Ouroboros Spine you were the only one

So, all I can see in my phone notifications is usually the first line. Which was your OOC text. I figured he was going to be all "IT SUCKS."

The question that he posed did not appear to Mordecai as the veritable can of worms it should have been. But he answered it all the same. “No, but I helped to claim it.” He wondered what it had been that had drawn Jinx out far enough to have found it. From where they had been at Silvertip, the Spine had looked like nothing more than a few squat little mountains tucked away in the depths of the wilderness. Not a fortress, or suggesting that it contained a basin-like valley within. It had honestly looked like remnants of something else.

“We've been through a lot since we came here, but things are on the mend now,” he went on to say, tracing nearby forestry with his eyes. Nothing stirred in the wood ahead of them, not that he had expected it to. They were not teeming with wolves from one end to another, but they were all there. And they were enough, Mordecai felt. It was on that note that he felt the stirring of unpleasant memories he wasn't yet ready to delve into, and changed the subject.

“One of the best parts about this place is the prey, though. Care for a hunt?”

An interesting tidbit that was. It made Sidewinder wonder where Mordecai had come from and what had brought him here. If he had helped to claim it, it stood to reason that Mordecai had come here with somebody else. Curious indeed. Who had he come here with? Were they still here? Where had they come from? But those questions would not further his search for the white-eyed "Viper," so he did not ask them. If he had a reason to, perhaps he would have questioned further to pry the origins of Ouroboros Spine out of the Ostrega, but he made no attempt to do so now.

Mordecai proposed a hunt, and Sidewinder nodded in agreement. “You lead the way,” he suggested. Winder certainly had no abilities as a leader, not even on a team of two. Besides, it would give him a feel for how Mordecai liked to work, something he was very keen in knowing the ins and outs of, if he was to reside here through the winter.

Once Sidewinder had agreed to the premise of a hunt, Mordecai had no qualms about taking the lead. Given his history though, perhaps that was unsurprising. He set off from where they stood to bring them lower into the basin, slipping between the trees smoothly. It was easy for him to drop all thought this way, to hone in and focus on something else that mattered. In this case, he felt keeping up on the caches would benefit them more than anything else.

And in a way, he could use it to do his own testing.

He stepped over a puny stream along their path, pausing momentarily to scent the air carefully. “Last time I was over this way, there were a bunch of pheasants trying to nest down. How well do you like giving chase to fast runners?” A cheeky grin spread on his features for a moment, thinking of the two of them trying to catch any of them. Mordecai knew they were quick on their feet, and wondered how well their success would fare in the varied terrain.

Pheasants, eh? Sidewinder had never claimed to be a good—or even decent—hunter. He was much better in slow, calculating moves. Hunting required an entirely different skillset than he had been brought up with. It was his other littermates who had been taught the more physical skills. Sidewinder had always been more interested in his father's other skillset. The one that involved more social skills. He had taken to it quickly, and as he was now going on his fourth year, he'd had plenty of time to hone in on those skills. And really, his whole life revolved around the skills he'd been taught as a child.

“I won’t lie,” Sidewinder replied, fully aware of how amusing that statement was to him, even if Mordecai likely had no idea (or hid it very well), “I’ve never been much of a sprinter.” That much was the truth, obvious by the fact that Sidewinder was a large beast, hindered by his size and weight where others might have excelled. He was unlike the small Mara, who probably would have done well at such things. “Perhaps I could flush them, and you could do the chasing.”

Hmm, should we roll (1d10 for 50/50 odds) to see if they're successful?

So they were one in the same when it came to hunting pheasants. Mordecai had the ability to be quick on his feet, but there were simply times when he wasn't. But they still provided a good challenge, and he merely nodded in response. He could do the part of chasing just as much as he was able to do the part of flushing them out… it was just the matter of finding where the birds had gone to. Once he had found that note of interest, he gestured in that direction.

“Let's try from there. If you can spook them, I'll see what I can do at nabbing one.” The process could have been repeated ad nauseum, of course. Licking his chops in anticipation, he waited for Sidewinder to head into the brush first, willing to bring up the rear and spread out from there.

Gonna wrap this up since I'm dropping Winder and you're doing the same with Mordy.

Sidewinder slunk into the brush, careful to keep an eye on their prey. Then, in a flurry of tooth and feathers, the duo managed to catch a couple of the birds, bringing them down with more than enough flapping and squawking and whatever other sounds pheasants make. Satisfied, Sidewinder ripped his meal open, but not before prancing around with it, tossing it up in the air and having a grand ol' time playing with his food. Only when he had sufficiently beaten the dead bird enough did he stop. With a belly full and on good terms with his Alpha, Winder soon skulked off. He had every intention of leaving Ouroboros and finding this "brother" of his.