Jade Fern Grove dad's on a hunting trip
the wayward son
123 Posts
Ooc — delaney
Offline
#1
All Welcome 
a wild puppy being a total and complete brat appears!

with his father’s absence dawning upon him, the tartok spawn paces the borders for the first few days after he initially notices. it isn’t particularly unusual but the days wear on and on and on and vex, of whom every hour feels like an eternity while he’s impatiently returning the patriarch’s return grows restless. he stalks the borders like a wraith; a boy playing at legionnaire, playing at king.

whatever he’d meant to show kaertok when he realized his father was absent from the bypass has long since flitted out of his mind.

the golden rays of the chilly sunrise draw vex from restless slumber and draw him out of the safety of the borders and into the multicolored ferns — some of which were taller than him. the deeper he trudges into the sea of emerald, olive, and apple, the more his anger grows until he’s maliciously trampling the ferns underpaw; grabbing the leafy fronds of the ferns taller than him in his teeth and tugging them until they snapped away.
33 Posts
Ooc —
Offline
#2
Ever since his excursion with Rosewood, Ikiaq had been more... openminded. Now that he'd left the borders once and had not died, he could do it again. The world outside was far more vast than he could have imagined, and... he wanted to see more of it. So he set out northward that morning, across a beautiful meadow and into an even more beautiful forest. 

The ferns were still so green, in spite of the fact that much of the foliage was turning brown. Apparently that was what happened when it got cold - soon, most of the green would fade away and snow would fall down and everything would be coated in white. 

Ikiaq was so wrapped up in the vibrancy of the plantlife here that he wasn't as focused on how frightened he was. The boy had never been the bravest, but he was working on it. 

He also did not notice that he wasn't alone, at first. At least, until he heard the sound of something snapping and turned his head to spot the other occupant of the woods. Another boy, maybe a little bit smaller than Ikiaq (though the Easthollian was not the largest) was stomping through the undergrowth and launching attacks on some of the ferns he crossed. He was... angry, it seemed. 

"What're you doing?" he asked, brows drawing together as he approached the other child. Concerned, confused. What if he attacked Ikiaq like he was attacking the plants?
the wayward son
123 Posts
Ooc — delaney
Offline
#3
as the leaves shake and flutter to the ground like twirling dancers, vex realizes there’s a relief to the exertion of his anger. the sea of ferns face him, tickling his face and he turns to a applered fern and grasps it. he tugs it and spits out the bits that splinter in his mouth, leaves sticking to his tongue and lips. again and again and again, vex carves a destructive path of wrath. why he was angry fled him long ago; he does it because he’s been bottling it up. being kicked from the den ( petty ), because of the disrespectful strangers at the borders ( he hadn’t even been present for that ), for his dad going on a trip and not inviting him ( even though it was far from uncommon ).

the ferns offer weak resistance and he finds the action cathartic.

until —

until a small voice calls out to him. he turns and fixes his gaze upon the brown boy, eyeing his approach. he ignores the question, trampling the leaves under paw, hackles bristling as he drinks in the boy’s strange scent. he doesn’t recognize it. it wasn’t the halfbreed and his companion’s scent …but it was still foreign. who’re you? he demands, because the grove is close enough to legion for vex to feel territorial over it — even if he doesn’t understand the deep seedlings of possessiveness clawing at his throat.
33 Posts
Ooc —
Offline
#4
Why was this boy so angry? Ikiaq watched a smaller fern crushed beneath one of his pale paws, brows drawing together and ears lowering in confusion. Why would he want to break something that was so beautiful? It just didn't make sense to the Ateneq. He loved plants - even the ones without flowers - so he couldn't grasp the reason behind why someone would destroy them. 

The other pup's sharp eyes fixed on him and Ikiaq's tail lowered immediately, not wanting to become the object of his wrath. "Ikiaq Ateneq," he responded, brown eyes flicking away before returning to the caped boy. "Whatabout you?"

It took a couple moments of steeling himself, but eventually he found the courage to speak up. "How come you're killing the ferns? They're pretty." And alive and growing, and maybe it hurt them to be crushed or bitten. It would certainly hurt Ikiaq to be crushed or bitten, so he would assume it would hurt them too.
the wayward son
123 Posts
Ooc — delaney
Offline
#5
vex’s rampage screeched to a halt the moment the other boy appeared; that doesn’t mean that he’s over his temper tantrum, however. the pause button blinks in the throes of the interruption. the name holds a sort of familiarity to vex in that it reminds him of his name — pingasut not slug — but that familiarity does not afford the poor boy beneath his stare any sort of friendliness.

as vex aged he was discovering things about himself.

one, that he wasn’t friendly.

two, he passed judgements very unfairly and super biasedly.

none of your business, he almost snaps. vex. he grunts, mostly because he wants the boy to remember the name. and — he draws in a breath. this is my land. it feels good to stake that claim even though calling anything his was laughable. he wasn’t even that old; but vying for his place as a future leader of legion ( because in his mind mom and dad’ll choose one of them one day ) leaves him with no room for hesitancy or doubt.

he peers at the nearest fern, sneering at its olive leaves as the other boy calls them ‘beautiful’. it’s a fern. he huffs the word mockingly, as if he knew what this leafy thing was called all along ( he didn’t ). who cares? he goads.
33 Posts
Ooc —
Offline
#6
This other boy was confusing Ikiaq more with everything he said. Vex was his name - which was short and sounded interesting and Ikiaq liked it - and this was his space, but... he was still destroying it. 

"Why would you want to destroy your own land?" he questioned, padding over to nudge a broken leaf of one of the victims of Vex's onslaught back upright. It stayed well enough, and Iki pressed the ground around it to be sure that its roots were firmly planted. 

A pout formed on his maw as the other boy went on. "I care," he pointed out, tilting his head to the side. "They're alive. They grow, like us, and they drink water and eat stuff in the ground. So I don't think we should hurt them for no reason." Plants were super important, Iki remembered. Other stuff - stuff that wolves ate - would eat the grass. Like deer and elk. Plus some of them could be used for medicines, which Ikiaq didn't quite understand, but he knew was important somehow.
244 Posts
Ooc — Jennifer
Offline
#7
Cameo unless addressed/needed/the end of the thread where he might say something. He b lurkin'

He'd been looking around for evidence of the Saints guys coming back when he came across Vex's trail outside the territory. Uh oh. Well, since it didn't seem like Arbiter was right behind them -- she probably told the three to go do some sort of investigation thing on their own and he got bored. Look it was gonna be way better for the kid for Warlock to find him than Arbiter, and he wasn't gonna risk just walking on by either. Mostly because he was pretty sure if he didn't  stop and his mom found out, he was pretty sure she would eat him. So, he went to investigate, quickly. He moved quietly through the underbrush, familiar with this grove from his own many trips. It didn't take too long before he spotted the two boys talking up ahead. Warlock stopped there, trying to figure out what he'd come across.

There were also two major reasons he just hung back and watched: one, he was just a brother not a parent so wasn't gonna go the whole full-name-yelling-Vexation at the kid, and two, because he was afraid the other kid might have some adult like him watching and Warlock didn't want to move too quick and get teeth in him for his trouble. It was safer to stay back unless needed.
the wayward son
123 Posts
Ooc — delaney
Offline
#8
because i can. vex explains, exasperated; as if this were a thing he’s already explained ten thousand times before. for a long moment, the muscles in his shoulders jump as they pull taunt as he watches the other boy fix a broken fern; tending to it with a care that makes vex want to destroy it. again. he doesn’t share the empathy towards plants that ikiaq does. they’re plants.

clearly, vex had no inclination towards the botanist trade.

well i. don’t.

in spite of the boy who seems determined to tenderly fix what vex breaks, vex goes to another fern and tugs on it, feeling his anger and annoyance flair up again; and having no other outlet for it besides these plants ( and poor ikiaq ) it is them that he takes it out on; them that bares the brunt of his temper tantrum unfairly.

in vex’s seething destruction of the ferns and annoyance towards ikiaq his brother-pupsitter goes, for the time being, unnoticed.
33 Posts
Ooc —
Offline
#9
Ikiaq was trying his best, but he did not have a wellspring of patience to dip into so he could deal with every situation perfectly. He could feel temper rising up in his chest when the other child destroyed another plant, and his ears pressed back to his skull.

He would try one more thing. One more.

"How come you're angry?" the brown boy asked, brows drawn together and fur fluffed out. "Did somebody make you mad?" Surely there was something. People normally didn't go on a rampage for no reason.

The older wolf watching them would go unseen for now. Ikiaq was far too concerned with the fern-destroyer Vex to focus on anything else.
the wayward son
123 Posts
Ooc — delaney
Offline
#10
truly, the fact that the other boy keeps both calm and persistent even in vex's reign of terror upon the ferns, in the face of his bullying is impressive. ikiaq is clearly standing up to the school bully who'll push him onto the ground without a second thought and that took admirable courage.

it was too bad that vex just found it annoying; a fuel.

kerosene to a fire.

'cuz i am! vex growls in frustration 'round another mouthful of ferns. in other words: he didn't remember, only knew that there was something morbidly cathartic in the destruction of something that can't fight back ...for now. until he was older and bigger and could pick fights just to feel the sting of pain, to laugh in the face of danger.

yeah, you! vex snaps. it's an unfair blow and not particularly true but lying was his new favorite thing to dabble in.

vex squabbles for a few minutes, grumbling under his breath before he turns his back on the boy and takes his leave, deciding he's bored and is ready to move on.