s ears and his own social status — since he was sure that, if he was too annoying, he wouldn’t be allowed to hang around for much longer. But it was a question asked out of genuine curiosity as well. He’d never heard German before, and it was driving him to distraction to listen to a story without being able to really understand it.

the yipping and ululations unnerved mahler, but no more than they would another wolf. he knew that his response was due to the fact that he and emmerich had culled a full coyote, and he had killed more himself. there was a latent distrust in him.
but dusty rose had done nothing to invite it. in fact, he was perfectly aware of his place and helped to put a scent-mark along the borders. "it is german," mahler answered, inspecting a pile of elk dung which he had not expected to see. "i vas born knowing it, and i have taught it to my children."
but there was something here, some gleam in his eye that suggested mischief. "i could teach you also." the man's broad paws trampled a tuft of lavender and he began to dig around it, separating it from the earth. 
he turned truly now, to inspect the young wolf. he wanted to know if their kind had raised the boy, or if it had been coyotes. but mahler did not ask, aware of how perturbing this might be. "i could teach you the song as vell."
his craggy face warmed with a soft smile.

"Oh," said Dusty, surprise and interest mixing in his tone. He'd always assumed that The Germans were just another made-up thing his father liked to talk about, but whether they were real or not, he was delighted to hear someone else talk about them. Something in Mahler's expression made Dusty think the older wolf was pulling his leg, but he was too polite to say so.

Even so — the chance to learn another language was not something the boy was willing to pass up.

"I want to learn," he said at once, dark eyes glittering in wonder. How many languages were there in the world, anyway? "My fathers speak English — one common, and one Appalachian. And my mother taught us all Spanish. We sing songs in both languages, and in a language I don't speak. Nahuatl." All that to say: Dusty hoped Mahler would teach him the song before expecting him to hold a conversation in the possibly made-up language. But,

"What does it mean?" he wondered, scoring the earth with his paws and then rubbing his muzzle over the ground for good measure. He caught Mahler watching him then and straighten up to stand at attention.

dusty rose was talkative, as much as any other young wolf his age. mahler found this amusing. he was reminded of thade and phaedra, and realized anew that his young brood would be coming up into such years as time went on. time was a fickle and chaotic thing, and he an ageing man with a wandering mind.
he trained it to what dusty was saying. "fathers? as in more than vone?" but he did not judge. "the song is about a crab who goes too far from sea and gets trapped upon a mountain," mahler chuckled. "it is more a lullaby than anything."
he pawed at the base of a tree, and an insect scurried through the dry leaves. "käfer," he offered at once, looking to dusty.
"you seem to be a volf of many talents. you sing. you speak multiple languages." what else was there behind the soft young hide.

The question made Dusty stare blankly at Mahler for a moment, but then he seemed to grasp the question, and he answered: "Two. One we call Dad, and one we call the flower eater. There were nine of us, see? So we needed more'n one dad."

Dusty Rose didn't actually know what a crab was, and he'd only heard stories about the ocean. Neither of his fathers had ever seen it, and Dusty had been half convinced it was just another story — like Germany. Did all those fantastic places really exist?

"käfer," he repeated, clumsily the first time, but a little more respectably the second. "In Spanish, you say escarabajo, or bicho or sabandija, one. But you can call a coyote sabandija, too." He began digging up the beetle. "They don't like it much, but you can."

The beetle crunched nicely between his molars, and he wheeled about in a fancy pirouette to announce, "I can dance, too." These were important talents, back home! But he wouldn't have called himself talented among the rest of his siblings.

"I just like to," he said to Mahler. "If you could see where I come from, you might, too. There ain't anything out there to look at or sniff at. Not like out here, anyway. I grew up hearin' stories about mountains and oceans and Germany, 'cause you gotta build your own world out there. 'Else you're just lookin' at sand all day."


The coywolf scratched at something in the dirt and announced, "Tejón." Badger. One of them had been digging up worms in this patch of detritus. Dusty guessed it'd been sometime the night before.

nine of them. one father. one flower-eater. dusty spoke with the nonchalance of someone who had been born to this life, but it was far beyond anything mahler had ever experienced. yet he was interested, happy to be silent until the younger man had finished speaking.
dusty rose again mentioned the dichotomy of coyotes. the words that mentioned the insects could be used for them. a slur, then. 
was it guilt or shame that rose in him now, to know he had slain one only before dusty arrived.
but it was their way. still mahler wondered if it had been full-blooded wolves who subjected a coyote to such a name. the boy was still talking. he smiled at the mention of dance, which he meant to see.
"it sounds as though you grew up vith many dreams and many people around you. and it sounds as if life has been hard for you given your nature."
he too sniffed the earth. "dachs," the gargoyle gave in his own translation. "i grew up in a small valley and it vas all i knew for a time." and then marigold.

The coywolf was blissfully unaware of the picture he was painting for the hollow's patriarch. Sabandija was not something he'd ever been called, although doubtlessly, some of the wolves he'd met out this way would've used it if they'd known the word. Rather, Dusty had heard his father shouting it at the retreating hides of unfamiliar coyotes. The ones that he sent on their way rather than eating or naturalizing them. Dusty Rose had assisted in all three of these pursuits on numerous occasions — his fathers and their army of coywolf children had done a good job of conquering the most desirable corner of the desert, and so there had always been visitors looking to make their play at gaining entry to the pack, or else scraping a bit of the des Peres territory off and claiming it as their own.

"Oh," said Dusty, pausing to consider the gargoyle's words. The desert had been an inhospitable and somewhat dull backdrop in which to raise young coywolves, but he'd always thought his childhood had been particularly kind.

"Dachs," he repeated, still sorting through his thoughts. Doubtlessly, this would be a word he'd struggle to recall when he next tried. "It wasn't bad," he said, picking his words more carefully, now. "I didn't mean to imply that. Some folks ain't as kind as they could be, but I don't expect it. And I wouldn't even if I was full-blooded. Family's the only ones that owes you anything, and my family's been plenty kind to me."

His bottlebrush tail gave a tentative wag.

"And you all've been kind to me, too," he told the man. "The hardest thing about my nature's that I get real sad when I'm alone. I don't know that lookin' different cuts my odds of finding friends all that much. And even if it did, I found 'em. And so I'm happy."

The coywolf scored the earth with his paws and then bowed down to rub his face and neck over the area.

"What was the valley like?" he asked, steering the conversation away from the more touchy-feely topic. "How come you left?"

dusty rose spoke in clarity and the man nodded, but the boy's question caught him off-guard. such a small thing, such an expected thing in the scope of a discourse. he was thinking of marigold; he was thinking of the children he had never forgotten.
so cloudy were the images nevertheless that mahler could not recall if he had even described them to wylla.
"the valley was small but beautiful. i vas born there and remember the vaterfall by which we denned. but later there vas a fever vich broke out and killed many of the pack," the man said softly, evenly. carefully. "i dispersed after that."
there was nothing left for me there.
mahler cleared his throat. "for vhat it is vorth, dusty, i am glad you are here. i think you make a fine addition to paleo." his lips quirked upward and he gave a answering sway of his tail.

It was a short story, and a very sad one. Dusty Rose gazed at him with soulful blue eyes, appearing empathetic but having no real metric for the sort of pain Mahler carried. And while he was aware this was the case, there was a vast disparity between this awareness and true understanding.

He did understand, very clearly, that this was not a topic that Mahler enjoyed discussing. Dusty didn't make any reply to the tale, because what could he have said?

"Well," said the coywolf, his heart giving a little squeeze at the older wolf's sentiment, "I'm real glad to be here." It was a rare privilege, he thought, to not only walk beside such a wolf as Mahler, but to be appreciated by him as well.


Dusty Rose loped ahead with new vigor, pleased to be patrolling his new home. His batlike ears swiveled to be sure that they were still alone, and then he broached a topic that'd been on his mind quite a bit, lately.

"So. I met Isa the other day," he said cautiously, not quite sure what else to say about the encounter. "She is very..." There was an awkward pause. "... outgoing," he said, employing as cheerful a tone as he could manage. It was, predictably, very cheerful; Dusty Rose hadn't minded her terribly. He only wondered what Mahler had to say about her.

mahler smiled a little, happy to turn to talk of his children. "ah, isa. she is a spitfire," he said with a small laugh. "she is like her mother vhen she sets her mind to something." there was pride in his voice alongside a deep love. "i suppose she had much to say," the gargoyle assumed with a quirk of his mouth.
many imperious things, if he had to guess.
"emmerich is calm in the vays isa is more focused. they are a mirror of each other at times, and completely different in others. and anselm — vell." the man drew a breath and shook out his ruff. "he has dispersed. young for it, but not so that he cannot find his vay in the vorld."