Blacktail Deer Plateau inbox zero

Build-up? @Saena :)

Saēna climbed the ranks like wildfire through dry brush. Despite her foul mouth and bursts of teenage attitude, she was well liked, moving easily among the other inhabitants of the plateau. Pura watched her meteoric rise from his place near the bottom - with the newbies and those less liked.

The sight of her success filled his heart with blackness.

A chasm had opened up between the siblings. They had never been much alike, but Pura noticed it now - saw her laugh and play with the others, tend to Blue Willow's brood. All he wanted to do was snap off their fat little legs. He felt betrayed, insofar as he could. It haunted him like a persistent wasp.

Today, he would seek her out. Pura crept through the forest in the early hours of the morning, following his sister's scent.

Saena made no effort to hide herself as she crept through the dawn, hot on the trail of a squirrel that recently terminated its hibernation. She was able to trace its progress through a clearing and up an old oak, and for a long while she paced at its roots, excitedly staring upward at the boughs and waiting for it to inevitably move again. Her shortened tail, which was slathered with a mixture of ground herb and saliva, wiggled despite the pain that lanced through her hindquarters with every meager shake. She dealt with it by loosing small protesting whines.

This made Saena exceptionally easy to find, so when she heard the heavy approach of a large wolf, no surprised showed on her face as she turned to greet them. Half-expecting Dante, the female had her mouth open to tell him she was doing all right, but she stopped when she saw Pura. Smiling lightly and trying to hide a wince as she inadvertently brushed the remain of her half-amputated tail against the tree, she said, "I was wondering where you were hiding lately."

Pura had worked himself up to 'having words' with his sister, but his displeasure died in his throat when he saw the state of her tail in the pale, cold light of the moon. All that remained of the once glorious fan of wispy hair was a sawn-off stump - Saena was obviously doing her best to keep it still. Pura crept closer, peering curiously at her rump. "Someone ate you," he murmured, shifting his grey gaze back to his sister's face.

Her straightforward sibling wasted no time locating and commenting on her recent makeover. What he said confounded her for a second and she frowned, clearly disconcerted and unsure. "No," she corrected him, feeling a shiver crawl up her spine at the thought of that lowly dog eating her tail, which he'd probably done. "I did pick a fight with a filthy cannibal, disgusting creature. He didn't eat me, he just... caught my tail."

"He probably did eat it, though," she tried to chuckle past her revulsion, but shuddered instead. Unaware that her brother was very much a filthy cannibal himself who might take offence to that, she faced him fully, wincing as the scar of her tail pulled uncomfortably. "Where've you been?" she asked, realizing that her previous subtle probing for information on his recent whereabouts probably hadn't registered with him. Pura was definitely a stranger to subtlety, after all, something she constantly forgot about.

If you still want to plot @Saena I have a free weekend and have worked out a starting post that needs zero build-up posting!

Unlike Saena, who was rightly disgusted at the idea of anyone consuming her flesh, Pura had worked himself into a minor hungry frenzy by the time she finished her story. He licked his lips creepily, eyes stealing glances at her flank whenever she shifted her weight. He imagined the scent of the black, drying scab - like cold metal. "Does it hurt?" he asked eventually, and for once deigned to answer the question he had been asked with a succinct "Borders. Watching." Most of the pack assumed they had a dedicated warden in the making - in fact, Pura was watching for any sign of approaching lone wolves that might make easy targets. So far, he had dispatched two.

That sounds good! I still want to!

Does it hurt? asked her brother, and Saena nodded slowly. She momentarily caught herself wondering why he'd think it didn't hurt, but she knew he was a bit slow. It was one of his endearing qualities. Surely it was frustrating for many and maybe even for himself, but she'd never judged him for it and wasn't about to start.

"It hurt a lot more when it happened," she admitted, slowly turning so he could see the mixture of mud and chewed herbs that was slathered on her hind end. "Aunt Willow took good care of it," she clarified, in case he wasn't sure what she was trying to show him, which she thought was possible.

She turned to allow him a better view, and Pura shied back out of sheer surprise. If Saena found her brother peculiar or uncomfortable to be around, she did not show it, and he was desperate to keep their relationship as normal as possible for as long as possible. Staring hungrily at her amputated rear would not help that cause.  "Looks fine," Pura mumbled around a mouthful of hot saliva, and averted his staring eyes. "Was it a wolf?" Perhaps Saena would allow him to find and eat the perpetrator in her honour.

She was comforted to know that her behind didn't look like it'd met the business end of a wood chipper, although she knew it probably looked worse than Pura let on. Having not seen his shying, however, she couldn't call him on it, and merely turned back with a grateful smile. "I hope it'll heal nicely," she told him, wincing as she switched it back and forth instinctively. Stop that! she mentally told her tail, but it was a great effort to hold it still, and eventually she had to bear it with grit teeth.

"Not a wolf," Saena answered, unable to keep a shiver from crawling up her back at the thought of a wolf doing something so immoral. "It was like a wolf, but different. Not the same body. Someone told me they're called dogs," she remembered, "but they all look kind of different from each other, different ear types and stuff. This one had a tail that curled over its back." Nothing like the poker-straight tails of wolves, she thought, lamenting the loss of her.

Pura had no trouble internalizing the feeling of relief that spread through him when Saena turned around, removing her peculiarly tempting stump from his line of sight. He allowed himself to be distracted by her description of whatever a 'dog' was, and dimly wondered how the taste compared to that of a wolf. Bland, he guessed. "I'll look for them," he offered, indicating his intention to leave with a slow step back. "What colour?"

Saena was shocked when Pura offered to go find the dog. At first she hesitated, unwilling to put her brother in the same danger she'd faced, but she remembered Dogmeat's sorry state. Her brother was a statue compared to him. Pura was easily the biggest wolf Saena ever met, so eventually she relented the information, beginning with, "well, it was sick when I found it, so it's probably dead, but if you want to...

It was in Ravensblood Forest," she went on, "y'know, right near the plateau. It was... uh, dark-furred, I think? Male." She wracked her brain for other clues about Dogmeat that made him distinct from other dogs and wolves, but her memory of him was hazy at best. "Sorry, I didn't get a good look at him," she sheepishly admitted.

Without much further word, Pura departed, leaving Saena both perplexed and relieved. If anyone could take care of a stray dog, assuming Dogmeat still lived, it was her colossal brother. Sure, he was acting a bit weirder than usual, what with his lack of goodbye, but she suspected nothing as she watched him disappear into the forest.