flying into space like a rocket

 Today had been quite a lovely day. He'd gotten back from his travels with Crux and was taking a well-deserved break from his duties while he recuperated. The large, rotund male lay outside of his den. He was sprawled haphazardly on his back, mouth agape, tongue hanging out while he drooled and snored. He was dreaming about... well, sleeping. He was having a nice nap in his dream until he tasted something really sweet. Like honey. Or syrup... or...

 His eyes popped open, brown blinking in the mild sunlight that filtered down through the reds of the trees. That wasn't just his dream.

 He licked his lips, tasting something, or rather smelling it and having the distinct flavor of sweet. He rolled over onto his belly, head lifting as he looked around. It wasn't anything around here but he certainly wasn't imagining it. He inhaled deeply, mouth watering as he rose to his paws. There was no way he could go back to sleep now! He wanted to find out what that tantalizing scent was!

 He looked around at the camp and found that there were others doing their normal routines. He didn't want to bother them if they hadn't noticed so he set off on his own in search of that wonderful aroma.

 It took him outside of the bounds of the camp and the territory of Ichorwood. Clearly, the breeze had drifted just right so that he could smell the sweetness across the mountain heather. He was coming, lovely sweet aroma!

 The smell took him all the way to a strange forest. Where the normal woods of his home had red leaves, this place had red sap! It was all over the place... on the trees. It was like they were bleeding!

 Bleeding lovely sticky sap just for him to eat!

 He was practically beside himself with joy as he didn't think twice of finding the nearest tree trunk to lick. He was no polite, well-mannered individual either. He licked up sap but managed to get it all over himself, looking quite a mess as the blood-red sticky liquid managed to get all over his face and chest. It was probably quite the macabre scene for someone that didn't know what was going on.

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While Harper loved her sister, and their pack of oddities, it was also nice to get out and do something. In this case, Harper was in an oddly playful mood; one of the side effects from all the special candies that she’d been eating. It was something that happened when she was ‘crashing,’ though it didn’t feel like she was crashing. Nonetheless, she was hyper, playful, and almost pup-like. A dangerous combination, really.

So she’d gone off to hunt for a snack, or something, when she became distracted with the sight of a Janetta Forester that Harper couldn’t help to play with and chase, though gently, as she hadn’t wanted to crush the thing. It had landed on a tree, which was almost covered in Nitidulidae, that Harper paused to look around and almost every other tree had this red-orange substance that smelled almost like honey.

Her ears flickered forward, realizing she’d lost her winged friend to a forest of sap-covered trees, when Harper came upon what seemed to be the culprit: a bear, it looked like, sucking the sap from the trees. He had it all over his coat, too, and Harper couldn’t help but to stare at him, wide eyed. She’d never seen such a small bear before.

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 Mmmm, this was one of the best days ever! He wondered how much sap these trees held. Could he keep coming back or— OH! Could he take some back to Event Horizon? He would bet that everyone there would LOVE to try some of this stuff. It was so delicious and... and... Say, why did he get the feeling that he was being watched?

 The man paused in his gluttonous sap-feasting to frown and then look around. First eastward but nope, no one was there. Then he looked westard but no one was there either... Hm. He began eating again but no, no, he definitely could tell someone was watching him. He flipped his head back to look behind him, leaning back on his haunches in the process with his forepaws raised in the air. OH! There was a she-wolf there! Now he could see her, as upside down as she was. "Hallo there, miss!" He attempted to wave but completely overbalanced himself and fell backwards with a thud but he was wholly unharmed. "Did you follow the sap-smell too? It's real good!" He smiled at her while lying there. Hmm... it'd be real bad if she wanted to attack but she probably would have done so already if she really wanted to catch him off-guard. Besides, he was fairly confident in his own ability to hold her off.

 He wondered if the sap itself might be a deterrent, it was awful sticky.

 Speaking of.

 He stuck a paw in his mouth to suck some of the red goo off while he waited for her reply.

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Harper had thought he was a bear. Why else would a wolf be sucking the sugars off these trees? It hadn’t made a lick of sense to her, so she continued with the idea that he was a bear until he spoke and tried to… wave at her?

Either this was a very polite bear, or a sugar addicted wolf. Perhaps both? Was that a thing? Her ears flickered as he fell and landed, causing Harper to tilt her head at him. Her mouth opened, her jaw hanging as she just blinked and arched her brows at him.

“I follow the Janetta.” Harper said softly, licking over her lips, in wonder what it actually tasted like. She knew sap was technically healthy, but she had never… actually bothered with it. Lord, this forest had so many strange.. creatures that Harper wondered why Elysium was.. so boring.

“Is it… good?”

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 Oh wow, she seemed awful surprised at the appearance of him! Mordecai tried to ponder why that was but he was coming up blank. Maybe because it was that he was so sticky? No, that didn't make a whole lotta sense. Hmm, maybe she'd never seen anyone eat sap off of trees? Man, that must be a sad life if she'd never had delicious sticky tree sap or seen anyone have any before. Maybe he could help expand her horizons!

 He took his paw out of his mouth after he'd sucked all the sap off and rolled over onto his belly and then back to his paws. Although when she spoke it was his turn to be confused. The... Janetta? He frowned, the rusty wheel in his brain spinning to try to make sense of what she was saying.

 But he couldn't. So he just did what he always did.

 His best.

 "Oh yeah, uh, Janetta..." He tried to sound like he knew exactly who she was talking about. "Yeah, uh, I ain't see no one called 'Janetta' here. Do you think she might've went another way?" He wondered why it was "The" Janetta. Was it because she was the only wolf called that? So, was he The Mordecai then? Wow, when he thought of it like that it made his name sound all fancy-like. He really liked that. He grinned goofily to himself, feeling all important for a minute.

 Until he was snapped back to the conversation. "Oh yeah! It's real good, miss! You wanna have some? There's plenty to share and as I always say, 'sharing is caring'." He said with a smile and a nod to her.

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Sap. It was like blood for trees, that bugs liked to suck on. And apparently, wolves, too. It held all sorts of vitamins, she knew; it was one of the first things that her mother taught her. She got her hopes up, thinking he was a fellow plant-herb-nerd-wolf like she was, until he didn’t understand that she was talking about a butterfly.

So when he tried his best, Harper merely smiled sweetly at him. Like an old woman smiling at a couple of children. He was cute, in that ‘younger brother’ like fashion, and then, Harper got real sad and pouted for a moment. Her brothers were dead. Both of them were. Oh, but thankfully, this brotherly wolf distracted her so she was forced not to think about it.

So she strolled right up to him and instead of licking the sap from the trees, she slurped the remaining sap that was on his lips and chest with a satisfying groan. Mmm.

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 The nice woman smiled at him when he suggested that her friend might have gone another way. Perhaps that was her acknowledging that they'd parted ways for now and would meet back up later? That was how he and Crux were. No matter where they wandered, they always found their way back to one another. It was always a pleasant thought and one pervasive in pack climates... not that that mattered right now. He had lovely company and lovely food. He'd return to Ichorwood soon enough but for now he was content to indulge here for as long as he could.

 Perhaps the lady would indulge with him! She seemed like she was about to try the sap too as she walked up and then... and then...

 Licked the sap right off of him.

 His fur prickled upwards and his eyes widened as she unabashedly cleaned him of the sticky substance. Oh uh, okay, he hadn't expected that. He was feeling quite uh... quite...

 "There was— on the trees— I—" His brain was quite close to short-circuiting as he'd never had someone —especially a pretty someone— come up and lick him clean before. Was that... a normal stranger thing to do? And that noise she'd made? He felt a shiver down his spine.

 He was hardly interested in the sap at that very moment and without even thinking about it he reached forward and licked her on the lips right back. "AH! I'm sorry! I don't know what came over me, I just— no one ever has been so—" Forward before. His heart was hammering in his chest as he attempted to shimmy backwards as he was sure he'd just offended her with his thoughtless action. Food was so much easier to figure out. "You're just so pretty and —" And what? He couldn't just lick random people.

 Uff... He felt all hot and excited now... Should... should he just leave?

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It wasn’t as if Harper didn’t know what she was doing, because she most certainly did. And while, yes, there was tons of sap on just about every - if not every other - tree that was in this forest, surrounding them, but it wasn’t as if he could see the sap on his mouth, or reach the sap on his chest, right?

She hadn’t given it much thought. Okay, just kidding; she hadn’t given it any thought, but to see his reaction? The way his coat moved, and the widening of his eyes? Oh, she’d do it again, too!

But oh, she broke him. He went on about the sap on the trees, and then he stopped talking, and Harper thought for a moment that he might have had a stroke or something. And then… oh, well, he licked her back!

He licked her back. He hadn’t thought about it, he’d just done it, and now he was embarrassed, and apologizing, and calling her pretty and… well, Harper didn’t know how to fix the situation.

“You vant an’ther?” Harper blinked, wagging her tail at him. “You give it a nice flavor.” As if to say that she wouldn’t mind continuing. Please, Harper, as if this isn’t awkward enough for him? She wasn’t sure if this was good embarrassment or bad, so she’d let him scoot away as she politely sat down, slowly and very seductively, licking her lips at him whilst looking as innocent as could be.

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 Oh jeez, he was waiting on her to yell at him. To tell him that she'd just done it because she hadn't... known better? Yeah, something like that. He was going to get smacked. Oh crap, oh man, oh—

 “You vant an’ther?” That. That hadn't been what he thought she would say.

 But he'd be lying if he said it wasn't what he had hoped for. He blinked, nearly short-circuiting again until he realized that she wasn't walking away or looking otherwise disgusted. He was thinking very carefully about what to do next but not with the rusty wheels in the brain on his head. “You give it a nice flavor.” He... he did? Oh, was this flirting. God he was so inexperienced with all this stuff! What would Crux do in this situation? If only he knew how appropriate (or inappropriate) that thought was.

 "O-Oh yeah?" He just decided to try to go with it, to do what he thought was natural. Hopefully he wouldn't flub this all up. "I bet... you give it an even betterer flavor." Was that good? His paw pads were sweating as he scooted in closer to her and attempted to wrap a paw around her to draw her closer so that she could lick off any other syrup that she wanted from him.

 Am I too sticky? Is she going to hate it? Aw man, he probably shouldn't have gotten sap all over him.

 Actually, on second thought, it was probably a good thing that he had.

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This had not been her intention - not that she had a real motive to begin with - but as he blinked at her, Harper merely smiled that innocent smile that she knew that boys loved. Her nameless newest suitor certainly seemed to be enjoying it.

He scooted in closer, now, and wrapped his paw around her to… what? She wasn’t sure, but she scooted closer anyway with a soft giggle. “Why don’t you try it and find out, Медовый — Honey.”. Harper cooed sweetly to him as she leaned over to lick over one of the sappy syrup spots on his chest, nuzzling there once she was confident that the sap had been cleaned off of him.

Though she'd stop at the one, glancing back up at him with narrowed eyes and the tilt of her head for a moment as she scooted closer and went back down. Further, this time.

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 Gosh, not only was she pretty, but the way she smiled at him. It felt as if he was glowing inside... or was that just below? Either way, he felt like he could be captured by her forever. He could feel blood rushing all over his body, his heart hammering, and he was ready for what he knew in his deepest instincts might come from this.

 Try it out, eh? He found his eyes roving back behind her to her tail as she cleaned the area on his chest and it was he who let out a groan this time. Yeah, he would certainly have to try it out himself.

 "I think I will..." His already deep voice was huskier at this point as he would let her rove as low as she wanted. Then, after a while if given the opportunity, would tease and lick her as well... until he was able to get around behind her and do exactly what his instincts bid him to do.

--fade to black?--

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