kestrel meowed[Canyon Pack]
With a bittersweet taste traversing her tongue, Stream watched a meandering current distort her reflection in the placid River. Indeed, she was enjoying this peaceful, goalless outing, but it was beyond strange to experience it.
The tranquility should’ve been long shattered by now, because Mudskipper would be romping wildly through the surf, not ignorant to the drier preferences of others but helpless against her own puplike abandon. Stream had lived for the days she’d been forced to throw aside all of the formal pretense and unceasing responsibilities to just be a dog.
“You miss her,” Scorch’s knowing woof stated from somewhere behind her.
Stream hadn’t been consciously aware of his presence, but she didn’t startle, either. It wasn’t the first time she’d sworn there was a part of her that was following her mate for every one of his wanderer’s pawsteps.
She laid her head over her shoulder and smiled sadly at him.
Of course he knew. He always knew.
“But it’s never just her,” she amended softly.
Every single dog they’d lost was an irreparable hole ripped into their daily life. And each remaining dog faced a different level of challenge to avoid falling into those omnipresent abysses.
Many used the hope of vengeance to build their bridges. Admittedly, It was the constructions built in the heat of hatred that would hold the longest, but, then, out of the seeming blue, they’d crash and burn violently when the builder suddenly saw that revenge didn’t repair what’d been wrecked, but instead needlessly involved countless others in the cyclical cycle of loss.
Some threw their raw grief into the holes, only to have it fail upon first touch and pull them down with it.
Still others put in nothing at all, and those seemed to navigate the hardest trail of all.
Stream herself had devised a way to craft reflective simulations like this one into tenuous safety webbing she used to stretch across the depressions in her own path, making each gap crossable, but only just. Scorch, however, braved using the inconsistent, hazy matter of isolation. Sometimes it could hold fast, but others it would give way instantly. He never could know.
He leaned against her and they just sat like that, a single, unchangeable shadow immune to the locomotion of the sun. They were far beyond the need for audible conversation. He spared no words, and she needed none. All that needed to be said -the anguish over what they’d lost, but also the appreciation for what they’d kept- was flawlessly communed through the twitch of an ear, the squint of an eye, or the curl of a muzzle.
Serenity became a benevolent master of time, allowing it to continue on in its imperceptible way, but wholly forbidding it to herald in any forces of disturbance.
Stream didn’t want to breach their tacit pact of perfect silence, but there was a subject that she needed to ventilate with the only dog she could truly be vulnerable with.
“I made the right choice, Scorch,” she began, but there was a lack of conviction in her words that only he could cultivate and grow. “Didn’t I?”
Scorch’s response was uttered without hesitation. “A leader doesn’t have to be found at the head of the pack.”
He’d said exactly the right thing. Entirely contented by the single sentence, Stream let her tense jaw loosen and drop into an easy pant.
But Scorch continued unexpectedly, still staring stolidly across the River. “And even if my leader became the very tail end Omega, I’d still follow her to the farthest reaches of space and time.”
Stream startled, not at the intimate profession of loyalty, but at one word contained within it. “Omega.” She looked at him incredulously, as if this unacceptable ignorance of hers was somehow his fault. “Sirius, Scorch, we’ve only got one Omega.”
He watched her with an expectant, but thin, grin, waiting for her to work out her own decision- just as she always did.
“Good grass, I can’t leave a wrecked camp with a single Omega,” she huffed, heavily pressing her left forepaw into the moist sand to relieve a little of the frustration of negligence.
“Let the high-rankers pick up their own dander for once.” Scorch might’ve picked up the inexistent defense just to give her a bit of contention to overcome and win a victory over.
“Last thing we need is to mess around with pack rank,” Stream amended smoothly with the faintest undertone of a growl. “Stability, Scorch, we’re looking for stability, not more upheaval.”
Scorch angled his head so that their eyes were entirely aligned. “Does having decent rank stop a dog from having basic decency?”
Stream narrowed her insouciant gaze into her well-practiced correctional glare before she could read too deeply into that.
Scorch leaned over with the intent of giving her a placating lick on the nose, but she was already turning away to get up.
Stream made her way down the beach in her three-and-a-half-legged gait, fully aware she moved with nowhere near her former gracility, but determined to be none the less proud for it. Right before she reached the hollowed-out trail up the gentle embankment, she whirled her neck around to hurl the parting due to her inappropriately insightful mate. “I hope you’re happy, because now you’ve given me yet another reason to lie awake at night!”
Scorch was already hock-deep in the frothy water, fully intent on taking advantage of her abandonment to take a swim. His innocently perked ears, wind-tossed fur, and open-mouthed smile that looked luminous enough to turn Coal white all had Stream internally cursing him for being so infuriatingly cute. “Love you too!” he barked sonorously and promptly dove all the way in, sending out a spray of displaced droplets that fell just short of drenching her.
With an admittedly affectionate snort, Stream scaled the crumbly ridge into the willow copse. It was luxuriously smooth going throughout the short trot from the River to camp- the soft, impact- and sound-absorbent clay soil could seriously spoil a hunter. When she arrived at the sparse patch of barberry bushes that acted as the southern perimeter of camp, she paused for a heartbeat to cast a surveillant glance ahead of her.
Most of the pack seemed to be elsewhere, but there were a preoccupied few scattered across the clearing. There was Dotpup, talking in hushed tones to the daughter -Duskpup, was it?- of the Rip deserter, Shadow. Lily’s cove appeared to be deserted, but a considerable line had accumulated in her absence. But since it seemed to be largely comprised of the usual hypochondriacs, Stream didn’t waste a whisker of worry over them.
Surprisingly enough, there wasn’t a recalcitrant napper in sight. Stream had to grin in spite of herself. By the looks of it, they’d feast tonight.
And of course the dog Stream needed was right in front of her.
She inhaled silently, but there was a single word riding on the corresponding exhale. “Sky.”
The little blue mutt was standing at attention before Stream in what could’ve been a single heartbeat, her head cocked, but lowered, in nervous anticipation.
In what might have been a reflex fostered by Scorch’s earlier points, Stream grimaced and then immediately corrected herself. This was a part of pack leadership and should be easily done.
"Sky, since we lost Otter, we only have half of an Omega pair."
Sky blinked owlishly and titled her head further, indicating that she hadn’t quite caught on to Stream’s intentions yet. Stream noted sadly how her silky mottled fur was scruffy with grime, and how the dark trails ran down from her eyes and along her snout. She could be a very pretty dog, if only she put the same effort into her appearance that she did her emotions. But post-war reality had not been kind to the sensitive female.
And what exactly am I doing for her with this?
"You're the next lowest-ranker."
Stream found herself racing to justify this as she watched it hit Sky. She’s never been a hunter, and definitely not a fighter. This is all she can do.
Well, that bit of brutal rationality helped so much.
"I'm asking you to agree willingly now, but if--"
Stream never got to finish her sentence. Sky lunged forward and buried her muzzle into Stream's shoulder, her body heaving with sobs.
Just slightly perturbed, Stream stood there, awkwardly fighting her contrary balance, until Sky cried herself out enough in order to return to a state of acceptable composure.
"Thank--" Sky swallowed nosily and tried again. "Thank you."
"Whatever for?" Stream gave a harsh laugh. "I just made you the pack's slave."
“I finally know what I’m doing,” Sky replied instantly, with a conviction greater than any Stream had heard before. “That’s a relief you might not be able to understand, but it’s very real.”
She turned aside, as if to go, but ended up circling neatly in place and setting herself up higher than before. “To have to suffer through a hard life that was compromised not by yourself, but by external and ancient forces far beyond your limited reach, let alone your control, is one thing, but to suffer through it all purposeless, is something very horrible indeed, Stream. But if that unfortunate dog can make it out alive and point on their purpose, they’ve given themselves direct access to greatness. Because they’ve fought a fight that they never consented to be in, that no one else would join them in, that had every ability to take them down, but they won anyway. They were weighted down into a situation that they shouldn’t have been able to survive, but, incredibly, they rose from their pain and thrived. And thriving is what I aim to do with the one life I’ve got.”
Sky turned away with seeming finality, but then straightened to her full height and looked Stream right in the eye.
“You know, if everyone experienced a little lowness, a single impeding thorn of odium in their side, just one paw into a mere puddle of the waters of oppression, at some time or another, our world would be better off, I think.”
With that, Sky trod away, invisibly metamorphosed into an unrecognizable creature of dignity.
And Stream stood there, increasingly aware of the hard fact that she wasn’t going to get a single full night’s sleep for the rest of her remaining life.
whej i came back i didnt know what to do and didnt know what was going on and i got that one character forced on me??? i dont remember their name i think it was eon or something
