Blacktail Deer Plateau i will kill you

Maybe one for @Saena if she has time! :) I've left whether they've talked yet open. Anyone else free to pop in; Pura might just shoo 'em away.

Pura hadn't managed to catch Saēna alone for any significant length of time, and was now desperate for her complete attention. Of all his feelings, and there weren't a great deal, his yearning to be near his sister was the strongest. The emotion manifested itself physically, like feeling the pressure and pop of a tooth being extracted whilst being entirely numb to the pain.

When he couldn't find her, the freckled titan sat down near the ragged plateau edge that Junior had dangled so precariously from and raised his head to howl. It was a flat, robotic sound - more like an owl than a wolf.

Saena was keeping her head down lately. She didn't at all blame Junior for what she'd done—she agreed wholeheartedly with her siblings actions regarding Finley, especially given her shaky interaction with the Redhawk Beta. Saena was simply unwilling to get heat from Dante and Blue Willow for believing Junior'd been right. She kept her usual outspoken ways down for once, hoping she (and her own dislike of the Caldera) would go unnoticed.

She'd thrown herself into Naturalism to keep her mind and mouth off Junior's actions. She'd now accurately predicted the weather four days in a row, and was squinting up at the sky, hoping to make it five. "No snow," she muttered to herself, satisfied with her prediction for the day. Only by evening would she know if she was right.

A strange yet unmistakeable howl broke her away from the sky more than the completion of her prediction did, and within moments she was trotting into Pura's vicinity. He was overlooking the lands below, so Saena approached with a soft chuff to draw his attention. She kept her ears angled toward him, curious what he needed. They hadn't spent much time together since his return, likely her fault more than his, but somehow this didn't feel awkward at all.

Pura's normally flat, stoic expression actually brightened when his sister stepped out of the woods. His ears stood to attention, and the corners of his mouth were taken over by a kind of muscle spasm that must have been the primordial ancestor of the modern smile.

He padded forward, stretching his neck to sniff at the air around his now grown sister. She was lovely, and smelled of forest and cold. It was hard to tell that the two of them were related. Different eyes, different shades, different sizes - as Pura grew, he paled, but to a cold, grey colour that wasn't on the same palette as Saēna's cream.

Satisfied that she was in good health, Pura sat down, studying his sister intently. He wanted to know about her adventure. "Where did you go?"

Her tail waved happily behind her as he recognized her and drew nearer. She was quick to push her face against his, breathing deeply the aroma of their family, which was something she'd thought she'd forget in time. Saena worried when she came back that Pura would never return to his senses and rejoin the pack, but her fears were unfounded. He was here now, in good health, and his coat a good deal lighter than the last time they'd seen one another.

His question was unexpected—Pura had never been one for conversation. She was stunned for a moment, but responded gladly when she regained her composure. "I went south. There was a canyon there, and wildflowers. I needed to get away when... When Kisu left." The effect her true father's departure had on her was much greater than it should have been, considering their relationship was nonexistent. Maybe it was knowing he would abandon his children that caused so much grief.

"Where've you been?" she asked, though she knew the answer to that. Saena'd been told that Pura was living on the edge of their society, reclusive and unwilling to be seen. She hadn't gone looking for him, likely because she feared he would reject her as well.

"I went south. There was a canyon there, and wildflowers. I needed to get away when... When Kisu left."

Pura took some time to digest the information. Like most other things in the young boy's life, Kisu's departure had barely registered - he knew him to be absent, along with Hawkeye and Peregrine, but gave none of them much thought as individuals. Rather, he had experienced the change as a general shift in pack dynamic - an deep and indescribable feeling of something being different.

"Nearby, watching," he responded, staring at her with his big, blank eyes. It soothed him to be near her, like a wet cloth on a feverish forehead. "Will you stay?"

For Pura, change was like a shifting tide. For Saena, it was a meteor shower directly over her head. There was nothing good or kind about change. It had the potential to be a good thing, something the juvenile hadn't lost sight of just yet, but in her experience it was never that. The only changes she'd been through were the sequential losses of each and every family members, save for Pura, who had hidden away for long months and may well be a stranger to them all now.

"Good to have you back," she said quietly as she met his gaze. His eyes didn't unnerve her, though there was a mechanical quality to them that others might find disconcerting. Pura was detached from society and it was likely the fault of the lack of attention from their foster mother and real father, or so Saena thought. It was so easy, so satisfying, to blame them rather than to think Pura had been born wrong.

"I don't plan to go anywhere," she said with a wave of her tail. "This is my—our—home. It belongs to us, you know."

Pura exhaled slowly, releasing tension that he hadn't known himself to be carrying. "Our home," he echoed, taking hold of her words and allowing them to sink into the darkness of his mind to be processed and dissected. Occasionally, snippets of conversation would rise to the surface months later - for no apparent reason, as though his mind was subject to bureaucratic delays. Today, he was sharper.

"That means we should be Alpha," he elaborated, turning his haunting gaze on their surroundings. The stripped-down trees, the sheer drop to the flatlands, and the towering mountains in the east - try as Pura might, he could not leave it, and perhaps it was not just because Saēna lingered. A softer, almost curious look crinkled Pura's expressionless face. He looked back at his sister. "How did Dante become Alpha?" he asked. He had been absent for the shift, but at some point, something must have happened to mark the passing of the crown from Peregrine to Dante.

"At least one of us will be one day," she assured him. Saena hadn't admitted this to anyone yet—that she had her eye on that coveted position of late, that Junior's disappearance had triggered a strong drive to inherit what now fell to her and her brother. He was the only wolf who would know. Sadly, it was nigh impossible for Pura to seize that seat while Dante occupied it, but a coup would never cross her mind, for the ashy male was a friend and not worth harming in that way. However, the Alpha female position was open as ever, and her instincts were beginning to yearn for it as much as her secret heart.

How did Dante become Alpha? he asked, and in response Saena could only offer a shrug. "I dunno. Dad said he was leaving because Fox was dying or something, except I saw her a week later walking around totally cool, fucking liars... oh, right, Dante. Well, he just sorta... became Alpha. I think Aunt Willow told him to." Aunt Willow could tell anyone at the Plateau to do anything, and they would probably do it. She was so sweet-tempered and made friends easily, and yet crossing her was like crossing an alligator.

Besides, Saena preferred it this way. Dante had the strength to tell Peregrine to suck his own dick, something her father probably delighted in doing if she did say so herself. If it had been Blue Willow leading, then they would still be forced to endure their neglectful father's occasional presence and lack of interest in them. Their aunt was amazing, but her soft heart would have been inconvenient then.

Saēna's temper flared briefly - Pura could tell from her language, if not her face. Fox and Peregrine had caused her pain. Blue Willow had told him as much, but to see it demonstrated by the injured party was rather different. He felt a chemical heat in his chest, like the burn of Tiger Balm. When Pura spoke again, he followed her tangent to the Redhawk Caldera, leaving thoughts of leadership to simmer quietly in the background. "You're angry at them." He paused, thinking hard but with no outward signs that much was going on behind his eyes. "We should do something."

"Yeah," she said lowly, unable to hold his gaze for some reason. It wasn't that Saena was ashamed of her anger—no, she hated them wholly and had announced that to the entire world—but, in that moment, the intimidation of Pura's usual piercing stare was too much. It was almost like he could see straight into her soul, to the twisted and writhing part of her that stung so badly from abandonment that it could only whimper now, and like he could decipher its pain without any trace of either empathy or sympathy. It was unnerving.

"I mean... he just showed up one day after going on a long trip, saying she was super hurt and he had to leave immediately. Apparently, he didn't have time to say good bye to me or Tytonidae or you personally, even though he's our dad. He only had time to call everyone together, as if he wasn't just up and leaving everyone. You can't imagine how angry it made me to see Fox totally fine not a week later. It was like... he made some excuse to leave us because she didn't like us.

Then Lasher. He hurt Lasher somehow. Lasher... never told us, really, but he came back to the Plateau and was sad for a long time. Then Finley—do you remember her, she was the weird one—was brought here after being hurt by a bear. Dad came to visit her, but he didn't even come to say hi. He didn't care to even visit us. Or Junior!" Once again, she left out the part where she'd asked Dante not to allow Peregrine to visit her in particular, because it didn't really matter now.

"So, yeah. I'm really angry at them. I hate both of them. She took him away from everyone here, and now he doesn't care about anything else, not even us, his kids." But, unfortunately, she had to tell him that, "there's nothing we can do. Dante already cut ties with them for Junior's sake. We can't do much more than that, and I never wanna see them again, anyway."

Saēna's feelings poured out of her like a blood from a nicked aorta draining into the body cavity of a doomed man. Pura struggled to keep up with the feeling in her voice as it crested and fell, but he understood the tale well enough. In her eyes, Peregrine had failed both his pack and his family, but it was not his face that presented itself to Pura. It was Fox's. She took him away from everyone here. She didn't like us. Next to the image of her leering, red little face, Peregrine's barely registered. The burning feeling in his chest swelled, causing the freckled teen to draw a deep, soothing breath just as his sister concluded her story.

Pura had not registered the detail of their combined loss. It had felt like something pressing on his brain - unnamed and faceless, without source and impossible to fight. He had run from it. Now, something moved silently in that vortex, creeping around the perimeter of his skull. Something small, and red.

"She stole from us," he enunciated slowly, furrowing his peppered brow.

"Yeah," Saena said softly when Pura repeated her own sentiment. In the beginning, she'd wholly blamed Fox as well. Now, Peregrine shared half the blame, though the blame was twice as heavy as it had been before. She hadn't actually thought much about Peregrine or Fox recently, but Pura's frown and words suddenly brought those heated thoughts right back, and the focus was once more Peregrine's wife.

It was Fox who had come to the Plateau and not been satisfied with practically being handed everything she could ever want. She'd stepped into their lands and was made Beta almost instantly, only for Blue Willow to kindly give her Alphaship as well. Saena had spent many hours thinking about it, though not recently, and couldn't come to a conclusion on why Fox should feel unhappy.

She had, after those countless hours, decided that it was because Peregrine's kids were the heirs to the pack. In Saena's story, Fox simply couldn't handle her own brats not being entitled over the Plateau's first litters, and had convinced Peregrine that they had to leave because she was "unhappy". In Saena's story, she was just a greedy little bitch who'd fooled their father into leaving his family and never looking back.

"I wish she didn't exist," Saena tacked on bitterly. "If she'd never come here, everything would've been fine."

The gear's beneath Saēna's big, rust-red ears popped and whirred. Her thoughts moved quickly - hummingbirds next to the vast, slow ships that moved through her brother's mind. Now, their course was set for Fox.

"I wish she didn't exist," Saēna bit out venomously. "If she'd never come here, everything would've been fine."

The words melted into the darkness and disappeared to find friends. He stood silent, suddenly aware of the firmness of the ground beneath his broad, grey paws. They had been standing still for a long time, and Pura felt as though he was beginning to take root. With glacial movements, the vast wolf leaned forward to kiss his sister's feathery cheek. "We'll win," he said in the vicinity of her ear whilst his hind legs unfolded and raised him up. Delivered in his flat monotone, it sounded darker than it perhaps deserved - for now.

Good place to fade? God I love Pura.

Despite the strange quality of what he said, Saena didn't suspect anything in those two simple words. She stood as well, sensing an end to their conversation. It was little more than whining at this point, but the timber wolf female felt it was necessary to share her thoughts on it. The adults had more or less brushed off her hatred of Fox; here, though, was a wolf who would never reduce her concerns to rubble. She'd found that in Junior as well, it ultimately being what tied them together.

"Wanna play tag?" she asked abruptly with a swing of her tail over her hocks. Saena hadn't known her brother to play in a long time, but when they were little he'd tussled with Junior and played games with Tytonidae. Saena had been strangely quiet and inactive, herself, but there had definitely been a time where Pura played, and she sought that part of him now. Without really waiting for a verbal response, she let her chest hit the ground and raised her rump, wiggled it playfully, and then turned sharply and bounded off into the trees.