Ravensblood Forest Happy up here

This'll be set at the edge of Ravensblood Forest. :)

The plateau offered its recently-transplanted inhabitants a sense of security and the pack, though small, thrived even as true winter approached. Pied felt at home in the hollow tree and went to bed there each night with a full stomach. She really couldn't think of any complaints at any given moment, even though life could almost be considered uneventful these past few weeks, ever since the novelty of their new homestead had begun to fade.

A yawn forced her jaws apart and her lips peeled back to expose dozens of sharp teeth. A moment later, they disappeared as her mouth closed with a quiet click. The young she-wolf shook out her mottled ruff and peered over the landscape below the ledge where she currently perched. The snow seemed to muffle any noises and she could see no movement around her, save for the silent flapping of a certain ghostly magpie in the distance over the flatlands.

Rising, Pied began to walk toward the borders, then loped down the path that led away from the plateau. At its foot, she paused with one white paw suspended in the air, deliberating where to go. She decided to head northwest in the shadow of the plateau, the river guiding the way on her left shoulder. Far ahead, she could see that it forked off in several directions and she wondered if it fed from the yonder sea.

After a time, Pied realized how far she'd gone and drew up short, glancing over her shoulder at the plateau far behind her. She then chuffed and faced forward, her two-toned eyes roving over the forest perhaps a quarter of a mile upriver. Something about it beckoned her and she kept moving forward with the intent to check out its fringes for a few minutes, then turn back and head home before Hawkeye considered her missing in action.

<style type="text/css">.jinxnew {margin:auto; width:400px; padding:30px 30px 30px 30px; border:1px solid #000; background:#49404A; font:12px Georgia; color:#988E99; text-align:justify;} .jinxnew q {color:#B4CC00;} .jinxnew em {color:#B4CC00;}</style>

The white oak bark that Kisu and she had collected was buried beneath one of the handful of enormous sequoia trees within Horizon Ridge's territory. Jinx had risen early this morning to visit the site and investigate the overturned earth, and had been relieved to find it undisturbed. The thought of a pack mate locating the cache and making a deadly mistake with handling the goods within was a frightening thought, so much so that she had thought time and again of relocating it to her eventual den site. She refrained from moving it, though, for the simple fact she had shared its secrets with Kisu. It must be readily available for the male's use, if he chose.

Once she was satisfied with the status of their cache, the female had loped down a path carved into the foothills by a once-running stream that no longer was fed, and padded along the damp strand in the peace of the morning. There was no sound, not even the calling of gulls overhead, as she paced down the beach and eventually slipped back into the Ravensblood Forest in precisely the location she had gone when Kisu had found her. She passed by the tree they had stripped bark from, and pressed instead further into the forest. She went so far, in fact, as to reach the snow-covered edge, where coast turned to flatland.

It was there that a spectre from her recent past arose in the distance, and stopped her dead in her tracks. Had it been any other, Hawkeye or Leto or someone less recognizable, Jinx would have been on her way, and perhaps never chanced an encounter; she would have slipped by on the fringe of acceptable company and continued scouting along the inner curve of the mountains. Yet, it was not of those wolves. The wolf she spotted was perhaps the most recognizable of all the wolves she'd known: the mottling of stormy slate on an otherwise pristinely white coat was unmistakable even at that distance.

Jinx's hackles lifted in uncertainty and curiosity; would Pied remember her? Would Pied blame her? It was the Kesuk who the Bon Dye wolves had betrayed, not the other way around (so she told herself, being addled by her vision, despite it having occurred mostly in her mind), but would Pied care? Jinx did not move. She stood at the edge of the forest, staring down her once-subordinate, wondering with bated breath what the female would do... If anything.

Woo, it's good to roleplay with you again. :)

Before Pied reached the edge of the woods, a figure appeared and she stopped short, immediately pensive. Her lips then parted in surprise when she recognized the white wolf with sooty paws. She found herself staring hard at the other she-wolf, wondering what to make of her appearance here. She looked a little worse for wear, yet here she was. Incredulity quickly followed on the wings of astonishment.

She read the lines of uncertainty in her former Alpha's posture. She felt unsure too but, more importantly, she wanted answers. Striding forward, Pied didn't bother with posturing, keeping her stature neutral. At the same time, her approach was sure-footed and swift. Pied's two-toned eyes remained steadily pinned on Jinx.

"Jinx," she said simply and a bit tersely. "What happened to you? Where did you go?" Her questions, so far, remained neutral, lacking any accusation. The words themselves indicated concern, yet her tone was absolutely flat.

I agree, I've missed your characters! I'm trying out Jinx as a less talkative character, just to see if I can succeed without boring myself with her posts, so hopefully it doesn't awkward Pied out or anything. >_>

There was a brief pause in which Jinx's breath was held in tightening throat. Her suspense was enough to make for a decent thriller action scene, but it was short-lived, as Pied's course appeared to line up directly with her position as the female lurched into motion once more. Still Jinx remained motionless, though her ears flitted downward to the sides of her head and her lips parted into an anxious wolf-smile, the sort one would greet a potentially threatening enemy with, and not a friend.

Pied's tone when she was within earshot was calm enough, but Jinx, whose rationality and poise had been taken by the horrible thing she had seen, imagined accusation where there was none and bristled indignantly. Her glare was pointed, but it faltered at Pied's own direct stare, as though for a moment her composure had been lost. Even she could not dare to stare down her once-subordinate, not when her memory recalled with fondness Pied's seamless integration into Bon Dye. Besides, the question was simple enough: where had she gone?

The answer was not so simple. The truth of it was that Jinx had found the magical fly amanita tucked into the roots of a birch, and consumed it without thought, believing it to project her soul into the spiritual realm and taking it as an avenue to increased knowledge and wisdom. The potent hallucinogen had made her perceive a wisp on the wind, and she had followed it in the belief it was Bade, the loa she served, up to the point where she had foolishly fallen into the river. She had survived the journey downriver, inexplicably, and pulled herself to the riverbank to witness a sleepy bear's descent into its den for hibernation... But the rest of the scene, the part where it had consumed a white bear and bore the red vision of Sos, had been entirely the effect of the mushrooms.

Being so zealous in her religion, she had taken it as truth. What she had seen had been real, at least to her. But the shock of nearly drowning, coupled with the onset of starvation and the anxiety of becoming lucid in a place she didn't recognize, had effectively removed her memories of most of it. She could only remember that the loa had guided her to Sos, and Sos had proclaimed himself victor, but of what, she could not remember.

So to Pied, Jinx had almost no solid explanation. Her religion, her god, and her loa were tangible only to her, and served as shaky arguments at best to anyone else. So while her glare said, you fools left my forest, her lips parted to say aloud, the loa promised wisdom and I followed. That "wisdom" was the replacement of her intelligent (for a Kesuk) forethought and her compassion with something baser and more wild, something that had no name, but governed the innermost spirit of all wolves.

Pied felt a little appalled when she was received with wary indignation. Her lip curled slightly even as Jinx bristled, though she otherwise did not make her feelings known. Her face fell into a stony mask as she read the former Alpha's body language—all of it defensive, none of it apologetic—and listened to her words. Her explanation came up incredibly short and Pied stared now as if to say, That's it? Now her eyes looked as disappointed as they did vexed.

"Why didn't you say something before you just—vanished?" Pied asked. It took effort to keep her tone neutral but she succeeded, for the most part. "We waited weeks for you to show up," she added, the words grating out between teeth that had begun to clench despite herself. "And what of Kerberos and Lecter? All of you just disappeared without a word or trace."

Everything about Jinx's demeanor seemed to fault Pied and likely everyone else Jinx had left behind, rather than take any blame herself. If this was true, it was infuriatingly unfair, yet still Pied held back the accusations. Maybe Jinx was just behaving this way because she was paranoid and, once she realized Pied wasn't going to try to rip out her throat, she'd relent. At least, Pied decided to give her the benefit of the doubt as she continued to stand there, awaiting an explanation.

Tension filled the space between them, but all Jinx could focus on was the way that Pied's lips bunched and pulled in vexation. The Kappa didn't respond physically to that; after all, while logic would have dictated that she was in the wrong, Jinx had lost the concept somewhat. Her mind was made up: they had left her forest, and gone their own way. It was unforgivable. She was too addled by the events to truly see it from Pied's perspective, which was promptly revealed to her.

They call, I obey. That was probably the most that Jinx would supply by way of explanation. That had always been the case. It had been the case when she had left Shearwater Bay in the hands of her sister, despite having coveted her precious title of Mambo since she was a young cub. It had been the case when Sos had first indicated to her that that forest was to be their place of prosperity. And it would be the case now, in her foggy and incomplete record of her short time as Alpha of Bon Dye.

Now the female's lips bunched to an expression similar to the vexation Pied had showed, and the brief lift of ears and hackles suggested, you should have waited longer. She wouldn't have expected them to be leaderless so long — it was not the way of pack to be left without an Alpha even for a day — but to leave the forest and uproot the pack, it was treason. They had sworn an oath. This belief was, of course, in contrast to Jinx's own actions: if her belief that her wolves had wronged her was justified, then why hadn't she chosen to stay in the forest when she came back as well? Was it not hypocritical?

To the final inquiry, and the grating of Pied's voice, she merely lifted a shoulder in apathy, as if to say, I am not responsible for their actions. I do not know where they have gone. There was a lurch in her heart at the mention of their names — she could have claimed Kerberos was dead, as her heart felt was certain with the macabre sight she had seen, but she did not. Nor could she account for Lecter, whose wayward wandering may have been in pursuit of Clarice, his daughter whose presence in his life was thin as gossamer. It may have been in pursuit of Sos.

She longed to put on a display to warn Pied away from the site of her new home, but there was too much tension and underlying curiosity for her to do it just yet. Respect was not established, with both feeling the other to blame for the pack's relocation (or disbanding, since Jinx didn't know what had become of it), although Jinx blamed Pied and company wrongly. There was no reason for the piebald Delta to heed her, and so Jinx waited, albeit reluctantly, for the meeting to take a turn that might permit either of them a chance to depart.

"Did you ever think that maybe that makes you a shitty Alpha?" Pied blurted before she could bite back the uncharacteristically caustic words. Gods, I sound like Mo, she thought to herself. "Sorry," she added reflexively, although she felt weird apologizing to Jinx at this point. "But if you're just going to up and wander off without a word for indeterminate amounts of time, you shouldn't be a leader and expect others to have faith in you. We made an oath to you and you failed us."

When Jinx expressed distaste, her body language leaving no room for misinterpretation, Pied's lip curled again and her own hackles bristled. Her tail stiffened too. "We were in a bad way. All of our leaders disappeared. We did what we had to do to survive. You broke the oath first," she repeated with an agitated lash of her tail. To drive in her point, she glared at Jinx, her gaze unwavering.

Jinx's apathy regarding the whereabouts of Kerberos and Lecter disgusted Pied. "You leave without a word, don't care about your closest comrades and you clearly blame those of us left behind for doing what was best of ourselves," she summarized, a touch of acid in her voice. "We're so much better off without you," she added without missing a beat, the annoyance leeching out of her voice so that the tone became cold once more.

Accidentally removed OOPSIE

When Jinx reacted aggressively, Pied wanted to match her pace for pace. Instead, she stood like a statue, unflinching in the face of the other female's threatening displays. She would surely not bend to her former Alpha's will, nor would she let herself appear to be intimidated, even if she felt shivers trembling through her gut at the sight of Jinx's fangs.

"I stand by what I said: that makes you a poor leader," Pied rejoined evenly. "And you take absolutely no responsibility for your actions or their consequences, which is even worse. That you think so highly of yourself is the icing on the cake," she finished, unable to hold back a sneer, though she wiped it off her face as quickly as she could manage.

"I'm not here to fight with you, Jinx," Pied said after a beat, "verbally or otherwise. I just wanted an explanation. Instead, I got excuses. Not once did you own up to what you did or try to look at it from our perspective. Maybe I would've understood your calling better if you weren't acting all high and mighty about it and showed a little remorse for what you put us through. You didn't even hang around long enough for most of us to get a grasp of the faith before you supposedly tested it to the breaking point and beyond."

The returned insult stung and it likely showed in her eyes, yet Pied tried to retain her composure. "You call me 'shitty' in return, yet I know many wolves who would disagree with you and agree with me. Can you say the same?" She paused for less than a breath and finished by saying, "You've lost a lot of good wolves' respect forever, Jinx." She frowned lightly, as if declaring this was as hurtful for her to say as it was for Jinx to hear.

OOC: Hooray I accidentally deleted my previous post's content OOPS

<style type="text/css">.jinx2 q {color:#BF4930;} .jinx2 em {color:#BF4930;}</style>

With what needed to be said, said, she could only take what was flung at her. If Jinx felt remorse for what she'd put her wolves through — admittedly, nothing, for packs did not rise and fall with their leaders, but with the wolves who committed themselves to the wellbeing of the pack, as those of Shearwater Bay had done during Nanuq's trips — she didn't show it. She was unflinching at the accusation of being self-involved, for Jinx believed herself to be no such thing. In fact, she believed herself to be a humble being, who had staked the glory of Alphaship on her religion when she heeded the loa.

Oh, to be as addled as the Kesuk in her trust in Sos and his designs was both a grand and fallacious thing.

She didn't have many words for much of what Pied said, but her tone was relentlessly icy when she said, I did not dictate my leaving, it was chosen for me. Was she wrong to ignore the perspectives of her wolves, wolves who didn't understand? Wolves who believed it was okay for a wolf to disobey the call of a god because they were an Alpha? Perhaps she, too, would better have understood Pied's point, and perhaps she would have seen their side of things, if the shock and strain of being washed downriver hadn't sent her better judgment and sense of justice packing.

The concluding remark brought a smug smile to her face that, for a moment, confirmed Pied's suspicion that Jinx was, at least internally, somewhat high and mighty about herself. The look said, yes, in fact, I can. For Jinx had many wolves who would have understood her reasons for leaving, all of them probably burnt to a crisp in Shearwater Bay (or so she believed), but Pied didn't know that. All of the Shearwater wolves of old — Lecter, her siblings, Kerberos, her uncles and aunts, her grandparents, Lethe, Sylvia, Jello, and all the rest — would have branded her a good wolf.

For, Jinx thought to herself, none of those wolves had abandoned their pack territory when Nanuq had gone on her spiritual trips. They would not have agreed that a wolf who left its territory was a good wolf. This fanatic belief, which was hardly true, she kept to herself.

With that, the pale Kappa lifted her tail and turned her head to peer at Pied through her left eye, as if to dismissively say, I suggest you be going now. The motion itself would hopefully waft the scent of a dominant male in the dappled Delta's direction, which would add the final point: there is a pack near here. It would be a half-truthful claim, for Horizon Ridge was in fact quite distant, but it was an excuse, like all the other things in her life.

Damn, I hate it when that happens!

I hope the way I ended this was okay (assuming Jinx wouldn't follow). If not, I'm happy to edit and continue!

By the way, I wanted to give you props for narrating Jinx's shortcomings. A lot of people (myself included) are pretty bad at doing that. It's flaws that make the most interesting characters... :)

Jinx's body language took on a haughty edge and Pied sucked in a long breath and shook her head slightly. Her own posture didn't change; she still stood rather stiffly, neither dominant nor submissive but entirely unflinching. Even when Jinx looked her in the eye and lifted her tail, Pied didn't move a muscle. She received the intended message quite clearly—including the olfactory portion of it—but she stubbornly refused to do what Jinx clearly wanted of her.

Feeling it would be a total waste of breath to say anything more to the fallen Alpha, Pied simply shook her head lightly again, as if shaking off a pesky fly. She then strode past Jinx. She wanted to bump into her, jostling Jinx off her high horse, yet Pied lost her confidence at the last second and simply passed the black-footed wolf. She then proceeded to trot into the dark woodland, refusing to look back, though her twisting ears betrayed the fact that she listened for pursuit.

Soon, the forest's quietude enveloped her. Pied finally turned around, facing the way she'd come and standing very still, sniffing and listening. She couldn't imagine why Jinx would come after her, yet all the same... She sucked in another deep breath, her mottled flanks expanding, then trotted off into the trees, making her roundabout way back toward home with every intention of avoiding the area where she'd crossed paths with Jinx.

OOC: Thank you! I'd actually thought you'd always been pretty good at it, personally. For me, it's an attempt to make my posts sound less self-righteous about everything, even though Jinx herself is being self-righteous to the nth degree. >_>
And yep, perfect ending!

IC: It was frustrating to have a wolf who she had once commanded blatantly ignore her — more frustrating still that Pied did so with the knowledge of a pack's presence in the area — but Jinx felt herself justified in all things. She felt herself supremely dedicated to Sos, and that put her above other creatures that refused to understand the extent of her god's power. So it was that Jinx came to view Pied as somehow lesser, even though truth would point out that Pied, at least, had not abandoned her pack.

That thought was put aside, for Jinx had already explained her reasoning, and felt it was acceptable. She no longer cared for the mottled wolf's opinion. What she did care for was the blatant way that Pied proceeded toward her, as though she would merely pass. Her stance stiffened, and as Pied approached she snapped her jaws in the female's direction, but otherwise didn't move; it was no use pursuing the Blacktail Delta, for Jinx didn't believe she had anything to prove.

When Pied had passed by completely, and Jinx felt satisfied with her warning display, the Kappa looped back into the forest and made a beeline for Horizon Ridge. She might inform her Alpha of the meeting, or keep it to herself and merely pace the perimeter alone. After all, there was no reason to drag Akhlut into it. It was not his affair. Had she been privy to Pied's intent to share the news with Hawkeye, she might have been more certain of her course of action, but by the time her paws touched the welcome incline of her pack's territory, Jinx had already chosen to forget the exchange.