Sly Fox Sand Dunes you dj, i’ll drive

He doesn’t stay at the caldera long. He only sticks around long enough to tell Towhee about his discovery—Bearclaw Valley is a ghost town, with Jr and her family in the wind—and hear about the latest batch of Redhawks. He also confirms that his madre doesn’t look pregnant. He’s selfishly relieved, though he can’t really pinpoint why, nor does he dwell on it long.

He considers hitting the coast, though something compels him right back east to his sister’s abandoned home. There’s no trace of them as he strides along the edges of the valley. Whatever happened to them must’ve happened weeks or even months ago. There’s not a footprint or a scent trail to be found. This time, he actually ventures inward.

The yearling comes across a pile of rubble where the valley wall must’ve collapsed. Could this be the reason the pack left? He could see why they wouldn’t want young puppies around such a hazard. Bushtit sniffs around the wreckage, the fur along his spine prickling when he definitely gets a whiff of death and decay.

He backpedals swiftly, blinking as the implication hits him. Bushtit sucks in a breath, then whirls and hastily leaves the valley. He doesn’t want to know who died here, who’s even now beneath the rocks. But he has a very bad feeling that his older sister must be among them, otherwise @Towhee Jr would’ve come found her family after tragedy struck.

Bushtit refuses to take this news back to his mother. Instead, he numbly wanders south. He makes it as far as the dunes before stopping, looking toward Verapaz from his perch at the crest of one sandy hillock. The summer wind tugs at his fur, blowing grains of sand into his eyes. He blames them for the tears that gather and well, scorching his pale cheeks.

She's getting tired of this cycle.

Walk alone, eat alone, sleep alone, repeat.

There's so little she can do to change things, not without walking back to the rotting old place. It smells of death now, it forces her to wonder if others remained, if they ate him. She forces such thoughts from her mind; they're much too vile. Mixing up what she hunts has been her comfort, an exciting twist in her mundane life. Today she carries a vulture, having caught the creature off-guard as it was scavenging. So vicious when they want to be, but now in the same state as it's own meals.

Damsel had never ate such a bird before, and as she searched for shade to do so she was frankly curious - and hoping that shade would come soon, the bird was heavy.

Looking ahead, another canine enters her field of view. Lupine, light-coated, young. She stops to watch him for the moment.

He see movement out of the corner of one watery eye. Bushtit turns his head, the sight stemming the flow of tears momentarily. His jaw falls open as he tries to make sense of what he’s seeing: some sort of odd-looking wolf holding onto a very large dead bird. It’s enough of a marvel that it nudges his sister’s family’s fate to a dark corner of his mind as he pivots to fully face the spectacle.

The wind shifts, bringing the peculiar stranger’s scent to his nose. She smells canine, though her fur’s short and her ears droopy. He’s never seen anyone quite like her, that’s for sure. After swiping a paw across his cheek, he begins to descend the dune, tentatively venturing closer as his dark eyes rove over her catch.

Did you shed all your fur ‘cause of the climate here? he guesses by way of greeting, his pale tail twitching. And drop your ears to keep the sand out of ‘em? Good call on both fronts, Bushtit adds, shaking some of the blowing grains out of his own upright ears.

The wolf makes his approach once he spots her, asking questions that make Damsel raise her brow at first. But, as strange as it sounds, she can see why he would think such a thing. A dog with a thinner coat and ears made to block out dirt was likely better suited to a desert than one with thick fur and pointy, open ears. But smart or not, she can only answer the truth. No. Her voice comes muffled through meat and feathers, nostrils working overtime to check out the younger canine's scent through the musk of death she's holding in her jaws. Damsel had never heard of a canine who could drop it's ears and shed it's coat by pure willpower, but she didn't doubt that it could be possible.

Spotting a space darkened by a large sand dune, Damsel made a beeline for the slice of respite from the sun. Keeping her eye trained on the wolf, she hadn't yet decided if he was worth running from, or biting, but she wasn't particularly inclined to do either in this heat. He seemed fine, for now. More 'normal' than the others.

Dropping the carcass before laying with her paws over the wings, she decided to ask a question of her own. Who are you?

She answers with a levity that his unserious questions don’t really deserve. Bushtit arches an eyebrow, the skin of his face feeling puffy and tight. He wipes at his other cheek, wondering if the weird wolf noticed the wetness. She makes no mention of it and says nothing else as she moves toward the shadow cast by the tallest of the surrounding dunes.

She sets down the dead bird and asks a question that strikes Bushtit as out of place, though he can’t explain why it feels that way. It’s not a strange question unto itself, though the phrasing feels more like an interrogation than a conversation. The yearling shrugs his shoulders and pads closer to her again, noting the temperature difference in the air when he slips into the shade. It’s less stifling here, even though the dune also blocks the breeze.

I’m, he begins, prepared to offer his name just like always, when he gets a wild hair out of absolutly nowhere. Ravinder Bevli, he says, pulling the name out of his ass. Who are you? And if you don’t mind me asking, why do you look so different from any wolf I’ve ever met?

Ravinder Bevli? What a strange name for a wolf, sounded more like something she would have heard on a 'doctor' or someone on the light box that used to be in the rotting place. She wouldn't question it, whether or not it really was his name would have no meaning to her sooner or later. Quail. She soon responds, offering up the name used by the others during hunts rather than the one gifted to her. She had failed to notice any tears initially, given she had not looked closely at his face until he neared her once more. A pretty boy - his mother must be proud, Damsel always was.

I don't look like a wolf because I'm not. At the question she quirked a brow; he was joking, right? I'm a hound. Very different. She thought so, anyways. They were from the same tree, but she was born with purpose while wolves were born out of necessity. She had met dogs who acted similarly, but frankly Damsel didn't see the convenience in pulling her off-spring around for a year just for the majority of them to leave.

Tearing into the bird, she thought to ask him what was nearby. Water, she hoped.

She looks different because she’s not a wolf. His head rears back. Is she a coyote then? Or perhaps a fox with a horrible case of mange? But, no, she’s something called a hound. Bushtit remembers one of his lovers calling him a “hound dog” once, though he’d never thought anything of it.

Oh, he says. Today I learned. What, uh… He pauses as she begins eating right in front of him. He promptly loses his train of thought and pivots, asking, Are you alone or are there other hounds around here? Do you guys run in packs?

He must not have met a dog before her then, and if he had she imagined it was one that looked much different than her. I don't know. There were more of us, but we were separated. I'm not usually alone If they were still nearby, she would have known. What about you? I didn't think wolves were solitary. A fair question, she thought. Damsel knew that wolves usually dispersed alone, but didn't they usually go off looking for a partner of sorts? Maybe he hadn't been successful, but he was friendly enough that she found that hard to believe given he wasn't particularly small or misshapen either.

It had been a long time since she spoke to anyone so casually, not since she was living in that berry filled meadow. She missed it.

His head cocks when she tells him she doesn’t know. Again, it seems an odd thing to say. Bushtit doesn’t comment, letting her think out loud. Apparently, Quail doesn’t usually run alone, though she doesn’t elaborate on her separation from her companions. Instead, she asks him about his own status.

Yeah, wolves typically live in packs, but I had a nomadic upbringing so it’s hard to stay in one place. I like being on the move, meeting new people and seeing new sights. You know?

There’s no particular trigger word in there, yet Jr’s fate leaps back into the forefront of his mind then. It comes with a wave of deep sadness. Is she really dead? What about Tvar? And the kids? Gods, he doesn’t want to think about what might’ve happened to them. If they’re all dead, he hopes it happened quickly.

Although sometimes, you see something you wish you could unsee, he murmurs, dark eyes tightening as a pained expression drifts across his face like a stormcloud.

I understand that. The words left her throat with ease, but that didn't mean it felt right to say. Her time alone must really be getting to her. What did you see?

She forgot about her meal for the moment, leaving her focus to Ravinder. She was curious to learn what could have shaken up a beast like a wolf to the point of wishing he could forget; Damsel didn't exactly think that was possible. Then again, this one seemed rather out of the ordinary to what she knew of wolves. Not only was he alone, but he was speaking to her as though he could feel anything at all. Whether or not it was the truth, she was yet to judge.

The cryptic remark seems to stoke her curiosity. But when Damsel presses him, he shakes his head. He sniffs as more tears prick his eyes.

I don’t want to talk about it, he says a little throatily. I’d rather talk—and think—about something else. Anything else, really.

What he wants, suddenly, is some fresh scenery. Bushtit doesn’t want to think about his possibly dead sister or what that news might do to her namesake. He doesn’t want to risk bumping into anyone he knows or go anywhere that will remind him of any of this.

I think I’d like to go sightseeing to the south. I’ve never been further than the lowlands. I could use an adventure to distract me, he announces, apropos of nothing.

He gazes into the distance as he voices this proclamation, though his dark, slightly watery eyes flick to the hound’s face. They drop to the remains at her feet before bouncing back up to catch Damsel’s eye.

If you’re done eating, you could come with me. I wouldn’t mind some company, at least for a little while.

She sees the tears this time, it's hard to deny that he has feelings now. A needle-sharp pang of sympathy hits her heart, and she finds she can't turn him down; maybe because he's young, maybe because she misses her children. I won't ask about it again. She promises.

Looking to the dead bird, she takes another bite before coming to a stand. Eat some, and then I'll go with you. She insists despite herself, If you don't want to feel, eating helps. It was the best solution she knew; rice when she was sick, milk bones when she felt sad, cheese for bitter medicine, soft food when her puppies had to get checked. It always worked for her, and though this wasn't exactly the usual bonus treat it was something relatively different; trash bird.

I’m not hungry, he says, shaking his head again, but thanks. I’ll feel better once I—we—hit the road again.

He wants to go now but he exercises some patience to let Damsel eat her fill. She’s promised not to try to get him to talk about what’s on his mind, which he really appreciates, and he thinks it bodes well for whatever amount of time they end up spending together.

While he waits, he pads back to the crest of the dune and peers in a southerly direction. What’s out there? More desert? Another ocean? Something else entirely? Bushtit has never really left the Teekon Wilds. He knows he’ll be back, but he’s suddenly so eager to get away from this place for a little while.

Want to wrap and/or archive here? I’m giving him a short break so you’re welcome to infer whatever you like re: what they get up to behind the scenes. :)