We watched her grow

@Katja <3

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He raced. 

Wind beat back on his coat, and where it could not touch, the frost clinged tightly. The prints left behind were long drags from haughty leaps. A hare bolted ahead, fast paced breaths that were suffocated out by the sound of the hunt. He'd tracked it's scent a mile down. A deep balance of life for a little bunny. It was not its fault that it was born prey.

It was not his fault that his jaws would grind to a close on its body.

 

Run

 

Run

 

Run

 

Run

 

Run

 

Run

 

The clock striked its hour.

It would've, anyways, had Bonnie not slammed to a stiff halt. Birds sang warning of canine teeth as they dispersed in clouding flocks overhead. Sliding in the snow in a harsh tumble and slowly settling upright, he was struck by distraction, nostrils flaring and eyes to the wind. There it was again. That..smell. The hare skipped away in a desperate flee. The boy was too busy to notice, or perhaps care in that moment, instead flagging his tail stiffly in anticipation, approval, for something he had never yet seen. But it was there, somewhere.
He just had to find it.

Old man thought wrong.

Look at him now.

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Her steps were both careful and easy, a tell that she was comfortable with snow and ice herself. Katja was borne of it, enjoyed it even, if partially because she could not feel the cold that others so complained about. This meant she had to be more careful, of course, watching for different signs.

Today was fine though. She could see the sun shining across the white landscape, glittering as it bounced off of the snow and ice. The sun meant that the ice would, at least, melt off her pelt if she basked in it. Not only that but the snow-covered ground "crunch!"ed beneath her paws, not hard enough to have kept frozen even under the sun's watch. 

The young War Lord paused then, ears swiveling to catch the sounds of a chase, eyes tracking a hare that darted out -- towards her -- in its attempted escape of its pursuer. Another wolf.

Quick to the trigger, Katja moved to anticipate the hare's path, her own jaws flashing to crash down on the creature's spine; a swift and clean kill, like Mother had taught her. Seaglass eyes lifted and observed the out-of-breath wolf, his breath pluming in the cold air.

A heartbeat of silence.

Katja's head moved and her jaws opened so that she could toss the meal in his direction. She lived plentifully. Others did not have such fortune.

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The squealing rattles of death made the boy's fur fire up.

Eyes of fresh spring leaves stared him down. There stood a tall woman with a dark coat dipped lightly into the fallen snow. She bore dark painted ears that pointed forward at him, holding the same hare that escaped one fate to be met by another. Minutes of violent sprinting after that thing, and she appeared out of thin air for it in a singular second.

Even from their distance, he took in the information of her scent, got familiar with it, and got familiar next with a slap to the face. The fallen prey hit the ground in front of him– she threw it as if he were stupid. But he knows he's no little boy, but a man who didn't need no help! He could've caught it all on his own, had she not intervened!

So, the wolf's nose scrunched up and a grumpy short flared out. That tail tucked all the way to the belly before releasing, legs having him take a step back, presumably enough distance that his mouth felt comfortable opening! Ears back, "What was that for? I had it!" No he didn't.

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Ah. Would he have rather she had taken it from him? Stolen the kill that he'd worked so hard for? 

To Katja, it was quite obvious he'd never been part of a pack, or at least had never learned to work with others. Mother and Father had instilled in them the importance of working together to reach a common goal. Was it really so offensive that she had killed the rabbit?

Her shoulders rolled and her chin tipped up slightly, thoughts churning as she sought out her next words. 

“Would you rather I take it take it then? That I allow you to find your own?” Blunt and to the point, as she ever was.

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"No!" Next, dared to take it from the man, and a set of greedy teeth snatched the bunny off the snow in an offended fit, tucking it away between both legs, and somehow hungrier than ever before after the lady threatened to take it.

So, he ate it! Tried to scarf it down the hole of his mouth, and when that did not work, held it down with a single foot to rip at the meat of it, starting at the rear- the good part.

A famished soul a long way from a big meal; however, he'd get there, once them foul smelling elk-deer were found. A nice fatty something he'd been huntin' down as he explored the souths forest.

Unable to fit a full-sized hare down the throat in one swallow, cut down to ripping pieces off just big enough to fit into his mouth, Bonnie didn't forget there was someone in front of him. 

Offended the first minute, and downright.. confused the next. It demanded an answer and he was hellbent on getting one.

"Why'd you give it, anyways? That's stupid. You caught it."

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As she expected, the wolf snatched it back and set upon devouring it. Red stained the snow, steam rising from where warm blood came into contact with the cold ground. Her ears still pushed forward, Katja sat back on thickly furred haunches and watched him.

He ate like he hadn't had a meal in a while, which could have very well been true, but she imagined some of the behavior also came from a guarded greediness. Greedy. No... It was likely more that he had expected her to take it. If she had been another wolf, one raised by someone other than her parents, she very well might have.

“I do not need it.” Her speech and pronunciation were perfect. Exact. Her tone, even and unbothered by his question. “To take something away from you that you need, and I do not, is unnecessary and cruel.”

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He could tell she wasn't alone like him.

A silver-spoon girl who approached a ragged boy like him. Fed a dog in the wild because it was cruel to take from the mutts. Had it been so wrong to wish instead that she had taken it in his protests? To have instead been met by nasty words back rather than humiliation. To wish to be proven as more than a loner dog. Even then, the boy-man still filled a hungry belly, and perhaps was also too filled in his mouth to run it as he normally did. Shut him up.

​​Even now, watching as if she'd rip the food from his teeth.

The boy soon sat awkwardly on both back legs. Loose white fur hung from red-stained lips, and those eyes stared into the green of her own. Both ears stood attuned, having listened intensely the same as he felt the cold intensely. Moving into his second year, experiencing the strangeness of an adult shed. Undercoat was more filled out in some places than others. 

"Yeah?" Bone snapped, flesh was pulled apart, never daring to break eye contact. "When you're out like me." Break. "Alone." Snap. "Breathin' in the wild." Torn, swallowed. "As time bites your feet." Lucky life, to not need it. "You'd be takin' some of them words back." He'd seen mongrels go after each other for the scrap of a doe spine.
Been one of em.

"You know?"
​​​

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Her head tilted just slightly, perhaps a touch surprised by how poetic he spoke against his contradictory nature. It might have been that she was too used to spending time in @Runar's company, but Katja was not used to hearing such improperly proper speech. There was more to him than met the eye. Her Mother's voice rang through her head...

"Look beyond the surface."

Curious. Katja had never before met someone who was such an true example of a learned concept. Distracted though her thoughts were, she heard everything he said, her eyes refocusing on him once she put herself back on track.

“Agreed. I have not walked your path. Bun then why have you not found a pack to join?”

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A bullish snort erupted his nose. Heavy, tightening his nose, muzzle crinkled up in the bite of rabbit flesh, tangy blood down the throat. The boy's head whipped to the side and tail bristled up, eyes keeping her in daring peripherals. Spitting out a hunk of fur, the response that came was then quick. "Don't need 'em." Left some. Kept falling back in them for whatever reason, and it never went any different. Shitty old men that had nothing better to do but sit around and keep the rest of them hunkered down. Couldn't feed themselves. One starved, they all did. Then there was the deep of the forests, calling to him. Taunting bird whistles, siren elk bugles cutting through the tree leaves. The itch that ached the boy's bones. Again, and again, and again.

His head slowly swiveled, gaze finally shattering away from her own as he pieced together his thoughts on the snow.

"'N they ain't want me, anyways."

The rest, chased out of.
Ruined.
But Bonnie would never admit it. Not to anyone.

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“Why?” Why didn't they want him? She knew there was more to it, more than just "they didn't want me", if only because no one admitted that. At least no one that she knew. The question was brutally straightforward, a pointed arrow knocked and aimed directly for him. She had never not been a straight-shooter, not seeing the point in sugarcoating things.

---

V short but its what she had to say lol

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Bonnie tensed, dragging what scraps remained of the hare closer to himself, hoarding it like it was his last claim to anything. Tail curled tight to belly, before bristling back out.

Distance was then made, just enough to crouch back on his haunches, watchful.
 
A vicious bite landed at the carcass’s foot, teeth grinding against bone with a force that sent a dull ache through his jaw. He felt it, sure, and yet wasn’t stopping. Couldn’t afford to. He chewed through that pain, ripping at the sinew and muscle, swallowing down what little strength the meat had to give. He’d need it—to keep moving, to keep searching. To catch the next meal.
 
"They're all weak." Voice mext muffled through a mouthful of flesh. "Just tethered mutts, doing tricks for scraps. The kind that bark loud but wouldn’t bite if their lives depended on it." A pause, then a sneer tugged at his lip as he finally lifted his gaze, swallowing. "Can't hold their own without the mouth of an old boss's tellin' them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it."

​​​And still he tried to integrate into them again and again.

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His words were spoke with a conviction that he hadn't shown yet. These were not ideas but memories. Experiences. The vitriol with which he spoke whisked away the doubt that might have lingered there before, the doubt that he'd actually been wronged by a pack. Some wolves spoke as if they had been when in reality, they had only been slighted. Had they left him out in the cold? Left him on his own when they should have protected him?

Only one way to find out.

“What happened?”

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Felt small again.

"Ain't nothing happened." Nothing but scraps to chew on anymore. Bones that rested at his feet, quickly stripped of their meat in the prior moments. Many of them had been swallowed!

Ate so quickly that there was little to distract him away from the green waters of her eyes.

Bonnie didn't recall the last conversation he had. 

His tail curled up and shoulders dropped, head turning as a slow shrug rolled out. "Just how things are." It seemed everyone was content with that, though. Being the underdog to a lazy pig with no grit to their name other than snippy teeth at their packmates. Everyone seemed content with that life though.

His brows softened in his own thought question: Was she? 

"But you would know how that is." 

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An eyebrow arched, her eyes -- if possible -- focusing harder on him. What did that mean? 'You would know how that is.' Was he assuming that because she was a pack wolf, she was someone's dog? Or that because she was a pack wolf, she had no bite of her own?

“I disagree.” Just as broad a statement as he had given, though she would not leave it like that. “Laziness is looked down upon, in Vanderfell.” Truly, if @Runar was lazy she would, quite literally, bite him in the ass. “All pull their weight, no matter the rank.” Because if they didn't, they would have Katja looming behind them.

“I could show you.” An offer she doubted he'd take her up on.

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His wrist dug into his chest, and his eyes blazed often between the snow of the winter and the spring of the eyes ahead of him.

He wasn't nobody except somebody she'd learn to regret.

The boy cautioned low for only a moment, feeling a deep call from every wind saying move. Remembered the same day Gunnar offered his wings, and how it had been the death of him. Then perhaps those that did not suffer from the piggish nature of content wolves were only a step away from being ruined by him. The dusty wildcat boy was ready to flee in that moment, before he looked to her next and made a selfish decision.
​​​​​​
"Show me."

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Surprise flickered through her, a flash of some sort of emotion behind her eyes even if her face stayed as still as stone. Katja had assumed that he would have shot her down, with a biting tone in his words; she wouldn't have been surprised, or even offended. All it would have been was another wolf sinking below her (very high) standards. But he proved her wrong, something she would readily admit if ever he asked.

She pushed to her feet, rising to her full height before him. Every bit as tall as her brother, a trait she no doubt inherited from her grandfather, Katja made no effort to appear less than she was. “Come, then. Follow me.” Her tail flickered behind her, waiting for him to move forward so that they could walk towards the landbridge that would get them across the waters and south towards Fate's Summit.

“What's your name, then?” She would ask as they began to walk.

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"Name's Bonnie."

Old man kept it on him! Smeared it right in his face and told the same old story over and over again. Always annoyed Bonnie– listening to a broken record that wouldn't play new tunes no matter how many times it got kicked and beat. The boy blamed it on it being broken, until eventually it broke so much it didn't repeat them at all. Then gramps just would go on about life lessons and starvation.

Now he kinda missed those stories.

​​​​​Didn't know what he was doing with his own.

The wild boy's scruffy face looked over the womans back to see her own, trailing behind with a viciously cautious tail going to the belly and to the air in cycles. Strangely confident to say his name next, "Bonnie Loðbrók," and shying away like a fussy cat when next biting quietly out, dusty ears swiveling, "What's your name?" 

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A good name. Bonnie was likely short for something, but even so, Katja did not comment on it. It was not her name, so it was not her place. “Katja Boesch. My brother leads Vanderfell Woods, and I assist him in doing so.” Mother gave them guidance in doing so, of course, but there would be a day where she wouldn't. A day not unimaginably far in the future where she wouldn't be there to give them that guidance. It was not something Katja enjoyed pondering.

“We do not believe in freeloading. If you do not pull your own weight, then you will not have a place to stay.” Something she already knew he understood. “What are you skilled at?”

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Gramps answered that.

Bonnie knew it. Knew it good, too. Lifting a high head over both shoulders, the boys muzzle crinkled at distant footchatter. Foxes gliding over the snowfall and chasing hare scent that had since made passage into his stomach.

They'd be disappointed.
And he was glad of it.

​​Sure was far from home for ain't never having heard of a Vanderfell, but they always came up that way. Sudden, with teeth to show for those on the streets with lesser upbringings than their own. And he was used to being the failed project.

Squinting, "Never heard of it." Not once. Then, that fire appeared in a burst of energy as he looked about far more quickly and spat out the next question with stubborn alarm, "Where am I, anyways?!" Didn't smell familiar! Where was he?! He didn't go that far from home before he got hit upside the head by that damn buck. "And– hunting," despite the ethics others grew fussy over. His eyes caught hers for just a moment, more confident to say: "Tracking. Can smell up the herds. Tell about how far they're out." And where to find them, for he was fascinated with their patterns.. Watched them nightly. But that wasn't an important skill anybody cared about, anyways!
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That he hadn't heard of it didn't surprise her -- all the time, there were new wolves here, new packs there, some literally appearing from thin air. She had long since wondered why; for her, it was normal, really. She'd grown up with the strangeness here, so there was no doubt that most hadn't heard of the packs that took up residence in these lands. Honestly, the Boesch wolf would have been more surprised if he had heard of Vanderfell Woods.

“That can be a touch difficult to explain sometimes. Lands here shift and wolves wake up with no clue how they got here. It happened to my own mother and father.” A curt explanation, simple and to the point. Mother and Father had told her of their appearance here, of how it had been abnormal. Jarring. What was abnormal to them (and many others) however, was simple say-to-day life for the blue roan.

“Those are good skills. Useful. Do you hunt well with a pack? Have you had the opportunity before?”

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It sounded preposterous, but there was little answer. Made his bones feel thick and tight against his skin thinking that there were other ways to have arrived someplace strange then some skygod shooting him off to a new land. "Your parents get a hefty kick in the head by a buck too?" 

Tried to recall a time. Bonnie wasn't the kind to get invited to parties and sundown events. Couldn't think of one now, no, because the lot of them were always too busy caught up in their own connections than bringing a newcomer along. Supposed they thought he'd ruin their night.

But something in him kept his chest puffed out when met with Katja's question and a lie barked out quicker than he could think: "Yeah. Couple times." 

He'd keep that lie up with proof if he had to.
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