Kintla Flatlands and never thought you'd wind up chasing me

@mordecai

after a luxurious nap, starling felt extremely invigorated. invigorated enough in fact to torment a local cluster of fox who had taken refuge in the warm hearth of a hollowed tree stump. she was feeling frisky enough that as she chased the foxes she cajolled them with a series of yips, bounding after them like an uncoordinated grasshopper. they were quick, and knew the lay of land better than her, and before long they had scurried off into the brambles.

never one to miss an opportunity to scavenge, starling turned back to the little den. she overestimated her svelte features and halfway through trying to climb down through the hole she found herself stuck with her ass hanging in the air. shit -- she grunted and tried to wriggle herself backwards.. and found herself entirely stuck.

sry this sux; legit lol over starling getting stuck

A flurry of vulpines had scattered when they greeted him near the crest of a ruddy hill. If Mordecai had been feeling half as invigorated as Starling, perhaps he would have given them chase through those very brambles they receeded into. But they had scattered too quickly, evidently startled by something that added itself unquestionably to his curiosity. The forest was a dotted sort, almost totally devoid of snow with the increasingly warmer temperatures that had come to settle across much of the land. If there was any suggestion that spring was knocking on the door already, this was it.

And as he rounded the next natural bend of that very terrain, he happened upon a sight that immediately prompted him to chuckle. It now made sense why the foxes had scattered — someone was trying to invade their home. Curious as to whether or not there was something worth investigating, he narrowed his approach only to have it stopped short. The wolf that was there wasn't just digging in after them, her actions suggested to him that she had found herself a victim of a rather foxy trap.

It was exactly how it came to him too, enough to prompt a short burst of laughter. It was hard not to. "Need help digging yourself out of their trap?" he called to her wriggling form.

she squeezed, sucking in air and expelling it in the damp fox-den. the cramped quarters were anything but generous, and starling struggled to keep her head low enough not to scrape the root-riddled ceiling. maybe this was a sign she had lost her princessly figure -- she had splurging on rabbit lately..

with a sway of her haunches she tried to push herself out by digging her hind legs into the ground and pushing back, but it was evident she was firmly lodged into place. her ears flew back when she heard a muffled laugh behind her - hey!! who dared laugh at her?

the laugh renewed another vigorous attempt to set herself free -- whoever laughed deserved a royal lashing. her anger was somewhat mollified as the unseen wolf asked if she needed assistance.

in her most composed (read:pompous git) tone she reply smoothly, her well-groomed answer suggesting a smug superiority despite the fact she was the idiot who had managed to get herself properly stuck. "oh no, i'm not stuck, just looking for food." she replied without missing a beat.

now u get phone post

A muffled voice responded timely; his ears cupped forward to catch the majority of it. She claimed she wasn't stuck, but he wasn't so sure of that. It looked as though the ground had promptly tried to suck her in, only to choke on her queenly features. A less than gentlemanly moment allowed him to trace over what he could see of her, but it was left at that.

"If you're looking for her kits, I hate to tell you that they gave you the slip a few moments ago," came his reply. He drew himself closer to where she was, but moved on past. Perhaps they had slipped out another exit than the one she was presently plugging.

YAY 600!! also sorry.. i got distracted by etsy LOL

she strained an ear against the clammy earth, listening for any riposte from the unknown wolf. well-- at least he hadn't made fun of her yet. lord only knows once the dirt saw fit to release her what kind of warpath she would embark upon if mordecai had been so bold to say "nice ass".

as it was, she wasn't really possessing a shapely figure, it was more of a pudgy one. pudgy enough to get her into this fox's debacle. she squirmed and grunted as she heard overhead the wolf's tread. digging her elbows and hind legs into the frozen ground she shoved and she shoved hard -- her efforts were promptly rewarded by a resounding POP! as she was spat forth from the den like a succubus from the altar. in a tumbling heap she landed, lacking entirely the graceful deportment she had oft carried herself with.

scrambling to her feet she set her eyes upon the stranger, a russet wolf with golden eyes that reminded her of the succulent warmth of honey. "oh hey," she said sheepishly, immediately adopting an air of importance as if she could hide the fact that her fat behind had just been caught in a hole not even two moments prior.

i fucking love etsy... but my wallet doesn't. so i try to avoid it LOL

Before he could make the attempt of finding another alternative route used by those foxes, she freed herself. The unfamiliar sound — perhaps akin to an earthy bottle of wine being opened — grabbed his attention just time to see her right herself as though she hadn't been pitifully spat out of the ground. Faintly, a smirk had etched itself across his features in a flash.

"Guess you weren't stuck after all." A beat of silence followed such. "Did you find anything good in there?" Perhaps a morsel of left behind by a kit unable to carry off its tiny reserve of food. If foxes kept their meals at hand, anyway. Come to think of it, Mordecai didn't really question what it was that they ate, let alone wonder after what they tasted like. For all he knew, maybe they were rather delicious. They were certainly flighty.

starling had looked at mordecai just in time to see a smirk flit across his features. he smirked at her! he laughed at her! he jested at her misfortune while she was left to suffer in the manner of a drudge! she huffed instantly, feeling quite attacked by fate's humors during this terrible hour.

nursing her wounded ego, starling looked away dramatically. with a flourish she brought her thin forepaw to her chest in a gesture of maiden impotency. "just my dignity!" the songbird chirped, eyeing him out of the corner of her eye as she slumped to the ground as if overtaken by exhaustion. this was not the life she had envisioned for herself and damned if she wasn't going to be treated like a proper lady!

Much like the other day, when he had encountered Donna, this particular female had a dramatic flourish to her as well. But it was comical, almost as though she were trying but not trying so hard that it came off obnoxious. There was something a bit more organic about the way she carried herself, no doubt suited to a more plush life than the one she found herself in. Maybe. He hardly had enough to form an opinion, but readily rose to the banter all the same as she ragdolled with seeming shame.

"Well we can't have you losing that," he said, a twitching nose to follow. "If you lose it here, you're liable not to get it back. The foxes would have another batch of dignity to add to their pile. They'd hold it for ransom." He struggled with the straight face, but felt it would have to do. Mordecai didn't want to crush her ego, let alone be at the receiving end of ire either; his curiosity lingered even behind the charade.

starling maintained her pathetic heap, feeling the cold air on her plush belly and the bitter scent of winter between the brittle blades of grass. she inhaled and the cold assaulted her lungs. exhale -- watch the burst of fog simmer into the world and dissipate into cold.

mordecai was proving most game to her shenanigans - at the very least, he seemed okay with her taste for the theatrical. she eyed him carefully, feeling so very sorry for her poor little self. she had been savaged by a fox tunnel! her figure had been called into question by the tunnel's dimensions!

wounded pride indeed. starling sat up suddenly, peering at the male. he was quirky. he was funny. but starling was only one of those things and it wasn't funny. well, not on purpose anyway.

"yea well i'm not gonna get that back." she said sadly, eyeing the hole with a forlorn look of self-contempt. "i'm starling saturnin takanaami endore." she authored her long moniker with a chest-puff of importance. "yourself?"

When it came to theatrics, he tolerated it at best. For the most part, his down to eath demeanor kept the majority of it at bay. The limits at which it crested varied, depending on however the day went and usually of the participants as well. In this case, he found her an interesting creature who for the most part lent her misfortune to humor. He was about to make a quip on how it her dignity was probably still locked within the den when her introductions tumbled forth; her name most distinctly a mouthful save for one part. Endore.

He recalled Ptarmigan for a moment, but mentally waved away the memory. The earth would have reclaimed her by now, no doubt her spirit lost and gone to somewhere, be it the loa or whatever became of them after they escaped their earthly bounds. "Mordecai," he offered, this time lacking the jovial punch of his prior commentary. The memory had tarnished his mirth, but temporarily. "What Endore are you from?" It was quickly replaced by the override of his most devout trait and left there. Perhaps she too, was of some distant relation through lines he could no longer fully connect beyond a name or two.

u get my 10TH POST ON LINGLING!! im going to bed soon so i probably wont reply tonight sorry

starling had not expected the ruddy male's punch to be quickly evaporated in the same manner she had been rudely evacuated from the den. she paused for a moment, her green eyes squinted for a second as she reassessed what she had said to cause such a shift of decorum.

after a moment of introspection the songbird lost interest and turned her full attention back to the male, who had inquired what endore she was from. as far as she was concerned, there was only one endore family worth any mention. she shifted her posture again in a more regal manner and deigned to speak. "nightingale endore." a name she had not uttered since her mother's death. time flew. but today was no day to dwell on deaths for the bright songbird. she piqued again: "where you staying? you look well fed."

no worries! hope you sleep well~

She brushed over his inquiry as though it were no big deal, which it probably wasn't. At least she didn't have qualms about saying where she came from, while he strategically, yet unknowningly never mentioned his atypical beginnings. Their conversation moved on, this time where her own interests were piqued rather than his. But conversations were like boats on rough seas, difficult to steer but never impossible.

"Blacktail Deer Plateau, for now. Near the mountains," he said, gesturing from where he had come. It wasn't too far off, but far enough that he had escaped the bounds of its claim. As the weather improved, he found it increasingly difficult to stay solely within its bounds and whether or not that negatively impacted his ability to return there had yet to reveal itself.

"My grandmother was an Endore. Chakra, or Sphinx is what I've been told she went by. Not very often I encounter someone who also descended from them." Not that Nightingale rang any bells to him; Mordecai was relatively unaware that he wasn't truly related to them, at least not in the sense of blood.

as mordecai answered her starling looked to the mountains that stretched ahead -- they looked impassable. that a pack had fashioned a life for themselves within that impregnable cliff surprised her. but then again, she had gone to argent falls -- and nova mountain. both of those formidable ranges had housed packs too.

she didn't think she'd care for the culinary options there (she hated lamb) so she inquired no further. it appeared mordecai brought back part of the conversation she had unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally) glossed over. the endores.

she thought for a minute. shingle sounded familiar. heck, she had been related to almost everyone in the valley back at home.. why was single familiar? "green endore was my grandparent. i don't really remember anything else." for a moment she almost said it's too bad quail isn't here, she'd know! -- oh wait, quail was dead too.

For a moment, he thought the name Green was familiar. But with no way of really telling, and like her, he had no one around that was a walking encylopedia of family relations. Instead Mordecai made a note of interest, then shrugged.

"I feel like that should be familiar, but I also can't remember all the ties. I'm a long way from home now anyway. Did they live in the Salvajes too?" Perhaps if that was the common link between them, then it would mean something more. And he really couldn't help being curious of it, because what were the odds? They had seemed less likely from all the time he had been on the road but there was something about this little quaint region that had begun to house more and more curious relations.

starling was still stuck on shingle, though her eyes swept over mordecai if he asked if they lived in the salvajes. that was a place she was painfully reminded of often -- and a look of wounded confusion overtook her.

the salvajes had been her home, and she had not been ready to give it up. not even when an earthquake claimed nightingale and bounders fell on quail and siskin and beauregard were stolen in the night. she frowned.

"i lived in the salvajes." she said at length, surprised by the vehemence of her voice. she didn't outright hate this place, but it was not her childhood home and nothing would ever alter the desolation of that valley. "but yes, they did.. i don't remember my other grandparent's name.. but shingle does sound familiar. i know they were in winterheart forest."

His brow arched in surprise when she mentioned the common link between them all.  Other than his parents and his older siblings, Mordecai knew few others who had lived in the Salvajes.  He had heard what it had eventually become and had, at one point, tried to search it out to see what remained.  An eruption from the mountains was a most curious thing indeed but his endeavors had been for naught.  Furthermore, he added to more of the common link between them.

"Winterheart Forest was Sphinx's pack," he said with a wave of his tail.  "My father also led there for a time as well."  Leviathan had always spoken highly of the evergreen forest and the stories that came from had unknowingly been fuel for Mordecai's ventures.  The connection there glazed over the fact that the Salvajes was a sore topic, but the mention of Shingle was equally interesting to him.  "I think Shingle was the one who led the pack after my parents, perhaps Green was her mate then," and to follow his words came the knitting of the previous arched brow.

"Did you live there also?"  He wondered aloud, entertaining the possibility that perhaps she had crossed paths with his father.

The two spoke at length for some time, and then departed.