Blacktail Deer Plateau reporting the patterns row by line

For @Osprey. I meant to have this up last night but instead I passed out haha. :C

The days had begun to length noticeably, for a change. If there were ever any indications that spring was heading towards them, it was that alone. The warmer weather beget it as well. Though the grassy climes of the Plateau still retained the worn, washed out hues of the autumn behind them, Mordecai felt confident they had all weathered through the winter. And it had seemed that this pack had prepared itself well just in case, very much in the way that he had made certain that the Spine would have.

But the thoughts of Ouroboros were not in his head as he wove his way through a forested patch of ground. Dante had given him a loose tour of the grounds and now, Mordecai found himself exploring it much in the loose tour he had been given. Retracing the steps that he and his companion had taken, the tawny Ostrega had delved off into the grove all on his own out of interest. What could have been in there? Anything, he presumed. There were densites scattered all around, though Mordecai held no interest in taking one for himself. He had long slept beneath the stars, weather conditions poor or not.

puscifer — the weaver

Osprey had once swapped stories with a very old wolf, who had lost most of his teeth during hir life and, whose once black fur was peppered with white. But the most extraordinary feature about him had been his beard - or goatie that had made him stand out among other wolves. But it was not his beard or other features about his looks that made Osprey remember him. No. It was tale of Hunger demons that were characterized by compulsion to eat a lot - anything and everything. Even other demons. They were capable of possesing people. And in regards of her insatiable hunger during the past few days, she had begun wondering, if one such pesky demon had not taken possesion of her. It seemed that no matter what and how much she ate, it was never enough.

So it was no wonder that we found Osprey moving through the forest, holding a dead rat by it's tail in her mouth. It was swaying back and forth, therefore it's scent tingled her nostrils constantly and made her drool. She would have gladly gulped it down in one take herself, had she not decided to give it to Blue Willow as a gift. The kids had grown quite a bit and surely a bit of extra-energy would do good. However, the fate would have it that she wouldn't reach her friend that quickly, because as she passed a grove of trees, she caught sight of a vaguely familiar wolf. She stopped and stared at the agouti wolf, her ears perked up and forward, brow furrowed and the rat still in her mouth. Instead of looking all important and serious, she appeared a bit silly. The rat was to blame.

A particular cloaked wolf from the past broke the scenery ahead of him with dutiful fashion. And for a moment, the pair regarded one another with scant familiarity. They had exchanged names but Osprey's eluded him. He remembered her as the hag of the woods, hailing briefly from a place that was more overgrown than anything else.

With a meal tucked away in her mouth though, she was quite comical. A narrow smile broke his clean demeanor, and all Mordecai could offer her was a slight cant of his own head, as though to suggest he wasn't sure what she was doing with such a large rodent. Did she intend to shove it away in a cache somewhere? Or maybe it was hers for the taking; she had struck him as modest enough not to be boasting and broadcasting her find.

"Does the rat have a story?" he quipped instead, offering her a wave of his bushy tail.

"Holy cow!" Osprey exclaimed, letting the dead rat fall to the ground. She recognized the man from an encounter a very, very long time ago. Had it not been the horror story she had told him, she would not recall him now. But she did, even if the story itself had faded from her memory a bit. "It's you, wow!" she couldn't explain, why the happiness of seeing a person, who was a mere acquaintance of hers, was building up in her chest, ready to explode. With her tail wagging she closed the distance between them and did the formal greeting ritual, but with more emotion.

"When did you come here?" she asked him, retreating few steps to give him some private space and skipping the answer to his question about rat and it's story. "I mean... weren't you part of another pack?"

Recollection spurred through her then; the rat fell towards the ground forgotten and before Mordecai could see where she was close up and personal with him. He welcomed the interaction briefly, but also took comfort in the space she gave him. Her reaction to him, a mere acquaintence, was much more jovial and lively than what he would have expected. But to be received warmly, a relative newcomer in their territory, that mattered. It warmed him, prompting a wider smile and a hearty wave of his tail. And then, there were her questions at hand.

"A few days ago, I think," he said, making a guess. Mordecai hadn't kept track of the time. "I haven't wandered in too far until now, spent a little time outside of the territory picking up on some things that had changed." He wouldn't lie that he hadn't delved straight into the inner workings of the Plateau pack. For all intensive purposes, he was still an outlier. The time would come where he would meet them all, or at least the fair majority. Until then, he was content to explore and pick back up on the herds that roamed the flatlands.

That aside, it was good to encounter another familiar face, even one fuzzy from the halls of memory. "I left the pack I was apart of a few weeks ago with another. Wanted to go traveling again, since the winter's stayed mild. Dante's an old friend of mine, hence why I came here in the end." He left the details of turning over the Spine out, unknowing whether or not she had ascertained his status, or even if their meeting had been during his leading stint. It had been a long time. "How have you been? Still haunting forests?"

"Wow - I hadn't even noticed that," Osprey said this more to herself than to Mordecai. Her time was divided between wandering outside the plateau's borders or doing single-hunts on her own. This also meant that she wasn't on top of track of things. It also made her realize that, if this fellow had spent here few days here already with her finding that out only now, then there probably could be other people she wasn't aware of too.

"Got the wanderlust?" she commented with an understanding smile. Life in the pack could get boring and mundane at times and breaking out of it was like taking a gulp of fresh air. She did it on daily basis - shorter or longer exploring sessions of the surrounding territories was all she needed for this "lust" to be satisfied. Maybe Mordecai was a similar in this aspect.

"As you see - these have been my primary haunting grounds for almost a year now," she said with a fond smile, pleasantly surprised that he had remembered some details of their last meeting. "I give blessings, cast spells or curses depending on the mood. So beware," Osprey warned him, a playful grin in her lips. "Did you see a lot, while you were away?" being unable to leave the Wilds herself she was always curious about the journeys others had made.

Wanderlust was certainly the thing that had afflicted him. It was something that thrummed lowly in him, even now. Though in a sense, Mordecai had seen most of what there was to see. He had crossed deserts, he had seen the ocean. He had climbed over mountains and nestled down in valleys. But no two structures were ever really the same thing and who knew what secrets they kept locked within. For a moment, he matched her playful grin, musing on what sort of blessings and curses she really could bestow on the hunting grounds. More than likely, something beneficial.

"More mountains and valleys, mostly," he commented, letting out a breath. "There's a couple of major rivers to the north that I didn't dare cross over with this winter. Eventually came around to the coast and followed it back to here. More or less," he chuckled. There had been some breathtaking vistas, including some he would not have seen if not for the company he had kept during that time. "There's a few packs out that way too, but I still think this region takes the cake on that. How have things been for you?"

When Mordecai tossed the question about, how Osprey had been doing during this time, back at her, she didn't know, what to say at first. It was true that he was one of the few people she liked a great deal, even though knowing very little about their lives, but then again this level of "I like you" did not go deep enough to discuss private matters. Heat had been the most recent and adventurous event, but it didn't feel like this was something she could speak openly about without feeling a little bit embarrassed. Before that? Hmm....

"I am doing well, thank you," she chose the most neutral path. "Blue willow - our beta - gave birth few weeks ago. Been busy bringing food to her, and I am excited to finally see the kids in daylight," true, it was hard to tell any of them apart in the darkness of the den. "Have had my bouts of wanderlust too - just few days ago I returned from a lengthy journey around this part of the valley. Glad to be home though," she didn't elaborate on details. "So - are you here to stay in the long run or just stopping by?"

Osprey was forthcoming in many of the things that had gone on. He had heard from Dante about the puppies that had been born, though the majority of the details of that hadn't come up. Partly because Mordecai hadn't asked, but partly because there had been many other things that interested him to talk about. It was only now that he gave it the attention that it deserved, and a small smile spread evenly across his face at their mention. In time, he supposed he would meet them too.

"A bit of both, I suppose," he commented in response to her question of how long he would stay. "I promised Dante that I would stay until the spring, but who knows, I may end up here longer than that." A chuckle left him, as he really hadn't put much thought into it. His staying there for any length would dependent upon many things, wanderlust being chief of them. But there was also the matter of how the pack would warm to him too, and he them.

"Is there anything I should be aware of?" While Dante had clued him in to a few things, Mordecai preferred to obtain his information manually. And he supposed if anyone would know, other than Dante himself, it would be someone who was from the pack and someone who at least thought decently of him.

Mordecai didn't promise anything for the future, stating indirectly that he rather enjoyed living today and not planning much ahead. He did it with such an ease that Osprey secretly envied him for that. During the last year she had given and broken so many promises in this regard and messed quite a lot things up, by simply getting up and leaving (or deciding to stay behind) that she felt obliged to people now to give her word about staying for good. Until the kids were grown up enough to fend for themselves at least. Having friends and family came with a cost and for every thing you gained, you also had to give up on something.

"Regarding packmates?" she asked him to be sure, because otherwise plateau was the most uneventful place in the world. Won't find whirlwinds and earthquakes here. "Well... there is Blue willow - our beta - who I already mentioned, who is very nice and caring. I think that you two would get along. There is Lasher - he has a bit unorthodox way of life, but he has a very captivating personality and... he makes you feel special during a conversation," here she blushed a little beneath her fur, recalling their first and only face to face encounter.

"Saena - she is a white wolf with red markings and blue eyes - hard to miss, when you meet her. She has got quite a personality, but means well," she didn't want to elaborate on this. She didn't hold a grudge against her, but couldn't say that things between them were fine and settled either. "There is Pura - her brother - who keeps to himself most of the time. Koda and his mate Kesuk - regular people," she shrugged, not knowing a better term for that, since she didn't know the two too well. "And... Finn and Valtyr... I think that you would get along, not that I have any knowledge about odd personality quirks," that was probably it, though she furrowed her brow in order to remember, if there was anyone she had left out.

Much to his surprise, Osprey filled him in on the others of the pack. Mordecai welcomed this information easily, paying attention to the names and features that she dropped about. There was no doubt he would forget little details in the mix of it all, but what she did share was most informative. From what she told him, he would also make his own opinions of them as well. Provided he had the opportunity to meet all of them; there were always those who strayed, or simply stayed out of the sight of others. Both Silvertip and the Spine had been good for that, yet here he found more of a sense of cohesion he felt the other places had lacked.

"Thank you," he said, "it sounds like you've pretty much gotten to know everyone here." A smile played easily on his features. If she had missed anyone, it wasn't like she couldn't add to the list as time went on. And with as much as she knew, Mordecai would not have been surprised if she wasn't highly ranked herself. It seemed to come with the territory of knowing the others, though her entertaining and intriguing nature more than certainly helped that as well.

"Mind if I accompany you while you drop off your present? I'm still getting the lay of the land here, so to speak."

After Osprey had given brief descriptions of all the dwellers of the plateau, she went over her words again in her mind, just to be sure that the way she had described them had been accurate. Just like in any pack - where there were many strong individuals, there was also room for conflict and disregard for other's views. And the way she got along with each of them was different. Some - like Blue willow and Dante - were her friends, so it was natural that she saw them in a better light. That she favoured them more than the others. Then there were people like Saena - Osprey didn't particularly like her and she had no idea, where they stood after the "showdown" a week ago, yet there were a lot of qualities to admire in the girl and she meant well, even if it meant to feel dislike for her aunt. Then came the "gray matter" - all the acquaintances with whom she was on neutral or friendly terms.

No - in the end she had not been too biased in expressing her views. All was correct and Mordecai had the room to make his own decisions and first impressions, when she met them. He reminded her kindly about the dead rat that lied forgotten by her feet and her initial purpose. "Sure - except I won't be able to talk much, while carrying it," she picked it up though and then realized that maybe the man wanted her to shut up. Oh well... She beckoned him to follow her and took the course towards Willow's residence.

"Sure - except I won't be able to talk much, while carrying it," she picked it up though and then realized that maybe the man wanted her to shut up. -- oh man, I didn't realize that could be taken that way, lmao. I HOPE OSPREY DOESN'T FEEL THAT WAY FOR LONG. ;~;

Falling in somewhat behind and to the side of her, Mordecai easily let her take the lead. It gave him a chance to follow someone who at least had a better idea of where the paths were. They were off at an easy lope, one in which he allowed himself to drift thoughtlessly and take in the sights around them. For the most part, it was forestry, dotted and lined with ridges and stones left unturned. The Plateau was an older feature of the area, he suspected, and however long the pack had been there was beyond him. It may not have even been the first incarnation of a pack there, either.

"You know, I've been by the plateau many times, but I have to say there's more to it than I imagined," he said, aware that she was liable not to answer him. It was fine all the same to time, because he could do the talking. "I suppose if not for Dante, I would not have come here either." If not for a lot of things, he wouldn't have been there. He could have very easily just kept going up the coast, past the Wilds, long before the Bay and the Sound were formed packs intent on keeping their territory safe.

But he hadn't, he had been drawn inward, towards the mountains. And the rest was history after that. Which prompted him to ask her another question, one he hoped she would at least be likely to share. "Were you born here?"

Osprey was not upset at all. If one had a mind full of ideas, opinions and theories multiplied tenfold by vast imagination, then he or she liked to talk long and in detail, without noticing that the other party had lost interest or felt overwhelmed. As she had got older, she had got better in reading these subtle signs (making as much correct, as well as false assumptions) and knew, where and when to stop. She didn't mind, if people wanted for her to slow down or stop completely. It was beneficial in a way.

She kept the pace steady, occasionally glancing back to see, if Mordecai was following and not got lost or eaten by an invisible beast along the way. Sometimes you can tell the value of the person by, how comfortable the silence between you is. Much to her surprise - while they weren't talking - she felt at ease. Not obliged to clear the silence, rather enjoy it. Whether the man felt the same way, was to be found out, but she felt happy nonetheless.

He spoke well of her home and, since being a long term resident here, who was fond of the place as a mother was to her child, she felt herself swell with pride. Osprey regarded him with a smile and then, when he asked a question, she put the rat down and replied: "No... I was born far far away from here. A nice place and similar to this one in a way. What about you? Are you the true child of these wilds?"

They paused, only this time so Osprey to deposit her catch long enough to answer him. She hadn't been born there, much to his surprise. Like so many others, she too had come from somewhere far away. It was a curious sort, to wonder why there weren't any native creatures other than the ones that inhabited it all now. Perhaps they were the new settlers in a bizarre world, for all he knew.

"No, I'm not from around here either. The place I came from is quite a bit different from here," he answered, thinking of Sedona. The Wilds was truly a different place than the one he had grown up in. It was different than most of the places he had ever gone. And there were times when he wondered how the scrublands were doing, but truth be told he had no interest in going back to find out.

There probably were packs that had been here since the very beginning, that there were true natives among the majority of those, who had come here from various parts of the world. On the other hand - did it really matter, where you came from? Osprey considered herself a "native" just as much as anyone else. This was her home now, she loved it and it felt like she had been here all her life and not only the past year. Everything flowed and nothing stood still after all. There was a constant motion and maybe those, who had been born here once, had wandered away to live somewhere else, giving a chance for someone else to settle.

"Intresting, do tell!" Osprey asked him, picking up the rat and resuming her walk, while keeping her ears open to listen, what Mordecai would tell about the land, where he had been born in.

As Osprey once again gathered up the rat to carry, Mordecai found himself trying to recall just what the span of Sedona really was. Sedona was more than just the name of the territory, he supposed, though he couldn't have said where the name had really come from. "Bear with me, it'll take me a moment to remember," he said with a chuckle as they started off. But in all actuality, it didn't take him long to remember some of the key places of his youth. Places that for the most part, Mordecai had yet to really find again in such a unique formation.

"I was born in the south. Pretty far south, if you think about it, because we only saw snow for a short while. Only in the mountains, too, never down low in any valleys or rivers like here," which in a lot of ways, already made the difference between the southwest and the Wilds very different. "My parents helped to hold part of the territory together when they first came there, along with my older siblings. Lots of sand and grit there, not a lot of shade during the summer months. We had forests, but nothing like these. Decent sources of water, though those had their moments of being rough too." He trailed off unexpectedly, finding that the picture he described was hardly anything attractive. He chuckled.

"I guess you could say in comparison, my birthplace is a much more harsh environment compared to here. My mother always said that her parents said that a long time ago, it was much more than a harsh environment. It was down right deadly. But I guess things change over time, seeing how it's more of a warm oasis that has benefited those who stayed there." And the truth of it was, Sedona was much larger than it had been when his own grandparents had lived there. The histories and intricacies of such were lost to him, however. "There's mountains, and a crater, canyons, it was pretty varied in terrain." A shrugged followed the end of his statement, though Osprey would have not seen it. "There's a lot of it I don't remember any more. I left… a long time ago, really."

And eventually, he suspected he wouldn't remember it at all in the end.

While Mordecai described his homeland, Osprey walked by his side in silence and listened. If someone could have had a look in her mind, they would see a blank page and colorful pencils lying nearby. Every time she caught an important detail of, how her companions homeland looked like, she picked up one of those pencils and drew. Bright yellow sun in the corner of the page, orange-brown sand and small hills in a scattered pattern. She used the grey to draw the tall forms of mountains in the distance. When it came to forests, she could not decide between dark or light green, because it was not easy to imagine, what could a forest look like if... it was not like a regular forest to begin with. Eventually she chose the dark green - here and there small "stick-trees" appeared.

What was it like, when water was not available all the time. She did not know - eventually she drew a small, blue lake and sitting on it's banks - a brown wolf smiling. Mordecai. Oh - and to finish the picture - white clouds and a volcano crater in the background. The latter seemed to be out of place in the beginning, but it had to be there. Done! Her inner-self put the pencils aside and retreated few steps to see, what she had created. In the real time she smiled (even though it looked a bit awkward with the rat between her jaws and all) and cast a glance of appreciation to her companion.

They had arrived to their destination and Osprey left Mordecai to approach the den on her own. She tried to catch a sound of anyone being there, even woofed to announce her arrival, but no one appeared. Therefore after a little thinking, she put the rat by the den's entrance and then returned. "Don't want to wake them up, in case they are sleeping," she told him. "What do you want to do now?" she was open to suggestions and had plenty of free time.

He lingered several meters away, waiting and listening to see who would come out and greet Osprey. None did, much to his surprise, but she soon returned with a fair reason. He had little doubt in his mind that puppies in themselves were exhausting and that the potential parents — should both be inside — were probably napping just as easily as their cubs. With that little task out of their way, he debated over options from the prompt she gave him. What could they do? There were plenty of things available to them, many that pulled at the strings of his interest.

"I'm up for a bit of exploring if you are," he decided. "There's quite a bit of the plateau I haven't seen yet." An eager wave of his tail followed such because at his core, Mordecai was very much a bold explorer. And given that Osprey had a fair lay of the land in his opinion thus so far, he had no doubts that she knew some exciting vista that would be appeasing. Dante had already touched upon some of the more familiar gathering grounds, but at Mordecai's own request had left most of the locations left undiscovered.

When Mordecai expressed his wish for a bit of exploring, Osprey's face lit up. It was not often that you met with a soul that was as eager to go on adventures as she was. There were people, who joined it out of courtesy, but it was evident that they lost all interest after a while. She - on the other hand - loved long trips without time limitations. It was a lot more exciting, when you could go, wherever the path took you and didn't have to worry about getting back. And getting lost was not an inconvenience, rather a chance to experience something new.

"All-righty," she beamed at him and after a little thought beckoned him to follow her in a direction that led past Blue willow's den to the territories that lied near the base of the mountain. "What would you say about seeing a Lauren's nest?" she looked back at him and quirked an eyebrow.

Writing this from my phone... sorry for any glaring weird typos lol...

Once more they headed off, this time trailing towards the north. At the mention of a Lauren's nest, his interest was undeniably perked. "Can't say I've ever seen one," he said after a moment of thought. Now he had heard of such creatures like trolls, but they had always come in the form of childhood stories. So in a way, he did have his skepticism, but wasn't about to discredit the theory. After all, what if the reason trolls were stories were because they were all dead? History was funny like that.

"Are there a lot of them around here?" he went on to ask. Perhaps he had even passed by one by sheer accident, unaware of what it truly was.

"Well... some say they don't even exist, but - if you ask me - I am pretty sure that I have seen at least two. And one I encountered - in fact - was here. Not the most beautiful creatures the god has created - the fur all matted and the stench - ugh!" Osprey shuddered, recalling the worst scent she had ever sniffed. It had been a decaying corpse of what had once been a coyote, floating in a shallow pit of water. "But the nests are easier to find than the actual beasts. They tend to keep to themselves," which was a handy excuse for not meeting them in person too often.

"Let's go this way now," she made a turn and now was climbing up a small hillock. Once atop that she stopped to scan the area, then waited for her companion and moved on. "The trolls come in different types, sizes and shapes. The one's that make nests are the big and furry guys. They eat meat just like we do and - occasionally - wolves too. However, there are stone trolls that like to pretend to be rocks, but play pranks on you, while you are not watching. They gobble down earth, moss and small rocks," Osprey told him with such a confidence as if she was the senior expert in Lauren biology.

Osprey launched into an explanation, and Mordecai listened in raptly. The Lauren that she described didn't sound pleasant at all. It led him to believe that's also how she knew where to find their nests, because without much doubt, he felt that their little homes had to be just as smelly. But apparently there were other types of trolls as well, meat-eaters and earth-eaters and the like. Ones that played tricks... which for some reason did not surprise him any.

"You seem to know a lot about them," he commented passively. "There must be a lot of trolls all over the place." And if there were, if they really did exist, then perhaps he too had encountered them without knowing. If there were ones that ate meat and some that ate the ground too, then he suspected there were those that ate the salt of the ocean, and the ice of the mountains. This thought led him to another question to sate some of his wonder.

"Are there trolls in the rivers and lakes too? Ones that could eat turtles, anyway," because hadn't there been that monster in the lake of Ouroboros? Sitri had called it a large fish, but what if he had been wrong — maybe it was a Lauren.

While telling everything she had come up with thinking about trolls, Osprey kept one eye at Mordecai's expression, to understand, whether he liked the game they were playing or whether he was beginning to consider her odd and crazy. If the latter - it wouldn't be the first time it happened. However, he seemed to be genuinely interested in the topic, no matter, how impossible it was. He even came up with theories of his own. Which was another bonus point in Mordecai's good character trait list.

"Nah... there is so little we know about this Other world that co-exists peacefully side by side with ours," Osprey said. "My knowledge about the trolls is a tiny, tiny dot in the bigger picture," she said, believing every word. The longer you lived in the world, the more you learned about it, the better you understood, how very small your knowledge was compared to what you did not know. "Could be," she agreed. Trolls were bound to nature. They could be anywhere. "Except I haven't had the chance to find a lake, where a Lauren lived."

This, however, didn't mean that they did not exist.

As she spoke again, Mordecai caught upon her mention of another world. Or technically, Other World, which apparently coexisted side by side with their present reality. For as intriguing as it was, the thoughts and curiosities it spun off were enough to make his head ache. It was quite a concept, but one that he found he was not entirely willing to devote energy towards. But this was jogged to the side as she said that it was a possibility that these trolls could have lived in bodies of water, to which prompted him to explain further where his question had originally came.

"When I lived in the Spine, we had a large lake within our territory. A wolf there said it was a large fish that lived there, but he was convinced that it would eat us all whole if we tried to swim in it. He said he had seen it devour entire turtles," he stated, pausing for just a moment. "But when we tried to catch this fish, we couldn't. So I wonder if it was a Lauren, just mocking our attempts to catch it." Though in all actuality, it had been a fish, Mordecai was now favoring this possible new thought for a time.