Overture Downs golyat

the night seemed thicker than usual - darker and heavier than it had been since the sporadic, temperate storms of summer - and a usurper-in-the-making fumed visibly as he cantered in stiff strides across the unkempt lawn that was overture downs; his trajectory aiming to return him towards the glade. the irritable stigmata had just come from realizing that the pack in the mountains had moved; it bolstered his reasons to relocate, but it steered his timeline to a date sooner than he was prepared to accept.

he could not take lead of bearclaw, if he had none with which to support his claim over the current family dominion. and he detested needing to rush, but now that his pack was in an even more crowded situation than before... well, if the warhound thought the walls had been closing in on him before, then now they were simply collapsing. it left him with only one move remaining: to escape the rubble and try to take with him whatever or whoever he had the strength to save.

@Enx

A tail. Cameo. Or not. :P

Nunataq had decided to toughen herself up and spend a night perched on her watch-tower rock. The temperatures had risen a little, therefore it was a little more comfortable to weather the hours, during which the sun had hidden itself behind horizon. The only problem was that a bed made of hard rock was not exactly the most comfortable to have pleasant dreams in. Therefore the girl's sleep was intermittent and fragile. She kept getting up to get more comfortable once again.

And during one of those brief wakeful moments, she caught a whiff of adventure in the air. A dark figure passed nearby and left the lands behind, and this - she recognized - was none other than the old, dark pelted grumpy guy (a pleasant change from all the sad guys around), who tended to watch her comings and goings. Since there was no one to tell Nuna that it was way-past bed-time and hours, when underage people are allowed to be outside without supervision, she got up and followed the man some distance behind.

She was careful to move quietly and stealthily (that's, what she though), excited to find out, where the man was going and what he was planning to do.

as furious as he felt, eventually it occurred to him that this was exactly the chip he needed to play in order to better convince the others of their relocation. the west would be much more forgiving come winter, he thought, and heading east into the thick of swelling numbers in that direction was inconceivable.

but he had been wrong before.

even with this potentially good news, however, he was not in the mood to be snuck up on, and when he finally caught evidence that he wasn't alone - maybe, perhaps a little later than he would ever care to admit - the warhound growled low, and hissed a demand to the wrinkling grass-shadows where he was sure the sneak lie close: "show yourself."

Stigmata should have learned two things about Nunataq by now: 1. Saying something to her was a waste of words; 2. The girl almost never did anything that she did not wish to do. Therefore instead of obeying and making her presence known, she remained lying down, pressed tightly against the ground and hidden by the tall grass and darkness as well. She knew by now that the man had realized that she was stalking him, but she was not particularly interested in keeping him company running side or right behind him. Not even close. She was playing "spies" and enjoying herself too much to stop now.

unaware of his stalker's identity, as things were, stigmata reacted to being stalked purely on a base level; his mind for once free of strategy, and replaced instead with murderous intent. nunataq certainly required a special kind of treatment - for those who bothered to deal with her - but until his demand went unanswered, he hadn't known it was her. but rather than finding any amusement in her antics, which was interpreted as insubordination in his mood, the dire-wolf found himself frustrated.

he was tired of her thinking she didn't have to listen. he was tired of bearclaw children running the show - all of them ingrates - and making decisions for themselves like they had anything to offer anyone besides "potential".

he was tired of there never being any consequences.

stigmata snarled as the silence around him persisted, and then leapt, teeth snapping, in the direction nunataq was hidden.

Among many things that were peculiar about Nunataq, there was also inability to imagine herself in someone else's place. This did not mean that she was not capable of being kind and adjust her responses to the emotional states and reactions of others. But the causes of their sadness, discontent, unhappiness and other negative emotions were a mystery to her that she had given up on understanding a long time ago.

Therefore no wonder that she had not anticipated that Stigmata would take her antics the wrong way and decide to attack her. "EEEP!" was all she managed to say, when his paws hit between her shoulder blades and teeth grazed against her skull. She remained lying motionless on the ground, waiting for the situation to resolve itself.

as he saw nunataq press herself deeper into the ground, the only thing stigmata could think was how glad he was that he didn't have to chase her. she would have won that game. but instead she played like some wolfish breed of possum, and remained motionless as he trapped her to the spot with one large, fat forepaw to the shoulders and blunted teeth at her nape. removing his foot to the opposite side of her, the smokehound half-straddled nunataq while relieving her bruised hide of his toothy hold.

the smash-and-grab had only taken a second, and he punctuated it with a throaty growl - knowing that any words would be lost on her - but he hoped his own wordless message had been clear enough:

do not sneak up on me.

he wasn't one of the other bearclaw wolves who didn't expect to be obeyed. he thought that continuing to let her act as she pleased would get her killed - he was quite frankly surprised it already hadn't - and so he would no longer stand for it. he would not tiptoe around her feelings nor accept any disrespect, and though he preferred not to use his teeth, nunataq was proving to need a firm paw.

he moved away from her; his chin tucked, tail swishing, and his stern eyes aglow, as he stood back to observe her next action, which he presumed now would be flight.

And Stigmata presumed wrong.

First, he had underestimated Nunataq. She was not afraid of him the least. He had taken her by surprise - true - and he was the Big Bad Wolf by definition, but he had not intimidated her either. Just caused inconvenience of her small frame being trapped under his burly one. And, once she was free, she sprang to her feet and bounced around like a colt in a pasture, stretching her legs, getting some circulation back in the body parts that he had squashed earlier and enjoying the lightness of her body now that the heavy weight had been taken off it.

Second, no one really tiptoed around Nunataq just because she was different. She was corrected or punished just the same way as other kids in the Bearclaw, depending on the severity of the mischief. She was highly intelligent, she learned and she had no problems in obeying, if the rules were clear to her and they made sense as well. In this aspect Stigmata had failed to convey the meaning, she did not know, what she had been doing wrong, and the old man had not made it any clearer now. It was like punching your guest in the face for taking a cake that has been left on the table. It is not very likely that a person would understand that cake was forbidden. Rather that his host is a jerk with anger management issues.

Third, she stopped within a safe distance from Stigmata (just in case he decided to hurl his mass at her again; she did not wish to be squashed again) and looked him in the eyes. His stern gaze was met with her mischievous one. She thought him amusing.

though his presumption had proved wrong, stigmata's opinion of the matter was not that she would have fled out of fear, but because he had offended her. she got the right message, at any rate - the cake was for taking, he was just an exceptionally bad host - but for whatever reason the girl didn't properly apply the lesson learned to her actions thereafter. any logical (read: weaker) canid would have skedaddled, but because she was the alpha's daughter (never mind her pedigree, which he had never considered before), she had most certainly been tiptoed around - neglected, as opposed to reformed - and saw no reason to flee from him, afraid or not. 

any wolf sticking around after being accosted by a jerk host, then welcomed whatever punishment happened thereafter. common knowledge, one might think. it wasn't a smart choice on her part to stay, but what did he truly expect of a child. especially a child who had no curfew, no supervision, no boundaries. she had obviously never been taught or hurt enough to know when it was best to flee, and for stigmata it conjured a grisly image of her young death; a cruel event that began with her innocently "playing," as usual.

he was nonplussed by her defiance - her choice to stay. of course he didn't expect her to learn the lesson the first time around; children rarely did. but he would continue to attack her each time he caught her spying on him, until she either learned to get better at it, or stopped trying and started approaching him straight up. she may have been used to rebuffs such as his, but her pampered hide had most certainly never learned to take any such act seriously. because she had never gone hungry enough; had never thought she might die...

stigmata smirked at her across the distance. well, she certainly had the endurance and acumen to be a fearsome predator and packwolf, assuming she made it to adulthood. it was a shame he would miss her progress. and though he figured it would be a markedly difficult task because she acted as if she had no respect for him, stigmata made a motion with his muzzle in the direction of home, proposing she head that way while he (very distantly) chaperoned.

Stigmata was wrong in many assumptions he had made about Nunataq, but he had hit a bullseye about one: lack of self-preservation instinct. Nearly all her life she had been cooped up in the same hen-house, surrounded by only familiar faces and rarely meeting people, who did not belong to the immediate circle of the family. She had some natural shyness and wariness about people she did not know too well, but usually curiosity won over the rational reasoning that adult would have had. She did not realize that not all people in this world wanted to quench her interest, that they could and would mind her antics and in the end... that there were people, who could hurt her worse than the pounce she had just experienced, or someone sitting on her that would happen in near future.

Her inability to comprehend language and speak was both a gift and a curse for her. She was able to read people in different ways, but at the same time a lot of world and wisdom from the verbal world was unavailable to her. How much easier it would be for Indra and Laurel to teach her hunting, good manners and warn her, were she just able to understand them! And no one had been creative enough to translate these texts in a way she could use. In a vast library of books they were as much useful to her as light to a blind person. Which left her to learning and discovering the world to herself. The more difficult and dangerous way, because she would have to make all the mistakes and learn from that experience only.

Were it also not for her stuborness and independent mind that did not let her follow other people blindly, but demanded to make it's own decisions and draw it's own conclusions, her learning process would be easier. As it was - she picked up, what Stigmata was pointing at, half-turned, but still waited. You first, man. She seemed to be waiting for an acknowledgement that she had read him the correct way. And also because the child still inside her did not feel comfortable going ahead of an adult, preferring for him to take all of the responsibility and have her tailing behind him.

when she hesitated to obey, stigmata's initial thought was to force her to take the lead, as he had been instructed to do things as a child. when he had been her age, debating matters simply wasn't allowed - he did what he was told or he got savaged. it was as simple as that and it was what felt most natural  to him.

adolescents where he was from, younger even than nunataq was now, would often set the traveling pace for the entire pack - if there were no elderly folks to take into account - and so it was hard for him to understand her reservation in that regard as well.

but as much as he didn't understand the girl, and as frustrated as he felt with her progress in the world, stigmata was not tempted to be rash with her. he looked the reedy girl over for a moment, noticing cracks in her resilience that colored her uncertain - making this less a matter of defiance, and more a matter of trust. understanding this now, the hound turned to trot several lengths in the direction of bearclaw, before stopping to make sure she followed.

hoping to encourage, but not seem too happy about her coming nearer, stigmata arched the base of his tail and wagged the end a little to beckon her.

For the first time this evening Nunataq and Stigmata had understood each other and agreed on something. The older wolf led the way and the girl followed readily. She trotted obediently short distance away from him unti they reached Bearclaw valley borders, where she stopped briefly to pee, and then dashed past him, because she knew, where rendevouzs site was.

Thanks!