Lost Creek Hollow steam rising from the belly of the beast

open for anyone; for reference this is obviously set several days following mordecai's tango with shardul.

Days and nights had swiftly gone out from under him, though whether or not it had been through a haze of fever, rest, or some rudimentary form of medicine was lost on him.  Where pain had come and gone, restlessness had grown and Mordecai found that his range was severely limited.  If not corralled by Harlyn for making his attempts, he found that he simply lacked the energy and the tolerance to travel; the former with whom he would not argue, and the latter he saw no point in doing so.

Yet propped up in the mouth of some ruddy den, he found himself murmuring silently for the briefest of moments, shifting his weight again to fend of the prickle of stiffness that dared to persist.  At least once the aggravation of not venturing far had provoked him to give a flash of teeth to an early winter squirrel, which had done nothing but split the tear of his lip again.  His eye was swollen and he considered that a most definite unpleasant twist of events, though the understanding of what had occurred and what it spelt out had crested the horizon.  He disregarded it, not entirely willing to see that particular truth — the eye was useless and degrading.

Stretching out his leg as far as he dared, he gently rested his head upon it with a huff. The woodland around him had settled into silence, barring the ambient din of faint bird calls in the overcast day.  Harlyn had spirited herself away for a bit in spite of the damp chill that lingered in the air; the others Mordecai could not account for.  He heard neither them stirring nor their calls, and found the quiet almost overbearing for reasons he could not entirely explain.

murder by death — steam rising

He had heard of the attack, of Mordecai's brush with death itself. The cat had taken not just his leader's eye, but the white wolf's spirits, which had been shredded beneath sharp claws, and crushed between powerful molars. He had failed. He had been entrusted as the pack's beta, and he had not been there, nor had he been able to detect the lurking danger beforehand. It weighed on him heavily.

He had not yet seen Mordecai, but sought him out now. He carried a rabbit, a meager offering, between his clenched and grinding teeth. His fluent, bouncy gait was stiff and somber, his ears had wilted, and his tail was hanging limp. When he spotted the mixed colors of his alpha's coat, prone within the mouth of his den, Luke paused. His toes flexed, his nails digging small trenches in the earth.

With a sigh and a shake of his head he pulled himself forward quietly, until he stood before the hollow's king with his gaze cast at his feet, where the rabbit was also placed. "I'm sorry, Mordecai," he whispered. "I should have been there."

Minutes went by unnoticed and slowly, he had begun to lull himself back to partial rest. His eye half-lidded, he had been on the verge of giving in and going back to sleep when the scattering of leaf litter roused him. It was not a leisure waking either; Mordecai had gone alert as though he had never been anything but awake. The figure that emerged was neither that of Harlyn or another predator in their midst, but the startling white of the blue-nosed Luke.

Silently, he let out a breath as he saw him, attention settling on his stature and the gift he clutched between his jaws. His discomfort was palpable and it rose a cord of tension in Mordecai to hear him speak. His stomach twisted knots for the briefest of moments, hungry, and he reached for the rabbit before answering. His grip on it wasn't the best and prompted him to adjust to compensate, but he drug it closer to him in spite of the poor gauge of perception.

"It could have happened to any of us," he stated, finding a tone of reassurance. "We were lucky... I was lucky." He didn't think Luke had anything to be sorry for — they had learned a valueable lesson.

Mordecai took the rabbit. Luke could not bring himself to look upon his torn face, from the raw empty socket that once housed an eye to the split in his lip. So, his silver eyes remained cast downward, fixed blankly on alpha's paws and the offering between them. Mordecai's reassuring tone did nothing to life his fallen ears, or mend his hurting spirits. He had taken the blame onto himself, not unlike the way he had taken the blame for his sister's demise early in life.

"It should not have happened," he said firmly, his brows pressing down over his eyes. "I am your beta, I should have found trace of the cat. I should have been patrolling more. Hell, I am your outrider..." he swallowed. His words only deepend his guilt, made him realize how complacent he had become. "I took our easy existence for granted."

i almost tried to respond to this from work before i clocked in but NOOOoOoOoO my coworkers have to cling to me like baby kittens who have discovered a can of tuna

The hare tucked safely between his forelegs, Mordecai's own gaze had settled on its lifeless form. Luke's form had slipped out of his diminished line of sight, but the voice of the blue-nosed beta reached him all the same. His mind was disquiet, finding emphasis that Luke did not place on certain words; the one that jumped out to him was your. Mordecai grappled with it brief and internal, and subconsciously.

He made a noise that settled somewhere between disapproval and acknowledgment, and found his voice. "I do not blame you no more than I blame myself," he said. "What happened could have literally happened to any of us, at any time. Better here than somewhere along the road, hm? At least here I have you and the others to count on." He found he was not the best with comfort, but as it were there was not much he could have claimed to be good for in his present state. His head ached dully, the puckered mess of flesh and fur as uncomfortable to him as their discourse.

of course lol

He was not aware, and nor would he be prepared to admit, that he was not as carefree and grounded as he believed himself to be. His emotions continued to be reactive despite the nonchalance he had trained into himself, though that was not to discredit the times it had served him well. His impulsive nature also continued to bubble beneath the surface; it was to blame for the indescribable restlessness he felt as he habitualized to a life of routine and responsibility. It would also be to blame for what would follow in the wake of this incident.

He did not disagree with what Mordecai said, but yet found himself unable to let go of the blame so easily. His face remained in its wrinkled, bothered expression. "I know you're right," he murmured. "But I still feel that I have not done my job." Such was the way of the heart and the mind; they seldom agreed. "I will do better."

As he understood that Luke would continue to let such a burden rest on him, Mordecai felt the need to let the topic go. Silence punctuated his response (or lack thereof) for several moments, and idly he nudged at the still gift. For as much as he wanted to say that Luke had done fine, the words would not come. They would have surely fallen into a void that held them as meaningless and that was something that Mordecai could distantly comprehend. He respected it, knowing that it would perhaps steel their own resolve to do more. If not, it would prompt them to do better.

But the silence of the wood around them bothered him all the same and that urged him to speak once again. "I guess this gives us reason to keep a closer eye on the borders," he decided, tilting his head to pull Luke back into his line of sight. "And we have winter to worry about as well. This may draw others nearer to our home, and I don't mean cougars." He did not worry as much about other predators as he should have, but Mordecai knew the world had its unsavory sorts.

"Have you heard much out of our neighbors to the north and south?"

Luke pursed his lips, refraining from comment. They should not have needed a reason to be more watchful of the borders; he should not have had the reason. His live in the moment attitude had come at the cost of preparedness, he thought so little of the future he did not even consider that their quiet home or one of their members might the be target for an attack. An attack he did not think was isolated.

Mordecai shifted the subject, and the blue-nosed wolf gave a shake of his head. "I have not spoken with them nor seen them in some time," he admitted, and instantly, he felt that he had missed another mark. As an outrider, he should be more aware of their immediate surroundings, and most of all, those that lived near to them. "I'll check in on them."

"I'm not sure how necessary that would be," he said as Luke finished.  "They've been quiet for a while now."  Before, it would have been too out of bounds to have at least heard the wolves of the Grove call to one another, especially with the crisp nights and shared hunting grounds.  But he hadn't heard that, let alone come across either group straying near to their doorstep out of curiosity.  Mordecai suspected that they may have packed up and left, but he did not voice this explicitly, instead leaving it vaguely implied.

His jaws shifted, pressing the surfaces of his molars together in quiet frustration. It was such a small oversight and yet it was another nick taken out of his confidence. His leader was right; their neighbors had not made so much as a bark in the past while. It was doubtful they were still there and a trip dedicated to checking in on them was a waste. Furthermore, it took him away from where he needed to be.

"Yeah," he agreed. "You're right. I'm just going make a round on the borders, make sure that cat isn't coming back." He dipped his head and excused himself with haste. He would do what he said, but in truth, he simply wanted to be alone.

It did not take much for Mordecai to gain the sensation that he may have suggested the wrong thing altogether. The haste in which he draw himself to see Luke pull away with told him that much and spoke of the volumes that his beta's frustration may have been mounting. Yet before he could call him back, Luke was gone and obscured by the cover of the woods.

A sigh broke Mordecai's silence, though it was far from frustration of his own. It drew from concern over the reaction his companion had towards all that had happened and ultimately left him feeling powerless to try and stop things from spinning wildly as a result. He couldn't fault Luke for feeling the way that he did and as he came to terms with it, he also realized there was little he could do to curb it now.

Dropping his solitary eye to the hare between his forelegs, Mordecai plucked it at with uncertainty. Even in spite of the hunger gnawing at him, he was slow to strip hide from the succulent flesh beneath. Inevitably, he gathered it up as he brought himself to draw back into the interior shelter provided by the den, secluding himself from the outside world to chew slowly in peace.