Mercury was still a stranger in these lands. The events for this season seemed strange to his eyes, but he participated all the same. Keeping an eye on the going ons as he explored and decided what it was he wished to do. When the straw-making event appeared he had jokingly offered to take Anthea, and she had readily agreed.

Which led the two wolves to the stone steppe - and the straw making competition. He looked at their station, the straw and other bits tidily placed for their use. “Any ideas where to start?” he asked. Perhaps her clever way with wraths would be a benefit here. He’d never tried to construct something with straw first. He had a few ideas for the basics, but he left the floor for Anthea to start, interested to see what she came up with.


"Speech"

Now that her leg was able to handle her walking a ways she was more than ready to get out and about to see this land she had found herself in. She wasn't exactly picky in where her explorations began so when Mercury brought up going to a crafting competition of sorts in the northern continent she was eager to go. She couldn't say she was particularly invested in the straw figure building, but she did enjoy making things and it gave her a good excuse to cover a lot of ground to see a wide range of places between where The Hallows made their home and this place called the stone steppe. Besides, if she was going to participate in all these odd things going on then she certainly wanted Mercury to be the one she did them with.

As they approached the collection of materials that had been left for them and Mercury asked her for any ideas on where they should start, she hummed with thought and picked at a bit of the straw, feeling the texture of it. "Well... It has to be in the shape of a wolf, right? So I feel like we can start getting the shape down first and then add on some personal touches as we go." She gathered up a clump of the straw and started guessing how much they would need to make a leg. "Maybe we can figure out how to make it look like it's running!" she added with a grin. Even though she had mostly just agreed to participate as a way to get out and see Boreas, now that she was here her usual interest in crafting got her a little more excited in the actual activity than she had been before. She reached for a roll of twine that was among the various supplies at their disposal and held up a clump of straw to Mercury. "Will you hold it together and I'll work on getting the segments tied together?"

"Anthea Dásos"

“Sure!” Mercury readily agreed. Adding a bit of flare to their creation might be fun, and he was always down for a bit of a challenge. He grasped the straw when she requested it, holding it tightly to shape so she could wrap the twine around it. “What do you think, should we make four legs, a body, and then attach them together and try to get the placement right?” he asked. It might be easier than trying to assemble it all together right off the get go.

Having the legs done would also give them more to balance the body on when they got to that. They could always tweak and reshape the straw as they went as needed. After that, they could give it silly hats or the like. He grinned, already enjoying himself.


"Speech"

Anthea nodded in agreement as Mercury mentioned forming the legs and body and then attaching them together afterward. "That does seem like the easiest way to do it to me!" She took pieces of twine and wrapped it around sections of the straw that Mercury held together for her, tying it in several places to make sure it held its shape before they moved onto the next bundle. It didn't take long with the two of them working on it to wind up with four legs and a body worth of straw. She stuck a couple of sticks in the dirt to use as anchor points, using her own paws as a guide for how far apart they should be. "So I'm thinking maybe if we put it's back right leg here and front left leg here..." she muttered half to him and half to herself as she stuck each leg on their posts, forming two points where their straw figure could stand from. She took another stick and slid it into the top part of those legs and used those to stick into the body they had made before grabbing some more twine just to make sure the body was extra secure and tied down to its first two legs.

"There!" she said excitedly with a grin and a chuckle. "Now we just need to put the other two legs on off the ground a little bit and that should look kind of like it's running." She looked to him with a shrug and another grin, her tail wagging behind her. "Or close enough at least!" Her own tail wagging reminded her that they should put a tail on it and she started glancing around at the materials they had while she went about attaching the other legs. "What do you think we should do for the tail? We could use more straw, I suppose, but is there anything use we could use instead just for fun? Maybe something that will kind of sway or swing?"

"Anthea Dásos"

They found their rhythm easily enough. Working around each other as he held and she tied. Occasionally, Solar with his sharp beak would nudge a cord this way or that to help the wolves tie their knots. When they were ready for placement he watched as she used her own body as a marker. Stretching out her back leg in the post of a runner as she stuck the sticks through the earth.

She wanted two legs off the ground to look like it was running, and he used the sticks as a platform to rest the raised legs on to give it that illusion. They were almost done.. And he realised what they were missing at about the same time Anthea did. He laughed at her suggestion of something that would sway, and considered for a moment. “Solar, see if you can snip off a large clump of evergreen for us?” he asked the bird as the little cormorant lifted off to do exactly that. He returned shortly after, struggling with his burden which he dropped at their feet. Merc tied the evergreen to the back end, and the busy leaves had a bit of flow and were able to sway more than tied hay. “Whatcha think?” he asked Anthea


"Speech"

Once Mercury asked his companion to go get them clump of evergreen she immediately knew his answer to her question over a tail for their creation. She grinned and nodded her head in approval before she went to work quickly putting together a neck and head for their straw wolf. In the end they roughly had a shape that could at least moderately easily be recognized as a running wolf's shape. considering the bulk of it was made simply our of straw, twine, and sticks she was pretty pleased with their work! Right as she was sticking a couple of red maple leaves onto the top of its head to look like ears, Solar reappeared with the requested evergreen branch which Mercury promptly put into place, creating a fluffy, bushy tail of sorts. She giggled and grinned, her own tail wagging as she stepped back to look at her creation. She really had little expectation when she went into this, but in the end it had turned out to be a lot of fun. "It's perfect," she said approvingly, turning her gaze to Mercury with a happy grin, chuckling as she came to lightly bump her shoulder against his. "That's definitely the fastest looking straw wolf I've ever seen!"

"Anthea Dásos"