It was kind of stupid, but when he felt the earth shake, he just simple rolled over. Alue had been sleeping when the land underneath him shifted, and he was too tired to care. It crossed his mind that there was in fact something bad happening, but with sleep still heavy on his eyes, he simply looked at the darkness that had once been the entrance of his den, shrugged, and rolled over. It wasn’t until things had truly settled, with everything in its new place, other pack members already standing up to find any pack mate who might be in trouble. Alue simply drifted off, not bothering to get up for at least another hour.

  Time had passed, and no one had yet to wake him up from the earthquake. As he stood up, stretching his legs, he wondered how long he had slept. Usually when he took a nap during the day, he woke up in the daylight. The wolfdog turned towards the opening of his den - now blocked with rocks and dirt and sticks - and felt his stomach drop. He then remembered that at one point during his sleep, everything had moved. He now knew it had been a bad idea to just roll over and ignore the danger, but now he was stuck. In a panic, he backed into his den. Alue felt that if he couldn’t view the blockage, then maybe it didn’t exist and would go away.

  It didn’t.

  With a panicked yelp, he started to dig at the dirt that was in his way, barely making any dents. When his nails went through the dirt and hit stone, he would start on a new spot. Instead of making any way out, he was just showing himself the pattern that rocks had formed in front of him, tightly packed together. If felt as if the air was being drained from his lungs. He pushed his body against the rocks, too shaken to actually put any muscle into it. “Help! Somebody, fuck, help!” His breathing was frantic, mind dizzy. He needed out and he needed out now.

Ashe had left her small family pack somewhere in the Reach, and had traveled along a river, keeping well on the opposite side of a great mountain that smoked in the distance.  She had been curious about the smoking mountain, but certainly not curious enough to venture anywhere in its direction.  Ashe knew what fire was, and was pretty sure anything that burned as big as a mountain was to be avoided.  When more mountains came into view, she swung east and back north,  following the ridge line that loomed above the trees.  The forest eventually thinned out into meadows, which turned into grassland.  Having grown up entirely under shaded canopies, the openness of the plains awed Ashe.  She lingered in the amber waves, for there were mice and other rodents a plenty to be her prey.  But then a summer storm blew through with a wind the likes of which she had never experienced.  Visibly ruffled and soaked from the storm, she decided the open plains were not exactly the most suitable of places.  She turned towards the mountains to her north once more, hoping that there would be caves where she could more adequately find shelter.  On her way she found a river, and began to follow it upstream.

For the hundredth time that day, and for each of the days that had past, the dusky she wolf second guessed herself on whether or not leaving home was even remotely close to a good idea.  It wasn't like there was anything wrong with home.  In fact, it had been a quiet place where nothing ever happened.  And for a teenager, that was just the thing, wasn't it?  She wanted to see, to know, to learn.  And yet she really wasn't sure if she did.  She wasn't ready last summer when several of her old pack's youngsters set out on their own grand adventure.  In the winter that followed, she regretted the missed opportunity, but hesitated again on leaving in the spring.  Like a pendulum, Ashe swung back and forth, back and forth with her decision.  She began to wonder if she would ever be ready, and had decided to leave anyway, but after several days alone in the wilderness, she regretted that too.  Maybe she should have waited to leave with the younger pups next year...  Well, it really was too late now.

She plodded along the river, completely lost in thought, until she almost stumbled across a scent marker.  A pack was nearby, and Ashe wasn't quite sure what to do about that.  On the one hand, she supposed she was looking for a new home, but on the other, she just wasn't sure if she was ready to meet someone yet.  Her parents had been soulmates, lovers at first sight, and while Ashe knew it didn't always happen that way, she had dreams of a handsome male who would come and whisk her away to an enchanted land.  Well... part of her did.  The other half had nightmares fueled by stories of the travelers who they had met upon the hunting trails during one of their moves.  Not all males were princes, some were villains.  Any rustle could be ruffians on the road, and Ashe was the very definition of a damsel.  She was neither taught nor talented in combat, and she wasn't an overly accomplished hunter, either.  The large beasts that had moved around the plains were more than a match for her, and she had not even so much as dared an attempt.  She ate mice and voles and rabbits, when she could catch them.  A pack would allow her to catch larger game, and her rumbling stomach agreed with that notion.  Her heart, however, galloped in her chest.  What if this was not one of the "good" packs?  She wasn't sure she was fast enough to outrun any pursuers.

The teen backed away from the scent marker, her ears back and her tail tucked.  She started to turn, but suddenly the way back seemed so bleak since she'd already come this far.  So she turned back and took a few steps towards the would be border.  But no... perhaps it was best to try and observe the pack first...  But the mountains would have better shelter, and she didn't want to get caught in another storm.  It would take her a day at least to backtrack to either of the forests.  She should go forward... she should go back.  The long grasses soon became trampled under her feet as Ashe became unintentionally responsible for an anxiety induced crop circle.

ooc: this is a pre-accepted plot from a while ago that i've permission from oni, eve, and blondie to pick up again, yaay.

summed up:

- eira runs away
- anya takes umbra as her seneschal as both punishment for not telling and to keep her from a worst fate
- umbra has been doing random errands for anya since then

this is pre-war, probably? whatever you want, oni

The boy runs, and somebody he’s never met is the only one that bothers to follow. It wasn’t that others didn’t care. They gave him his space. They didn’t see. They found themselves absorbed in a life that didn’t revolve solely around one sad and lonely soul. That was fine. That was life. She didn’t begrudge the watchers and she didn’t despise the ones who missed the flight entirely. She barely cared about them at all. What she cared about was the dark of the forest. What she cared about was the trail an unexperienced boy left in his wake. What she cared about was the broken plants and tufts of fur. Most of all what she cared about was this—he was still just a kid.

Kids run. Kids hide. She knows that. She knows that better than a lot of people. So she follows with eyes aglow with the hunt. He wasn’t difficult quarry, and she didn’t begrudge him that, either. The little shit had probably never been beyond his own pack before. She made mistakes when she was young, too. Stars know she did. But she wasn’t young anymore. And she knows these woods better than he does.

She doesn’t stop him in the first mile. She doesn’t stop him in the second. She lets him run and she follows slowly but doggedly like a mutt worrying a bone. She has the thread of something rotten between her teeth and it worries her as much as she worries it—she wouldn’t admit that for the world, but it was true. She could nearly forget the heavy weight in the coils of her innards as she immersed herself in the chase, but at the end of the day, it was always there.

There was an end to all hunts. All blind flights through the wood. Night does not last forever. She finds where he’s bedded down. She looks upon the face of trouble and something loosens in the beating of her heart when she realizes just how young he really is. In the day, he must think he was grown, tall, a head above all others—she had too, once. But as he slept, none of the shadows we tether to ourselves were there. For fucks sake, he was only a baby.

She gives him his space. She thought she might wake him, because weary people did not guard their tongues. But this really was just a boy. He must be exhausted. She settles on a stump overlooking where he laid his head, and as night wears on her eyelids become heavy but do not close. When morning comes, glimmering crescents welcome the first early rays.

“Hey,” she calls down as the dawn birds begin to sing, “Kid.”