Porcupine Ridge i was listening through the wall when you met your monsters

who wants to get beat up by a busted up guinea pig on steroids??

daylight washed the ridge, earth's honeyed milk pouring over mountaintops and cutting its light across the promontory –- reminiscent of the pale cerecloth of an empress long since passed from this world into the next.

the youth of the day found leif making his mindless, strutting way across the shale, wet nose set to work, snuffing against the rock corrugations underfoot. he had been tracking a peculiar scent for acres, and although he could not put an identity to the suspect, he was bested by curiosity –- as he often was -- and continued haunting the footsteps of whatever critter so captivated his interest.

tongue lolled and raggedy tail dropped between his legs, leif plucked along the ridge-nape, occasionally pausing in his travels to lift his nose to the sky and sample the air for any relic of a clue as to where his quarry could be hiding -- a process for which he was rarely rewarded.

jogging down the wooded slope of the east, the lad was starting to get bored, and just as he was making his exit through the brush, the smell from earlier that now only indistinctly murmured to his senses, suddenly stormed his nostrils with a potency that was equal parts disorienting and exciting. leif jerked his head to attention and strained his ears to listen as the shrubbery ahead trembled.

a massive creature with an ordnance of quills strapped to its back appeared from behind the undergrowth, toddling in a manner that clearly announced to all it encountered, "see this headgar? i gave my mama an episiotomy, wanna see how many ways i can fuck your shit up?"

oddleif reeled backwards on his haunches, ears flying back and his tail clamping against the undersides of his belly. WHOA. what the FLIP is THAT. dropping his head between his shoulders and sniffing apprehensively, leif flit his tongue over his jowls, nervously pacing and panting, slimtorn ears pivoting as he inwardly browsed his "prey or gtfo" vernacular for any trivia about this monstrosity. it looked unstable -- like it was taking a smoke break from an AA meeting after assaulting another member with a chair.

porcupinezilla looked entirely too unconcerned for oddleif to be comfortable with the situation, and the radius between them felt meager. but still.... the varmint looked sort of appetizing. and to be outfitted with all those harpoons, it was obvious to leif that it had to be conserving something that someone else wanted. probably something muy, muy delicioso. and he definitely wanted whatever it was.

circling it shyly, his eyes sharply focused on it's anatomy for signs of any weaknesses that might lend him favor in a confrontation. unfortunately, every last body-part, save for its undersides, carried with it the threat of impalement. leif did not think his head would look particularly handsome on a skewer, so he exercised caution in his movements to ensure that none of his appendages sustained damage from a discharged quill.

the rodent chattered –- snickered, even –- and bristled his mohawk as the brazen wolf loped about him. it's body followed oddleif's gestures, feet shuffling, bay head bowing. did i mention the quills?

becoming increasingly frustrated by the lack of progress, a whining bark erupted from the wolf's throat. he dipped into a play-bow and snapped at the air between them, before scuttle-butting into the bushes and returning again to repeat the performance, each time attempting to grasp at whatever vulnerable flesh was visible to him -- racing off again on hot wheels into the trees.

in leif's charming wee noggin, he was making significant inroads by tiring this creature out. realistically, he wasn't. even more realistically, all of his successes were paid into prolonging the inevitability of so much woeface.

Trips into the Vale were becoming routine for Saena ever since she'd found it. There was history here and it was alluring, but more than that, it was new ground. The Outrider grew increasingly curious about the world outside her home, and though she was loathe to spend great lengths of time outside the steady borders, she often heeded her wanderlust. Blacktail Deer Plateau would always be waiting for her when she got home, and if her recent encounter with Dogmeat was anything to go by, it seemed the mutant, cannibal dogs were either dead or dying. Now that the threat was gone, she was itching to explore more.

Rather than heading toward the white-clothed tree that stood in the Vale's heart, Saena struck out west across the snow-speckled valley, eventually reaching part of the mountain that broke out into sharp, spiny ridges. It was so unlike the smooth mountainside near Blacktail Deer Plateau that for a long while she stared at it, studying every last crack in the steep slope... until movement in the nearby bushes caught her periphery.

Her tongue swept over her lips as she turned to face the commotion, but already the wolf had darted back into the trees. Curious, the mottled bitch slowly stepped forward, only to halt and flinch back when the dog broke through the bushes again. Saena twisted her ears forward and began to sidestep until she'd made an approximate half-circle around where she'd last seen the wolf, then she surged forward and pressed her head curiously through the trees to watch the spectacle.

A porcupine shuffled center stage, uncaring of the wolf that darted in and out with snaps of its teeth. Saena had never seen a porcupine either, but one look at the sleek quills clustered on its back was enough to tell her she would never have confronted it. The wolf, a male cloaked in a motley assortment of browns and greys, darted in and out almost like it was playing with the spiny creature. Barely masking a chortle, the Blacktail settled herself on her haunches to watch, giving no indication that she intended to help the lone male in his ridiculous endeavour.

the recreation of breaking through underbrush back and forth without much in the way of genius, porcupine-slaying breakthroughs was becoming a bit of a bore to him – each failure packed a punch of frustration that collided with the merciful tap of a freight train.

yipping, hind-end scuttling across the pine-litter like some spooked berseker, leif whirled and spun and ducked in tightly-wound circles, spanking the ground with his paws and kicking terrain up beneath him before fleeing one more time into the inner-reachings of woodland

his lighthearted scamper back was halted when the form of another wolf appeared several feet away. oddleif braked and tentatively set his legs in reverse, the mood completely inverted as he was restored to quintessential aloofness.

caught unawares his tail dropped limply between his ankles and his ears shifted with uncertainty on their static mast. lowering his head between his shoulderblades, leif jittered his ivories as a gruff growl-barking noise rumbled his throat. it was not threatening or belligerent in nature – he was not the hostile sort, but rather endlessly apprehensive and fairly so seeing as the reality of an outlier was often an unforgiving one.

circling the porcupine reservedly, the asocialite checked saena out as she "sat in the grandstand" instead of distracting the enraged bull, demonstrating no inclination whatsoever to participate. thankfully, she did not give off the energy of someone who wanted to lop his head and serve it on a silver platter to her commanding officers. her coat pure, a resemblance to albescent wave-foam possessing her entire except for the russet daubed beneath eyes he could not yet pinpoint the color of – some tropical intensity that made him feel uneasy as she looked on.

he hesitated over retreating from the scene, but was nonetheless bent on cracking this case and figuring out who or what tyrannized the stomping grounds he had so impolitely intruded upon. so, he would allow for her unproductive nearness – at least for now.

with the pretty dame clutched in his peripherals at all times, the dirty-blonde failure lowered himself to his belly and changed up his approach, army-crawling closer to the goliathan, rigged-out pinecone and nipped at the thing, blunted click-clackings of teeth punctuating each defeat.

his next technique could be nothing short of negotiation. why in fresh hell had this terrible miscarriage of biology been permitted to walk among them without a single chink in its armor?!