Blacktail Deer Plateau Put money in my hand

a bdp member val hasnt met?

Twilight was cold upon the plateau as the lanky adolescent, Valtýr, gave his coat a good shake to warm the air against his skin. He moved across the winter ground with heavy, awkward steps. A large piece of willow bark was clamped betwixt his narrow maw, a treasure he had collected for its unique and musty aroma. It wasn't long before Val arrived at his hideaway: a hollow of tangled roots. He slipped between them to deposit his cache before reemerging. The boy took a deep breath as the land settled into night's cradle.

Should he sleep too? Or was another awake and about?

Osprey had noticed that among the faces of the newcomers, there was one of a more childish and innocent proportions. That of a kids. First she had thought that he was related to the core-members - maybe Dante's or Lasher's nephew/son they had never known about? Blue willow's relative? Yet as the days passed she noticed that the kid kept to himself and came to a conclusion that he was on his own. For a young person like he it seemed a little odd and wrong at the same time. Why was it so?

Therefore, when she noticed a quick shadow cross her path one evening, she decided to follow it and finally get to know the mysterious little stranger. Her step was lighter and longer, but even with having this advantage she almost lost the kid to the twilight, noticing him disappear in a well-hidden hallow in the very last moment. Keeping the exact spot in her eyes, she closed the distance that was left and stopped in front of it, sniffing the ground to make sure that this was the right place.

"Hello," she greeted him and asked him to reveal himself, if he wished so.

Valtýr's breath turn to frost against the velvet sky, the moon looking down upon the barren wood. Wet, molten eyes glanced skyward and suddenly the youth became lost amidst his senses. The crisp air upon his nose... the bite of cold snow against his brackish paws... Winter was a new experience for the halfling, who had been born last summer. So much had changed in that short time, but Valtýr couldn't shake the sentiment akin to being adrift at sea. Only recently had he become acclimated to the Plateau, but still he shied away from the more dominant wolves. The orphan was the lowest rung on a long ladder — a fact he often reflected upon.

So absent was Valtýr that the crunch of snow beneath footsteps barely registered. It wasn't until his guest spoke that the teenager realized she was there. His heart sipped a beat from her abrupt arrival, slipping betwixt the roots like an adder. The Sveijarn's figure sunk into a hunched and submissive pose, line of sight lowering in an obedient manner. He could tell she was silver by the color of her paws... but any other features eluded him for the time being.

"Hi," the boy responded, voice soft. A moment passed, expression uncertain. "Am I... in... trouble?" Why else would the she-wolf seek him out? Did that bark belong to someone else? Had he broken a rule? The adults usually left the adolescent alone to his own devices, and so Val questioned what was needed of him now, not realizing a little intervention would be to his benefit.

The kid seemed to be afraid of Osprey in the beginning, therefore she retreated few steps away to give him space and lied down in order to tell him that she meant no harm and was plain curious and also to be at the same eyelevel with him. She wondered, what had made him so fearful and shy, was it because of her being a stranger to him or the treatment he received from rest of the pack. None of the adults she had spoken to recently had mentioned or talked about him in detail. As if he was not that important - but he seemed to be quite young to be totally on his own. How could that not matter?

"Trouble? No, I don't think so," Osprey shook her head. "I have caught sight of you before - you are a little, mysterious and flighty spirit. So I followed you in order to get to know you."

Even though Osprey had the best intentions to subdue Valtýr's apprehension by relaxing in a prone position, the child became shifty when eye-to-eye with the woman's celadon stare. Brackish paws moved nervously beneath his crouched figure. Wasn't he, merely a youth, supposed to be lower than his superiors? The sandy adolescent then mimicked Opsrey, and slid down onto his belly uncomfortably. At least now he wasn't looking down at her.

His sooty tail gave a feeble wag of appeasement as Osprey spoke. It appeared he wasn't in trouble, but the delta wanted to know more. Suddenly, Valtýr felt very hot for being upon such cold snow. "Oh..." he hummed, not sure if 'little, mysterious, and flighty' was meant as a compliment or not... probably the latter. "Okay," he chirped, prepared to be interrogated.

ooc: post 600th goes to you!

The young fellow lied down too, but he didn't seem to be comfortable in Osprey's company. She did not like it, but didn't let it show and eventually decided to ignore it. There wasn't much of anything she could do to make him feel better. Only talk and pretend that all was fine in hopes that he would relax over time.

"I don't know, if you know me," she began, wincing at her choice of words. "My name is Osprey - who are you?" she asked putting as much kindness and "feel free" in her voice as she possibly could. She was keen on finding out more about the shy adolescent and, if fate would have it, befriend him too.

I win!

Just as Osprey suspected, time would ease Valtýr's withdrawn nature as he identified a sense of self. For now, he was a particularly susceptible to the emotional torque all adolescents endured. It wasn't that he distrusted Osprey, but rather he found most adults distant and unrelatable. They were on a tier the boy had not yet ascended too, and thus he had difficulty communicating with them.

"I didn't see you at the meeting," Valtýr noted, which might of explained the reason they had never intercepted one another before. Osprey introduced herself in a kind voice. Everything about her was nice. His ears orbited forward, a bit more engaged in their conversation. "I'm Valtýr," he said in a quiet tone without embellishment, making it clear the conversation would be rather one-sided.

"Valtyr - it's my pleasure to meet you," Osprey dipped her muzzle politely. She didn't quite know, what kind of meeting the lad had meant and concluded in the end that it had taken place sometime during her absence, for she was sure that she had never seen this kid before her leaving the pack.

The boy didn't offer much for continuing the conversation, but it didn't look like he was fed up with Osprey already, which she took as a permission to go on. However, she reminded herself to be careful and watch for signs that would indicate that Valtyr was no longer comfortable in her presence.

"Where are you from?" she snatched the first most obvious question that was at paw's length to her.

Osprey laid on the formal etiquette thick, but her polite manner helped unlock Valtýr's quiet demeanor. He became charmed by her agreeable nature and soft voice, feeling safe in her company — albeit still awkward. He offered her a nervous smile and slow tip of his maw, returning his thanks with a wordless gesture.

"I'm from... a lot of places," he told Osprey, "I was born besides a creek... but my family moved to a grreaaatttt mountain next to ice." Of course, he had been an infant during his time in Swiftcurrent, and had never actually felt the cool touch of its creek... but remembered Bazi and Galileo fondly. At Duskfire, he had the recollection of the glacier upon entering the territory — but Tuwawi and Njal had squirreled their children away in the den for fear of unsavory predators. However, this had done little to deter the lynx who had stolen Larus away.

The details of his departure were hazy at best. It had been a tumultuous time in Val's young life and his mind had spared him few pictures to remember it by. However, he could recall bite of cold and a man named Lucius who had saved him from wasting away. "I got lost in the woods one night, but a stranger helped me find the plateau." Next came Junior, bloodied and washed up on the banks. Her body had lent the young Sveijarn enough warmth to continue on. "That's when Blue, Lasher, and Junior found me." Junior's pained shrieking stubbornly lodged itself in his memories... the image of her grotesque limbs xeroxed into his mind.

It was ironic that Duskfire had recently been in the company of Koda and Kesuk, yet no parallels were drawn between the orphaned Valtýr and his forlorn home besides the glacier.

The mountains... It sounded interesting and exciting. Osprey had lived in the forests and plains all her life and seen the snow-capped mountaintops only from the distance. She had never ventured too near to them, admiring the creation of the nature from afar. Yet living surrounded by them? The next question she wanted to ask him had less to do with the regular stuff - had he - by any chance - met shapeshifter goblins or even mountain trolls? The tale a wolf called Ame came to her mind and for a moment she looked at Valtyr with an excited glint in her eys, which disappeared with the next blink, when she realized that kid would probably be spooked by this.

"You have an interesting life story - not all kids your age have experienced this much in such a short period of time," she said. "I wasn't born here either - I came from a faraway land. There were a lot of forests and meadows and the rush of the ocean nearby. A beautiful place," it seemed only fair that she shared her part of the story too. "Did you have any siblings?"

Again, Osprey's intuition was correct. Strange tales regarding Duskfire would have only stoked the flame regard Larus, Jokull, and Tuwawi's disappearance. He often tried not to think about the tragic end of his family - perhaps more as of a coping mechanism than anything else. He gave a nervous laugh when the silver woman expressed wonder at his unfortunate life. "Y-yeah..." he agreed, eyes drifting to a stuck up root - but his attention returned when Osprey began to weave the rich image of her homeland.

It sounded like nothing Valtýr had ever witnessed and a million times more pleasing than the places he had lived. Warm meadows... the sea... Bronze eyes went wide as his mouth began to move wordlessly, so wanting to ask of this place... but he went silent when she, once again, returned to the subject of his past. Valtýr's expression became dark, eyes lidded wearily. He nodded, affirming her question. "Three," he said. "Jökull, Maera... and Lárus. He's dead." The boy's voice went flat, then - oddly similar to Pura's analog tone.

Osprey should have predicted, what she was about to hear, before the kid told her about the family that did not exist anymore. She had not meant to steer the conversation towards something that made Valtyr unhappy and yet she had managed to do that on the second take. For future reference she decided to revise the long list of questions you asked to a person you met for the first time in your life. Now she had to mend the wrong she had done. The question was - how?

"I am sorry!" was the best Osprey could come up with no matter, how lame it actually sounded. "And so far... have you found the plateau to your liking?"

Valtýr's depressive lapse was only momentary -- Osprey's apology was enough to pull him back into the conversation with a new topic. His skinny tail wagged feebly, front paws curling under his sandy chest like a cat. "Mhm," Val hummed as his maw dipped in affirmation, "Its nice here. Blue Willow is very kind. Saena and Pura are... only a bit older than me. We get along." These relationships was important to the orphan who pined for his bother and sisters. Especially Maera. "I am happy Dante let me stay." As Val became older his infant naivety faded away and he was slowly becoming aware how narrowly he escaped death. If Lucius hadn't found him, or if Junior hadn't been half-dead on the shore, or if Dante refused his presence... well, things would have been a whole lot different.

"Yeah... Blue willow is like a mom for us all - the kind soul," Osprey agreed, smiling at the thought of her friend, who often put the happiness of others above her own and felt guilty and bad, if she decided to take a healthy dose of selfishness now and then.
There was nothing much she could say about Saena or Pura on the matter, for she didn't know either of them too well. The fact that her niece disliked her was no secret to her. Regarding the nephew - she hadn't had much to do with him, but from what she had observed - he was a bit weird. And creepy. Brrr... she shivered.
"Dante is a good fellow," she agreed, feeling happy for Valtyr's sake. Maybe it was not entirely according to the rules of nature - letting someone else's offspring to live and grow up in your pack. But then again... the alpha had no children of his own yet, so there was no competition for the resources at the moment. This could change any time, however.
"If you let me, I would like to be your friend too," she offered. "I have my flaws, of course, and I tend to take frequent bouts of wandering around the flatlands, but I daresay... I am pretty decent."

Last post for me! ^__^

Osprey only had good things to day about the others, which made Val smiled in earnest. The gray woman was kind and humble to the point of openly admitting her shortcomings. Everyone at the Plateau, so far, had been more than cordial and it made the lost Sveijarn feel truly welcomed. "Okay," he simpered and shuffled forth to give Osprey a quick lick on her chin. He scooted back, warmed up to her but not quite comfortable enough to linger so close.

Having friends was everything to the orphan, and he would oblige Osprey in conversation for the next hour or so before retiring to his root burrow.