Horizon Ridge i walked a thousand sorry miles

For Pied.

The interminable horizon spread before her, a dauntless sea of weathered grey and bruised, sulky blue. Her eyes drank in the landscape of saltwater and brine, parched yellow things wide with neotenic rapture. Below, the jutting shoal pounded deep and cacophonous like the groaning bellow of some ancient leviathan -- and far off the wheedling cries of gulls distantly reached her pricked ears. Caiaphas stood at the precipice stunned by the grandoise of the view; having been born a coastal wolf the sea was always a thing intimate and beloved to her. She was not familiar with the Teeklon wilds but even in the heart of such savage wildnerness she felt the primal drum of the sea - a boundless and interminate reverberation that throttled her lungs and her senses alike. She had sought out the ocean and here she was - a ragged revenant standing breathless on what appeared to be the very edge of the world. Relieved to witness such a familiar sight, the small creature sported an elusive smile. <

Although it would take many weeks for Pied to heal fully, she now felt relatively mobile, though she did not stray from the area immediately adjacent to the lair she shared with Kisu. She felt a bit of cabin fever coming on and itched to go for a walk through the territory, yet she kept telling herself, Soon... but not yet. She didn't want to aggravate her injuries nor risk slowing her healing. She must be patient.

She hobbled in circles around the site this morning, adjusting to a three-legged gait, as she kept her right hind paw crooked off the ground. The Gamma felt she'd mastered it after a few hours, so she gave herself a break and sat on the ledge overlooking the sea. The sight of it filled her with trepidation, yet she didn't look away. She wouldn't be going near the beach for a while, yet it would be silly to be unable to enjoy the view from a distance.

Pied couldn't say what drew her attention upward but she tipped her head backward and realized that someone sat on the ledge a few dozen feet above her. "Hey there!" she called, twisting around so that her back faced the edge. The stranger was no longer upside down and she could see a sliver of his or her dark face and mismatched body; the odd markings intrigued her.

Caiaphas had been so engaged with her own private thoughts that she scarce heard the approach of a wolf below her - much less a crippled one. When the unfamiliar voice pried the silence open and smacked her from her reprieve she flinched inwardly -- arching her spine in stifled surprise. Recovering her composure she tilted her head carefully, craning her neck to view the stranger that hailed her. The preliminary thought that this female was not part of Horizon's Ridge occurred to her, but common sense dictated a recovering and battered wolf would not have greeted her so openly. Caiaphas withdrew from the ledge, disappearing from view entirely -- her footsteps echoed down the steppes in a vague unison that suggested she was making her way towards Pied. She reemerged from a particularly large crevasse a few seconds later, content that she was now eye-level with the female. She had once been told standing above other wolves was a sign of insolence and disrespect - and in deference to this memory she was happy to be on the same level as the female before her. There was no flicker of surprise or pity in her eyes or posture when she assessed the sorry female before her; if she wasn't the quintessential image of a wolf mauled by a shark and picked off by the gulls, Caiaphas didn't know what was. Sullenly, her gaze settled on the leg Pied favored - and without trepidation she unabashedly spoke. "What happened to you?" Her words, however veiled, contained no malice.

Her call seemed to startle the stranger and Pied felt rather sheepish for a moment. Her eyes followed the unfamiliar wolf as he or she—the Gamma couldn't tell its gender from here—abruptly retreated from the ledge and disappeared. Uncertain as to whether the stranger would reappear, Pied chuffed to herself and fell back onto her haunches, her dappled back still facing the sea.

Eventually, the two-toned figure did reappear, walking the towpath leading to the den site Pied shared with her mate. It occurred to the Gamma that she shouldn't call attention to herself in her condition, yet if she couldn't trust her own pack mates, familiar or not, then who could she trust? In any case, the she-wolf—for Pied could smell her now and file away several identifying factors about her even before they exchanged names—did not appear in the least threatening.

"Oh, I had a fight with an enormous fish and lost," Pied quipped in reply to the stranger's question. "I'm Pied. You must be new...?" She left a space for the stranger to introduce herself. As she waited, Pied subtly admired the juxtaposition of her charcoal visage and her agouti body. Up close, she looked even more striking, especially with her sharp, narrow snout and smoldering golden eyes.

Caiaphas, for a moment, was unsure of the sincerity in the female's words. Dubiously, she looked the silvered female up and down -- ascertaining that indeed, it looked as if she had truly been mauled by some denizen of the depths. Besides, as far as Caiaphas could tell, there was no guile in the mottled wolf's expression. "A fish?" She queried, her dark muzzle tilted to the side in mild disbelief and mixed apprehension -- "or a shark?" Her words revealed she was a coastal wolf by heart, and quietly she wondered if the piebald female was used to the sometimes unpredictable life the shoal exhibited. But the sea was just that - unpredictable -- and while Caiaphas did not press, it was clear from her bright eyes that she possibly thirsted for a more elaborate explanation on how the smudged Gamma had gotten so mangled. "I'm Caiaphas." She paused introspectively, her eyes discretely catching that the female before her sported a sliver of deep-sea blue in one adamant yellow eye. "Akhlut admitted me today."

Caiaphas was fresh off the boat, as they say. "Wow, you just got here then," Pied replied. "Welcome to Horizon Ridge. I'm actually the pack's Gamma, despite looking like its punching bag," she quipped, shifting her weight slightly to favor her bruised hipbone. "I'm also mate to Kisu and, one day, I aspire to be the pack's Caretaker—when I'm ready to switch back to taking care of folks rather than folks taking care of me."

The newcomer questioned her about the orca, which she did not know by its proper name. "To be honest, I'm not sure of the difference." She paused, in case Caiaphas wanted to fill in the blanks. "I call them blackfish. They're huge and black, like the name implies, but with white bellies and these strange eye patches on their heads. Have you ever seen one? Sometimes, they hurl themselves onto the beach to catch prey... which is what happened to me," Pied explained.

She listened in silence, though her gaze flickered intermittently as the mottled wolf spoke. Caiaphas was only familiar with some aquatic life -- and other than witnessing the wicked fins cresting the water from a distance, she had no real recollection of the behavior sharks or whales demonstrated. She paused for a moment as Pied asked her if she had ever seen such a monolith ashore - a faint flicker rose again in her yellow eyes. "When they die their bodies wash ashore. There are lots of monsters undersea. But no, I've never been introduced to one to the extent you have." Pied revealed that she was the pack's Gamma - a statement that elicited a faint head tilt from the dark youth. "Gamma?" She rejoined quietly, unsure of the significance behind the pack's ranking system. She was sure the colloquial female would have an explanation ready to dole out for the clueless new wolf.

Edit: Concluding and archiving since Caiaphas has been removed.

Heh, Pied thought, I'd hope not. Aloud, she said, "Jinx mentioned that a blackfish could feed a whole pack and some change. At the time, I shuddered at the thought. From a distance, they looked... well, magnificent. Up close, though... I shudder now for a very different reason. I'd never go near one myself, dead or alive."

Caiaphas seemed perplexed by her use of the Greek vernacular commonly used in canine communities to indicate the order of ranks. "Gamma means I'm relatively high in the ranks. It's actually the highest sub-leader rank. The only wolf above me is Akhlut. As you know, he's the Alpha. Did you not use this system to describe the hierarchy where you're from?" she questioned curiously.

Their conversation lasted a while longer, Pied drinking up Caiaphas's words like a thirsty camel who'd just come across a desert oasis. Eventually, however, the other wolf seemed ready to move onto other things and, anyway, the Gamma needed to get her rest, of course. As soon as Caiaphas disappeared along the towpath, the yearling turned and hobbled into the lair.