Arrow Lake Blood Pact Scout, Weird Scout, Dreadnought Scout, Dark Scout, Fear Scout

The midafternoon sun broke suddenly from behind a vast cloud, sending warm light down on the little black wolf cub rooting through the undergrowth near his home. Dragomir was out on his own again, chasing after a strange little black creature he'd spied on a rock not long ago. It was small and scuttled along on more legs than Dragomir could count. He lost sight of it numerous times as it scurried over blades of grass and down into crevices, but it always emerged again. He was nothing if not relentless in his pursuit.

He squinted as light burst from the cloud cover and chanced a look up at the sky. That brief flick of his gaze was enough for his quarry to escape into a crack in the ground, so when he looked back, he could not find it. After several minutes of waiting for something to move, Dragomir began to search in earnest for the insect he'd been tracking, striking against the hard ground with his forepaws and loosing tiny, frustrated awoos.

She had left the children in @Sadiq 's capable paws so that she could have a break. Taki was just now really starting to feel comfortable leaving them long enough for her to stretch her legs and have some time to herself. They were getting to the age where they needed to eat less often, and they were definitely old enough to start adding regurgitated meat to their diet. In fact, she had caught and eaten a stout hare not very long ago and was on her way back to the den with a belly full of their next meal. She could have used her free time to patrol or partake in some other kind of self-indulgent activity, but she found it hard to concentrate only on herself when, more often than not, her thoughts drifted to her children and their needs.

She heard the pup's frustrated sounds as she moved on the familiar trail back to the den, and growing concerned, she deviated from her path to investigate the situation. She soon found the dark boy, one of Aure's twins, and he was throwing his front paws against the ground and continuing to make the noise that had drawn her here. As she neared him, she released a chuff so as not to startle him before stopping nearby, her gaze searching the ground below for whatever had clearly offended the boy.

No amount of trying to crack the hard soil would unearth the hidden arachnid. Dragomir didn't yet have the strength in his arms or the callouses on his pads to make more than a paltry dent in the ground, and the spider knew it was safe from him as long as it stayed in the crevice. There were roots of weeds for it to rest on; it wasn't so bad down there. They were at an impasse. Wanting whines poured from Dragomir's half-parted jaws, followed by a huff in the crack's direction, but still the spider did not emerge.

Lucky that Takiyok happened upon him, or Dragomir might have spent the rest of all his days intently focused on that crevice in the earth. Her chuff drew his attention away from the spider. As with Sadiq before, Dragomir couldn't yet discern the differences between her face and Aure's; he was blind to his mother's physical imperfections, and similarly blind to Takiyok's individual features. He relied on scent to tell others apart, and just now, he hadn't caught her scent.

So he stumbled toward his "mother" with a joyful wag of his tail, his whines turned to happy croons as he sought to bump against her chest in a rare show of physical affection. If Takiyok looked closely at what he was focused on before, she might pick up on the slow emergence of several long, spindly legs.

As soon as the sound left her mouth, the child turned and bounded towards her as if he had known her his whole life. The assumed reason for his frustrations took the opportunity, now that she held the boy's attention, to emerge from his hiding spot and scurry away to freedom. 

She glanced down at the ebony pup, her expression a mixture of concern and confusion. She hoped her children, who she thought to be around the same age, did not greet strangers so enthusiastically. She held the scent of pack, which she figured was probably what put him at ease, but she still thought his greeting seemed a little strange. Still, she would not turn him away. Even before she became a mother she held a soft spot for children. Instead, she studied him for a few moments befor asking: What were you doing?

He was perhaps not astute enough to notice physical differences yet, but Dragomir picked up readily on other differences, and the way Takiyok reacted to him was not at all what he'd come to expect from Aurewën. Normally she would have taken the opportunity to sweep him to her breast and breath hushed words over his brow, calling him balaur and mumbling away at him even though he couldn't understand most of what she said. Comparatively, Takiyok's greeting was downright cold.

The change in Dragomir upon realizing this wasn't his mother was instantaneous; at once he drew back from her and his denim blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. His tail went rigid and the fur on the back of his neck bristled as he surveyed this woman who looked so very like his mother, but acted so completely wrong. It wasn't the other one, either, the one who looked like mother but was different but in a good way. This one smelled like mother, too—or rather, mother smelled like Takiyok and the rest of the pack—but despite that, this was all wrong and he felt betrayed by his own senses.

She asked what he was doing, and he responded with a mistrustful growl and arched his back. It was more cute than it was menacing and all of it was writ with more uncertainty than aggression, so it was likely she would catch on that he was just confused.

Taki studied the boy with concern as he puffed up and backed away, making it clear that there had just been some kind of misunderstanding; he was just a child after all. Her motherly instincts pushed her to soothe the pup's discontent. As cold as she may have appeared to be at first, it certainly hadn't been her intention to upset the child. 

I will not harm you, she said softly and calmly, much like she would to her own children if they were frightened of something. She remained where she was as she waited to see if her words would have their desired effect, feeling like any movement in his direction would send him running to god knows where and possibly getting lost.

I will not harm you. These words meant nothing to Dragomir but her quiet tone had the intended effect: his fur began to smooth back down and his eyes widened slightly from their previous squint. Takiyok masquerading as Aurewën was a cruel joke. It wouldn't be long before he would begin to notice the differences, like Takiyok's eye colour or his mother's unmistakable scars. For now he was blind to such things. He still had trouble looking at the Pionier and not seeing his mother.

But his mother was a feeling creature and Takiyok was more logical, more wild. Aaaah? he asked as he shuffled further from her, with brows still scrunched into an adorable baby's frown. The spider was forgotten but only for now.

He calmed a little, thankfully, and she watched as he moved farther from her. He spoke some incoherent word, but the question in his tone was easy to hear. But, she had no idea what he was asking, so she lied down and began to groom her front paws, occasionally glancing at him to see if he was interested enough to come over. She had no hope of understanding his baby talk, she knew that from experience, so she switched gears; maybe if he grew interested enough in her presence, he would come closer, and they could start over. One thing she knew she could usually count on was a child's curiosity of the unknown, which was exactly what she was to him right now.

Her sudden disinterest in him did the trick. Takiyok turned to her paws and Dragomir, whose eyes were plastered on her, began to creep closer with a wriggling nose. She knew just how to manipulate his curiosity, but his progress toward her was slow. Painfully so. He slid one paw forward, paused to gauge her reaction with a stiff wag of his tail, then moved another, and so on and so forth until he was within a couple feet of her.

And then without warning his ears pressed forward and he launched himself, aiming for a small eight-legged shadow that had just appeared in front of her breast and caught Dragomir's attention once more. It skittered out from under Takiyok and the cub sprang after it, thankfully back in the direction of home. His attention span was limited to one thing at a time, and as he chased after the spider, his wariness and the white-furred Takiyok were both quickly put from his mind.

Tacking a conclusion on here since this one is pretty outdated now and I wanna clean my threadlog up! Thanks for the thread, hope we can have another soon!