She was a lot farther from home than she'd wanted to be. She originally hadn't gone very far, but she'd gotten lost and then had tried finding her way back. She had been pretty sure she was going the right way, but none of this looked familiar at all. At first the sights had been pretty, some of them a little too hot, but now the scenery had changed to a forest. Black stuff oozed all over the ground and overall Kieryn wasn't having nearly as much fun anymore. More than anything her stomach rumbled loudly. It'd been a while since she'd eaten anything and she hadn't had any hunting lessons yet. She'd tried a few times to catch a mouse but she was never quite fast enough and to her dismay it always heard her coming. After that she'd given up on trying to catch anything. Well almost given up. To her surprise there was a rabbit not five feet from her. She peered at it curiously. It wasn't moving so she moved to a crouch and tried to be as quiet as possible. She had yet to discover what the black stuff was so she didn't know that the rabbit had gotten trapped and died from starvation. So she stalked to it and yet it didn't move. Why wasn't it running from her. She was next to the thing now and the bottoms of her paw pads were touching the ooze. She didn't notice though. Instead she poked the rabbit with her nose and to her surprise it didn't move at all even after that. She decided to sniff it and to her satisfaction it seemed like it was dead. A free meal! Tiny jaws clamped around an ear and she went to walk away with it when she realized she couldn't move her feet. Letting go of the rabbit's ear she looked down at the black stuff and tried to move her feet again. No luck. Panic welled up in her now. Why couldn't she move? Walk, "Talk" Think

He had been traveling for a couple of days, though where he was going exactly was beyond him. The day before he had left, his mother had asked him to go and scout out different lands, giving him a mission that he knew very little detail about except that they might potentially move. He knew how tired and distraught she was, and perhaps the lands they resided in now were beginning to bring her down considering all that had happened during the last couple seasons. This summer seemed to be just one big clusterfuck, and honestly, were he another alpha then he'd consider a move too if the lands he lived on brought nothing but bad memories. Besides, didn't packs move every once in a while anyway? He assumed that's what the next door neighbors had done, but he hadn't gone to actively seek out where they went after that anyway. As he made his way at a good pace across Boreas, none of the lands he had passed through had really caught his eye. On top of that, there seemed to be packs kind of scattered around, and competition for food and resources wasn't exactly something he thought was on the list. While they were the only pack in the north at this moment, someone else could always decide to move in nearby, and who knew if they would be friendly or hostile. So he expanded his search, and would return after he found what he thought was suitable territory for the now full pack. With the return of the healers aunt and then Esarosa having a litter of three, the pack had no more room for newcomers really. It was frustrating, and he was quite surprised that the pack had managed to fill up so fast during its early days. He came across a rather peculiar looking place, one that stunk of tar and...death. His nose wrinkled, ears sliding back as he moved cautiously through. The odd bubbling sounds around him was certainly off putting, and the stench even more so. This was definitely somewhere he wanted to stay away from, so he was glad he was just passing through. At least, he thought he was. It wasn't until he spotted something that looked to be completely out of place here. Something other than the bones and rotting furs he had passed already. Instead, green eyes would find something very much alive, and seeming to struggle in place. Focusing on the figure, he soon realized it was a pup; and it seemed it was in a potentially dangerous predicament from the looks of it. Quickly making his way towards it, he would not hesitate to come up and grab the child by the scruff, hauling it away from the black gunk that held her prisoner. He would release her almost as fast, away from the tar pit as he wrinkled his nose from the stench. "Hey, you should be more careful y'know!" He looked at her, wondering why she was here. But upon looking back at her prior position, he noticed the dead rabbit and he made a look of disgust. "I hope you weren't trying to eat that!" "Speech"

The rabbit was all but forgotten as she tried to move her paws to get herself unstuck. The fact that they seemed to be sticking to the ground made her worry. She soon became convinced that the black stuff was a goo monster that was slowly going to digest her and eat her insides and leave nothing but bones. She could now understand why the rabbit wasn't moving, though it was still a vague concept that she didn't fully get. Death hadn't quite come to her grasp of knowledge, though she knew things were dead when they ate them. She hadn't heard the male approach at all. No word of warning was spoken before she was lifted into the air. A pained cry escaped her as her feet were forcibly removed from the ground, and she found herself a little irritated that some strange thing was picking her up so easily. She was almost a year old and yet she was still almost pup size. Fear came after the irritation as she wondered who it was and she vaguely remembered her ooze monster problem. Was this his friend and now it was going to eat her? Or maybe it was a rival who was gonna eat her instead. Either way she felt like she was going to be eaten. Surprisingly enough she wasn't eaten. Instead she peered up at the thing that had pulled her from the ooze and to her surprise it was a massive dirt colored male. He was very clearly a wolf judging from his features and she felt a little more relaxed now that she realized it wasn't a monster. Her face turned to a pout though as he chastised her for being reckless and that she needed to be more careful. She'd stare at the rabbit warily and then pout some more. "I'm hungry." She whined. "It wasn't moving so I thought it was food." Walk, "Talk" Think

The taller male looked down at the smaller girl, his nose wrinkling as he tried to ignore the smell of tar and rotting things that he was sure littered the area. His brows furrowed when she looked up at him and the rabbit with a pout and a whine. Food? She was trying to eat that??? Well, he supposed he couldn't blame her. If he were her, and if he was really hungry, he knew he would have tried to eat it too. Assuming of course, if he was really that desperate. And she seemed like she was. But it was odd...he wondered why a kid was out here alone. He couldn't quite pick out the pack smell on her with the overpowering smell of tar and other nasty crap, so he frowned as a sort of response.

Looking around, he didn't see any other wolves nearby or anything. So he assumed she was alone. "Well, under normal circumstances it could have been food...but it's rotten, and caught up in that sticky black stuff. Definitely won't taste very good, and you could have gotten sick from it. Didn't your parents teach you anything?" At this point, he got genuinely curious. Someone had to be taking care of her, especially since she didn't look like she was starving. Well, not visibly anyway.


"ROAR"

The male didn't seem to be too happy with her. Her ears flattened against her head as she frowned at her and she had the impending sense of doom that only came with the feeling that she'd done something wrong. She glanced back at her the rabbit before staring down at her paws. She'd just assumed the rabbit had been okay to eat. She didn't know that it'd be yucky and gross. She was thankful he'd pulled her from the tar though. No one knew she was out here so she could have been stuck there forever! He explained why the rabbit was disgusting and she looked up at his pretty green eyes now (she was a little envious of them) and instantly became sad at the mention of her parents. She frowned up at the much taller man and shook her head. She hadn't had the chance to learn much. Her uncle Cas had been trying to train her, but he'd been awfully busy. She hadn't really caught on to anything yet and she was beginning to worry she never would. "Both my parents are sick - they have been since my siblings and me were born so we haven't learned anything from them." Walk, "Talk" Think

"Ehehe...sorry." He knew she probably wasn't happy that a stranger just showed up out of nowhere and started scolding her. But honestly, what else was he supposed to do? Let her eat it and then watch her get sick and maybe even die!? Well...maybe she wouldn't die. She would have probably figured out that it wasn't good to eat with the first bite or two, and then maybe gotten a pretty bad stomach ache after. But at least he saved her from that much. He had a stomach ache when he was younger from eating too much rotten fruit when they lived in Imperium, and that was the worst week of his life! He wouldn't touch another rotten thing if he could help it. But this placed seemed to be crawling with rotten things. He frowned some when she shook her head, his brow points knitting together as he wondered what could possibly be wrong. He listened silently when she told him about her parents, his lips tugging into a deeper frown. Were they that sick that they weren't able to teach her anything? He couldn't imagine what that would be like. His mother had always been there for him and his siblings, teaching them what she could and when she could, even while tending to her responsibilities as an Alphess. Sighing, he looked at Kieryn as he thought about it. "Are you a loner or something? Anyone else that could have taught you something?" Had he been able to smell the pack scent through the thick stench of tar and...rotting corpses, he would have probably criticized the way they didn't seem to be teaching her anything. But for now, that would remain under lock and key. "Speech"

This was so embarrassing. She'd had to be saved but some giant boy, almost eaten something rotten, and now he was scolding her. Couldn't she have had normal parents that didn't get sick that could have taught her the stuff she needed to know? She loved them, they were her parents, but she felt a tiny bit of anger at them. This wasn't fair at all! Her older siblings had gotten to learn all this stuff and here she was, barely trained, getting herself into stupid situations. It didn't help that Regulus had gone off with her parents an Kavdaya and she didn't know where Castiel was. He was supposed to be her mentor. "No I live in Celestial. My uncle taught me a little bit about fighting but that's about it." She should have chosen hunting. That's what she should have done. Hunting was a basic need, but she'd been so wrapped up in the idea of hating fighting that she'd chosen it first to get it out of the way. Now she greatly regretted that decision. Now she was out on her own and didn't even know how to hunt for herself. She probably looked stupid. Her ears flattened against her head at that thought. Walk, "Talk" Think