Just keeping him active. I don't want to mess up his timeline, as he's in the process of joining a pack, and I don't know the outcome of that yet soooo that's why this is a 'read only' post. :) Working out a bitta backstory here...
It happened not long after his eyes had opened, and while the memories were likely as blurry as his vision had been, they haunted him still. It was perhaps the first real memory that he still had, having forgotten all others previous to the incident, and left him with a feeling that his childhood had been anything but golden. Regardless, as a physically painful memory and as an event that would forever leave him somewhat short in pride and self-esteem, it was probably one of the most defining incidents of his life.
The day he'd lost his tail.
Wanderlust was bred into Blackthorns, it seemed- and he'd been too young to be going anywhere on his own but with 8 other littermates, it was easy for one or two of them to get some distance from the den before their absence was noticed. He was the eldest- but birth order for a litter of pups was of little importance, when all 8 survived. So there was nothing remarkable about the boy- who, at that point, was still referred to by his birth name- Cian.
But Cian went too far. An opportunistic coyote, boulstered by starvation, had noticed that the mother wolf had given birth to a remarkable brood of puppies and at the first chance he got, he snatched one of them up. He remembered seeing the reddish canine sweeping toward him with its mouth open but it was only when he was grabbed by the scruff that he felt panic grip him. The coyote fumbled him, and when Cian hit the ground, he let out a small 'woof.' Frantically fearing he'd be found out, the coyote snapped at the child again- this time grabbing him by his short, pointed tail and made to bolt off. Cian shrieked in pain, alerting his parents to both his plight and his whereabouts, and within seconds his father came thundering through the undergrowth. He hit the coyote with full force which caused the coyote to clamp his jaw shut, cleaving Cian's tail in two and leaving him with little more than a short stub. The coyote was swiftly dealt with, and Cian was carried back to the den, where he would be fussed over continuously for the next few days while what was left of his tail healed.
It didn't curb the boy's recklessness, nor did it serve to make him any more meek or wary than he'd been before. Naturally, his tail would never grow back, and while the vertebrae would grow and lengthen his tail slightly, it would never grow to be more than a mere five or six inches in length. So his parents gave him the nickname "Jackalope," which would stick with him for the rest of his life.
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