Big Salmon Lake Sharknado

Peregrine felt weak with relief now that Wildfire was back. He had been terrified that she had gotten lost in the catacombs deep beneath the caldera, lost forever and left to die a grisly death in the darkness. Luckily, that wasn't her fate (nor Nightjar's, for that matter). Their little Dhole was hungry, tired and a bit shaken from the experience, yet it was nothing that a bit of food, rest and reassurance couldn't fix. As Gamekeeper and Caretaker, he saw that she had plenty of the former and latter and he only left her side when she succumbed to the third: sleep.

She had regaled her family with the tale of her misadventure, which included the description of a partially destroyed Big Salmon Lake. Having taken inventory of the damage to his own home, Peregrine couldn't resist the urge to venture out to see for himself. As he made his way there, he couldn't stop thinking about a certain silver wolf, either. According to Wildfire, Dante had helped her find her way home and hadn't touched a hair on her head. In fact, the way she talked about him, it almost sounded like his daughter had her first crush.

Peregrine didn't know what to make any of that, so he focused on the road ahead. The lake was still a ways off but the Alpha wolf could already detect the rank stench of rotting fish.

Using the ravens and crows as NPCs and will refer to a few of them by name.

While she had the urge to return back to Blackfeather, Potema thought that it was her duty to find a stable food source for the pack before they dared relocate. Lusa and her pups must be in shock, and she did not know who else was injured or sick. They needed to regain their strength.
 
It was a blessing, then, when the ravens and crows began taking flight, a large number of them heading northwest. From the few days she spent with them, listening to them talk, she began to understand a few calls and commands, with the help of the wolf-speaking members of the flocks, of course. She was a fast learner, and took off after the dark cloud, her belly rumbling as she recognized the call: Food! Food!

They were going to a small lake, west of the ever familiar Greatwater, the name of she did not know. She had not journeyed west much in her lifetime, always focusing her eyes north. The smell of rotting fish hit her first, a pungent, revolting smell to her, but to the corvids, it was a feast. As the lake entered her view, she could already see black figures diving to the nearly dried up lake, tearing apart the rotting fish that lay on the outline of the lake's former shores. From the look of the grass she had passed on her way here, she could only say that the funnel made its way here, sucking up the water as it went. What a sight that might have been.

She walked towards the remains of the lake, her nose wrinkling at the smell, her single eye observing the state of the water. Brackish at best, but water it was. It would fill her up until she found a proper kill.

When he arrived, he found himself in the company of a young she-wolf and a veritable cloud of ravens or crows (he didn't know the difference). Peregrine hung back for a few moments, watching the birds go crazy over the rotting fish strewn everywhere, then shifted his jade eyes to the strange canine. From here, he could only see that she was small and pale, not much else. It was difficult to discern a scent above the fetid stench of seafood gone bad.

Careful to maintain some distance, Peregrine picked his way to a spot on the shore further down from her, then glanced sideways. That was when he noticed her eye, as well as her youthful features. She didn't look to be a yearling yet, though he wouldn't try to guess her exact age. He still couldn't capture her scent, though he knew she must be from a pack, probably one of the southern ones. If Peregrine discovered she was actually from the north, perhaps even waylaid by the storm, he wouldn't let her age stop him from hastening her away from his neck of the woods.

But for the moment, he said nothing, waiting to see if she would notice and acknowledge him first.

The girl lapped at the brackish water, her eyes screwing up in disgust at the muddy water, but she had nothing else for the moment. The fish was too badly rotten to even consider eating, but that did not stop the crows and ravens - they were carrion birds, after all.

After finishing her rather disgusting drink, Potema backed away from the water's edge, hoping that she did not retch anytime soon. The white princess licked her mouth, wincing at the bad taste, for a few moments before she became aware of another wolf in the area.

He was an adult, older than her, but younger than her mother and Burke. She paused from her cleaning, her good eye focusing on the male warily. The corvids ignored him, too focused on filling their bellies, leaving Potema to confront the black male alone. "Are you from around here?" She asked, deciding to be courteous. "I guess this lake used to be a lot bigger, huh?"

She drank from the brackish lake and Peregrine grimaced slightly. While he waited on her, he felt a small throb behind his left eye. It was bothersome and caused him to shake his head, as if he might dislodge the pain somehow. Strangely, it seemed to work. It eased away before it could become a full-blown headache, though its cameo still concerned him. What was up with all these random headaches lately?

The youth's question sidetracked him. His ears pricked and he faced her fully, black tail twitching. "I am," he said. "Are you? And yes, it was. It's kind of a shame." The once beautiful lake was reduced to a swampy stink hole now, though perhaps the next rain would freshen it up a little.

Woah...does Peregrine have a tumor? Or is it something else?

And again, a raven perched on her back, content in its placement after its meal. Being stranded from her pack in the company of crows and ravens almost forced them to have a more comfortable relationship. The black birds liked to land on her back every once and a while; perhaps it was because of her soft fur. One raven in particular, one of the Matriarch's children, kept returning, almost claiming Potema as her personal perch. Potema didn't mind so long as they did not poop on her (which, fortunately, they have not done).

"I live nearby, but I've never been to this lake before." She shifted into a sitting position, prompting the raven to squawk indignantly before moving onto Potema's head. The girl pouted, wincing at the raven's talons. "They've taken a liking to me, these birds." The raven cawed in agreement.

When a raven came to land on the youngster's back, Peregrine's hackles bristled. But she didn't shoo away the bird, so his mistrustful disgust shifted from the raven (or crow?) to the child instead. What wolf would tolerate that sort of thing? Even with his family's special naming convention, Peregrine would never stand for a bird using him as a roost. He didn't like it.

"I can see that," he murmured in response to her remark. "Was it one of them that did that to your eye?" he wondered, half-joking. Before she could answer, he added, "What is your pack called? And what are you called? My name is Perry." She wasn't so young that she would have a tough time pronouncing his full name but something about her sylphlike appearance was making him soften, despite her strange relationship with the blackbirds. It helped that he had daughters around her age back home.

"Yeah. One of them attacked me when I was smaller. It was trying to eat me I guess. Blinded me." The scars on her eye was larger than anything a raven could manage, but one could attribute that to tearing, if they wanted. "I managed to tear it's eye out, somehow, when I fought back. They've had some kind of respect for me ever since. The raven that attacked me was one of the leaders, I think." 

Perry sounded like a nickname to her; she couldn't imagine naming a kid Perry and just that. She wondered what it was short for. "My name is Potema, from Blackfeather Woods." She had not been made aware of the hatred that was associated with that name, other than the fear most wolves had for the forest. She wouldn't know how to react if the wolf responded angrily to the reveal of her birthplace. "What about you?"

He hadn't expected her to confirm his suspicions; he had been joking, more or less. He grimaced again at her gruesome tale and felt even more appalled by her camaraderie with the blackbirds. In any case, she had wrought her vengeance upon the assailant in question and, according to her, this had won the birds' respect. How strange.

"An eye for an eye, eh?" he quipped rhetorically, then paused for a moment to contemplate the information given. The name didn't strike fear in his heart by any means, though he didn't have the best impression of her pack. At least they were from the south. He wouldn't have to chase her off on those grounds, though his cordiality would have its limits regardless.

"I'm the Alpha of Redhawk Caldera," he replied. "Were you born there? Do you like it?" What did the adults think about the ravens (or crows) feeding on the eyes of their young, he wondered?

"Yeah." She smirked, almost looking meek as she shrugged in agreement. She liked this story much better than the "I don't know, I can't remember" spiel. It made her the mystical girl who communes with black birds. She liked that much more than the pitiful girl who was attacked and can't remember what happened.

"I was." She didn't see why she shouldn't? It was all she had known for moons. The darkness was comfortable to her, and the caws of the crows and ravens were merely in the background most of her life. Until now. "And I do like it. But it looks different now, after the storm. The wind funnel —does it have a name?— came past us, but the storm messed us up regardless." She didn't go into specifics, but figured the mere mention of the storm was enough. "What was that thing anyway? Have you ever seen something like that before?" He was older, so naturally she assumed that he knew what the storm was. It wasn't like she had her mother to tell her.

He had been safely tucked underground at the time, so Peregrine hadn't realized an actual tornado had ripped through the wilderness. Now that she mentioned it, it did make total sense. As a matter of fact, he had seen one once, albeit it had happened out over the ocean back home in Flightless Falcons. It had been quite a sight, equal parts fascinating and frightening.

"It's called a tornado. I saw one once, when I was younger. I lived near the ocean. They're called waterspouts when they happen there." His tail twitched thoughtfully. "How badly did it damage your home? Is your family safe?" He wondered who her parents were and almost asked but Peregrine decided he probably wouldn't know their names even if she provided them, so why bother?

She tried to imagine what that tornado must have looked like over the ocean. From her time learning how to swim with Charon, she had garnered some respect for the vast body of water alone. With the addition of a massive funnel of wind spinning rapidly on the water's surface, her respect would have grown tenfold. "Tornado, huh?" She repeated the words, tasting it on her tongue. It was foreign and unfamiliar, but fit, in a way.

"There's a swamp nearby our home. The rains hit us so hard that the swamp flooded." Her nose wrinkled as she remembered smelling the swamp being stirred and pushed into the relatively clean and dark forest. She had not seen the swamp waters...but who would want to? "I remember hearing trees falling as well." The hope that no one was crushed underneath one was still hanging in the air. She had not returned in a few days, taking it upon herself to scout out for more food and herbs for the pack (while in reality it was a chance for her to be free for a while). "What about your...Caldera?" Again she fumbled around an unfamiliar word. "Did the storm hit you?"

Potema didn't mention her family, though she spoke of a flooded swamp. Peregrine bet that smelled a bit like this place: like shit. He didn't say this out loud, though. She was curious about the damage to his own home. They'd had some flooding as well and definitely some fallen trees. The high winds had also blasted part of the caldera's rim, draining the lake somewhat. None of it was too terrible, though they hadn't quite gotten away unscathed.

"We took some damage, though nothing too significant," he reported. The Alpha paused, then said, "Potema, if you don't mind my asking, who are your leaders?" More likely than not, her leaders were also her parents, though that wasn't an entirely foregone conclusion. He wasn't that interested in these wolves, he sort of just wanted to file the leadership's names away for reference, especially because of their proximity.

The raven on her head flew away, disinterested in the dull, generic conversation the two wolves had. Why listen to that bull when there was food to be had? Potema barely registered the departure, focusing instead on the conversation at hand. Perry's pack, the Caldera wolves, had gone unscathed. It occurred to her that she had no idea what a Caldera was. It had to be a landmass, of course; that was the accepted trend for pack naming in Teekon. Was it just a fancy word for a mountain? Potema didn't bother asking him and extending a rather routine conversation between two wolves from different packs.

"My mother, Meldresi, is the Alpha Female. Her mate Burke is the Alpha Male." She didn't dare say that Meldresi was missing. Not that she didn't trust Perry not to invade her pack because of their metaphorical gaping wounds, but she didn't want pity. First she got it because of her eye, and if she ever said that her mother was gone and possibly dead? Pity bomb, right there. "For the record, he's my step-dad." The question of whether other packs had similar situations with pups being fostered by another parent came to mind. Her brothers and her wouldn't be the only ones, right?

Peregrine jumped slightly when the raven suddenly took wing. His jade eyes tracked it as it rose into the air, then they drifted back to Potema's face. He found himself staring at her blind eye as she spoke. He dimly registered the names. Something niggled in the back of his mind but he couldn't put his finger on it. He knew about Sebastian's father by sight and description, yet if he had ever put a name to the face, he didn't make the connection now. Meldresi's name was similarly familiar, yet only vaguely. There was a slight and subconscious sentiment of distaste associated with both.

Potema made it very clear that Burke was not her father but rather her stepdad. "Ah," was his only comment. He was an old hand at blended families but didn't necessarily feel like swapping stories on the subject. "Do they know you're out here alone, making nice with rivals?" he wondered. Coming from another wolf, the phrase might have been a subtle threat. Peregrine didn't really mean it that way, yet the more he studied her face, the younger she looked. It was dangerous out here, even if her young appearance just made him less likely to get aggressive, personally.

Potema felt uneasy as Perry focused in on her blind eye. Anything concerning the disabled optic unnerved her, especially if she felt someone on her blind side. It was a consequence of her handicap she was still getting used to, but her hackles raised slightly, and a pit of uncomfortableness welled in her stomach.

While Perry didn't mean it at as a threat, Potema certainly read it so. She had no clever response to whip out, as her mother or Burke might have done. So instead, she frowned slightly. "They don't mind if I'm alone, so long as I come back soon." Which she had not done in the slightest. "I don't encounter strangers much, either. Especially not now, after the storm." With her crows and ravens — yes, she started to refer to them as "hers" — she had no reason to fear enemies if they dared attack. They would either alert her or help attack her attacker, whoever that was. "Does your family know you're wandering about after a major storm, talking to little girls?" She redirected the question back to him.

Potema might not have considered herself witty, yet when she turned the question back on him, Peregrine laughed out loud (something that didn't happen often with strangers!). "Are you insinuating I'm some sort of creep? I have two little girls back home. They're around your age. But touché. I guess I'll be going then." Still smiling, he shook his head lightly and began to turn. "Bye, Potema."

He would be glad to put the stench of dead fish behind him. Actually, he couldn't smell it anymore because of scent satiation and all that. It was probably clinging to his fur, though. He would have to take a bath before he went home to his family. He should probably suggest to Potema to do the same but when he turned, he was already too far away to shout. Oh, well. Her pack's territory was now a swampland, so maybe it didn't really matter.

Potema had no knowledge of pedophilia in the slightest. She had meant it in that he was wasting time talking to a little girl (teenager, really) instead of helping his family. She would have never called him a creep — he was actually quite nice for a stranger and a "rival". The girl blinked curiously, both at his laugh and the sudden knowledge that he was a father (she should have suspected, anyway).

His departure was sudden, but not uncalled for. "Bye," She called to him as he walked away, leaving her alone with the birds, who suddenly took off, back to the Mesa. Potema followed after them, not looking back at the remainder of what might have been a pretty looking lake.