Phantom Hollow It's been a little cold and not outside

They were both in a pretty similar place mentally.  Mal was practically the patron saint of rejection at this point, so anyone willing to actually give him a chance was welcomed pretty much with open arms and probably way too much honesty on his part than was smart.  He bobbed his head in a nod, I've just been figuring stuff out by trial and error and like.. Logic I guess.  I had to learn to hunt on my own, so this'll be the same thing, I guess.  Having more people to share the load and practice with would definitely make stuff go faster.  Actual practice hunting with someone other than that one random guy, or practicing fights that were more than just wrestling with his sisters before his childhood prematurely ended.  Another couple people and things would probably stop feeling so stretched and weird when it came to just taking up space on the territory.

See, the numbers question was where Mal thought that Simmik might think he was a fool.  Everyone else seemed to think he was stupid or something, but again, packs didn't just appear out of thin air.  Um.  Kinda depends on how you're counting. There shall be a bit of erring on the side of caution OOCly here, as Cèilidh may be reactivated eventually as she has in the past? Dunno?  Can always say she's been out of the territory hunting or something and then didn't return sometime if she stays inactive. Cèilidh has been around, so one for sure.  But there were three more that vanished when the earthquakes happened and stuff.  See, Ibis and... pause.  Ereshkigel?  He'd heard the name like three times and it was starting to get a little blurry mentally, Well, that last chick had just joined, Ibis had brought her in, and then they went off wandering, but that's when the big earthquakes happened.  They didn't come back.  So then Okeanos went to find his sister, so he's gone too.  Haven't found a sign of any of them anywhere since.

So what did that mean for them?  Did he count them as here or gone?  One wolf disappearing wasn't a big deal, but when three associated ones disappeared in a row it felt like a conspiracy.  Or they just had uber garbage manners.  When I went looking for my sister and a new home and stuff, I'd come back after like a month or whatever to check in.  It's been like a week more than that now...   His ears flipped back for a second.  He was more concerned about Okeanos than Ibis, and didn't give a hoot about Ereshkigal at all.  And honestly even his concern for Okeanos sometimes flipped to 'screw that guy, he's probably hiding back in Elysium' on a whim.  Maybe he's still searching, maybe they're dead, or maybe they're cowards and not gonna say they aren't gonna come back -- but there's definitely not enough people to go look and defend the territory now.  Honestly, he thought it'd make Ibis (and to a lesser part, Okeanos) the biggest hypocrite of all if it was that last part -- for all her harping about Mal being rude, it was far more rude if she was just ditching them so he's trying to hold down a whole place for people who weren't gonna come back. If it turned out that was the case, he sure as hell wasn't gonna be nice if he saw her ever again.