The Alpha female did not want to wander too far outside her territory—she was doing her best to complement her brother's tireless patrols—but she roamed into the larger plains of the flatlands, pale eyes shrewdly scanning her surroundings even as she pondered the state of her pack. It's up to you, she thought to herself. Despite her penchant for advising others, Koontz could not take the role of a Dreamserpet. Yildun could cover that field for her while she took it upon herself to provide the pack in a more active and crucial way: by feeding it.
I guess that makes you a Boneknapper, she thought to herself as her paws carried her across the breadth of the land. It felt strange. She wasn't a particularly gifted hunter, despite her mother's prowess. Well, you'll just have to get better at it, her inner voice answered firmly. You really don't have any other choice. You can't survive the winter without at least one hunter. Koontz bit her lip and nodded, acknowledging the wisdom of her inner voice.
There was no time like the present, so Koontz sped up her gait and dropped her nose to the ground. She would hunt up whatever small game she could, then start stockpiling game in the woods on the plateau. It was only the middle of September, so she had several weeks before the temperatures really fell. The clock was ticking, yet Koontz didn't let herself feel overwhelmed by the task laid out in front of her. In fact, despite her mediocre natural skills, she embraced the challenge and rose to it with enthusiasm, hoping to make her faraway mother proud.
He had been doing well making sure to basically stick close to where he and his brother had set up camp upon first coming to these areas but the young male found himself beginning to grow really bored and wanted to explore. Thus far, they hadn’t really done much of anything but check out the areas around where they had set up camp. Hamied, being young, found himself wanting to explore more, see more, and maybe meet some others along the way. He knew the possible risks of running into the wrong wolves, but being small made him swift, light on his feet, and able to run away at any given moment. It was with that thought in his mind that he let his brother know that he was going to go exploring and dashed away before his older brother could talk him out of it. He didn’t know where he was going, but that didn’t matter a whole lot. Hamied did, however, make sure that he would be able to find his way back by taking note of different landmarks, as well as peeing in different places here and there. Yep, he would be able to easily find his way back to his big brother! Bounding along, he went further and further away from where he’d been staying. His tail wagged happily behind him as he went, not really having any care in the world. He was a happy boy most of the time, especially since his other siblings were no longer around to pick on him without mercy. Sure, he missed his parents quite a bit, but leaving with his older brother was opening up a whole new world to the young male. He would be able to thrive and grow instead of remaining a momma’s boy for the rest of his life. Movement caught his attention and he began to follow that movement. His nose told him it was food. Following it, he finally caught sight of it. It was a fat raccoon. Hamied had never hunted a raccoon before and the thing looked like it was half his size. But his stomach growled a little and that was what kept him stalking the animal. The raccoon had a slight limp, moving fairly slowly. Hamied could smell the injury because it was getting an infection. Crouching down, the really small young male watched, waiting for the right moment, though he was a little nervous about trying to catch something that was as big as that raccoon was. |
She came across a fresh scent: raccoon. Koontz paused, deliberating, then decided to move on and try to find some other game. If she didn't find anything else, she might return and try tracking the coon. For now, she didn't feel such prey was worth the risk. She was no expert—yet, at least—and she didn't want to start her hunting career by getting injured.
A few moments later, she discovered another scent and she stopped again, head lifting and ears pricking. She turned, her pale eyes scanning the flatlands, and spotted a shape moving in the distance. She began to lope toward it. As she neared the figure, another one emerged into her field of vision. Koontz laughed lightly to herself, then swung wide around the raccoon. She then continued her approach, realizing as she did so that the wolf must be hunting it.
She didn't want to interrupt, but when she drew near the stranger and saw how youthful he looked, she couldn't help herself. "Hey there," she called, sotto voce. "Are you hunting that raccoon? Want some help?" Maybe they could tackle it easily between the two of them. Though that wouldn't leave much meat for Koontz to take home, at least it would give her some experience and at least a small trophy for her efforts.
As she crept even closer to the other wolf, still awaiting his response, Koontz suddenly drew up short and gaped at him. "Hamied?"
Although he was a yearling, he was much smaller than most. He got his tiny size from his mother’s side of the family. Though he wasn’t nearly as small as his grandmother, Fayre, had been, he was barely the same size as his mother, Phoebe. It was because of his tiny size that his siblings picked on his without mercy, all except Cyrus. He was the only one that didn’t pick on him and did what he could to stick up for him, taking care of their siblings when they drove Hamied to the point of tears… which was more often than not, unfortunately. Because of being picked on so much, he had easily become a momma’s boy. It was still hard, sometimes, being away from his mother but he was managing, though he could definitely stand to gain some much needed weight because he was a little too thin. "I’m gonna try to," he responded to the question suddenly being asked of him without removing his mismatched eyes from the raccoon that he was stalking. At first he didn’t recognize the voice because he was far too focused on the raccoon that would very likely kick his tiny butt if he tried to take it on all by himself, but he had his mother’s stubbornness and was going to give it a try. It wasn’t until she said his name that he yanked his mismatched gaze from the raccoon. His eyes went wide and his tail began to wave like crazy. "Auntie Koontz!" The boy shoved forward, bounding toward her, quickly closing the small distance that had been between them. "I didn’t know you were here! Mommy had said you'd gone but didn't know where." |
"Yeah, I left a few days after my birthday," she told him, unaware that she'd actually left on his first birthday three days after her own. "What did I tell you about calling me auntie?" she added, pulling a face. "I'm only a few days older than you, nephew," she added, wrinkling her nose even as she lifted a paw and playfully swiped his shoulder. He did look significantly younger, yet the two of them were much more like cousins than aunt and nephew.
"So what are you doing here?" she asked in the next beat, forgetting all about the raccoon. Koontz glanced over his shoulder as if expecting to see somebody else. "Is anybody else with you?"
He was pretty thrilled to be seeing his aunt, obviously and giggled like a little kid when she chided him about calling her auntie. Hamied had mostly done so out of sheer excitement, not even thinking about how they were so very close in age. "I know. I know," he replied, wrinkling his nose playfully at her. "I forgot." He wondered if Cyrus yet knew that Koontz was here. The small young male doubted it, though, because Cyrus would have told him if he had known since they weren’t keeping secrets from each other. "I came with Cyrus," he answered, grinning widely. It was little secret in their family circle that Hamied’s siblings all picked on him, except for Cyrus. "When he told mom and dad that he wanted to set out on his own, I said I wanted to go to. Mom was sad but they let me go. I didn’t think Cyrus was going to be okay with it, but he let me come with him. We’ve been staying up north in some forest." In his excitement to see Koontz, he all but forgot about the raccoon that he had been stalking until movement from it caught his attention. "Would you help me catch that? And then we can talk more about it?" |
"Well, I'm glad you two have each other," she said with another wave of her tail. "I'll have to catch up with him sometime. Are you two staying around here permanently? I run a pack of my own if you're interested." Koontz said it lightly, trying to make it clear that there was no sense of familial obligation out here. "Or is Cyrus trying to start his own?" she wondered suddenly.
Hamied redirected her attention to the raccoon and Koontz laughed and said, "Oh, right. Actually, I had just decided to become one of my pack's hunters, even though I'm not particularly good at it. We just really need one. I'd love to get in some practice. How do you want to go about it—got any strategical ideas?"
Hamied liked it when he got to see his family members in Flightless Falcons. He was blissfully unaware of any of the tension that had first surrounded his parents and his grandparents, and remained so to this very day. The boy had fully enjoyed getting to go back and forth between his home and his grandparent’s home to be able to see them off and on. Family meant the world to Hamied, which was just another thing that he got from his mother, though he got some of that from his father as well. ”I don’t think he’s yet decided what we’re going to do,” he answered, giving a slight shrug of his wee shoulders. ”But I’m definitely going to tell him that you’re here and that you’ve got your own pack just like Papa and Mo!” Hamied had only ever called Mo “grandma” once, and was quite content with calling her Mo after having been explained that it just sounded better. At least, that was how he remembered it and stuff. Young boys tended to sometimes remember things how they wanted to remember things, after all. His ears slicked backward, slightly, as he stared at the raccoon and tried to think of how to go about doing this. "I know it’s going to take both of us cause that sucker looks big enough to kick my butt…" he mused aloud, not entirely sure if he had any strategical ideas or not. He was used to chasing and catching small things like rodents and rabbits. When it came to the bigger things, he usually just followed after everyone else, doing as they did. "Think if we ambush it from both sides, it might confuse it and let us kill it?" |
If the smaller creature had seen, smelled or heard them, it made no indication. Perhaps it was fearless. Koontz distinctly recalled Mo telling her a few stories about plucky raccoons. It rambled back and forth across the plain, pausing every now and then to paw at the ground and then examine something or other with its crafty little forepaws.
"That's not a bad plan," Koontz said. She chewed her tongue for a moment, then said, "What if we elaborated on it? What if one of us ran right up to it and distracted it, while the other ran up from the other side and attacked it while its back was turned?"
Her ears pressed forward and she peered at Hamied's face, wondering what he thought of this idea and hoping he didn't feel badly that she hadn't simply gone with his. She was just trying to become half the hunter her mother was. And her efforts started right here, right now.
It wasn’t so much that the raccoon was fearless, really. It was more that the creature could only move so fast because of the infected back leg. It was in pain and unable to move very fast, but it was slowly putting some distance between it and the two wolves. Honestly, though, it hadn’t realized yet that it was being stalked and talked about as a meal. It would likely put up as much of a fight as it could, though, simply because a wounded animal was already a wicked vicious thing. His tail wiggled when she said his plan wasn’t bad and he pushed his ears fully forward when she mentioned elaborating on it. He wasn’t at all upset that she had a different idea, a better plan. He was far from being the world’s greatest hunter, after all. He nodded as he listened, turning his gaze toward the raccoon. ”I can distract it,” he volunteered. Though neither of them were large wolves, his aunt was by far bigger than him. That meant, to him, her bite would pack more of a punch than his. |
He seemed keen on the plan and offered to be the one to provide a distraction. Koontz grinned at him in what she hoped was a rogueish manner. "Go for it," she told him, thrusting her hoary muzzle in the raccoon's direction to send Hamied on his way. While he made his approach and put on his part of the show, she would swing wide around the critter to prepare her ambush.
She turned her back on him and began to lope perpendicularly to the shuffling raccoon. As she walked, her silvery ears slid backward to track Hamied's progress. Although Koontz definitely couldn't make out his footfalls, she knew he would be making noises the closer he came to the raccoon. That was his job.
Finally, she put enough distance between herself and Hamied and the raccoon. Koontz pivoted around, now keeping a pale eye on the two even as she readied herself for her sneaky attack.
He gave a slight nod before putting on his "game face" which meant that he was returning to seriousness in what was going on. Turning toward the raccoon, he watched it limping for a moment before setting off toward it. He didn’t go too fast because he didn’t want to come upon the animal too soon and risk it having a go at him, though he was sure that Koontz would enter the scene before it got too ugly. The raccoon stopped ambling and limping along to turn her attention onto the small beast coming toward her. Rearing backward, the raccoon winced from the pain in her injured and infected leg but didn’t show any sign of backing down. If that little wolf wanted a fight, she was surely going to give him one. She was unaware of the second wolf that was part of this whole ordeal. It was likely going to end up being her downfall, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight. |
Hamied made his approach, placing himself in plain sight of the raccoon. It reacted by stopping and facing him warily, unwilling to back down but also too cautious to keep going and be forced to divide its attention. Koontz watched and observed all of this from a distance, all the while wondering if the raccoon had even the smallest, sneaking suspicion that it was all a trick...
Before giving it a chance to figure it out, Koontz made her own approach. She moved silently but swiftly, not unlike a lioness approaching a wildebeest on the plains of Africa. When she came close enough, she burst into a gallop, no longer caring if the raccoon saw or heard her. By the time the creature turned to ascertain the threat approaching from the rear, Koontz was already upon it.
The 'coon did not go down easily, however. Koontz managed to throw her weight on it, pinning it to the ground, yet it somehow managed to roll and began flailing its limbs at her. She felt its claws slice at her leg and she yelped despite herself. She then found her balance and sprang away even as the raccoon, spitting and screeching, tried to right itself.
Seeing its vulnerability, Koontz didn't waste any time. She dove right back into the thick of things, this time trying to aim for the raccoon's throat. Meanwhile, she hoped that Hamied would provide some support from the rear so that she wasn't left alone to fend with those ferocious claws.
What seemed just a few beats later, Koontz stood panting over the slain creature across from Hamied, blood staining her muzzle. She waited to catch her breath while inspecting some small scratches sustained on her foreleg—a small price to pay for a meal. She exchanged a bloody grin with Hamied and licked her chops before finally drawing in a deep breath and regaining her wind.
"Well," she announced, "let's dig in while it's still warm." Without another word, Koontz fell upon the small kill, tore off a chunk of meat and withdrew a few feet to work on it. When she polished that off, she went back for seconds and, eventually, thirds.
She finished eating in less than five minutes, then rolled onto her back with a groan. While she lay there and digested, she asked Hamied a few more questions about their mutual family members. The young Alpha knew she shouldn't let herself fall asleep—she had to get back to the plateau—but she lost the fight of will. Their conversation faded, as did her consciousness, as Koontz slept contentedly on her full stomach.