Mists of Gold (meeting)
08-18-2018, 07:02 AM
Her children were well grown, now. They hadn't been old enough to leave the den yet when the last pack meeting had been called, but they had been beginning to venture out onto the moor alone, so it was certainly time to introduce them to the pack members they might meet out there. It was also, she felt, well past time for the other pack members to start being more sociable towards each other. Aurielle and Regulus were, understandably, quite caught up in the return of Solveiga and Aramis, but without either of their attention on the pack it was languishing and fading, which would not do at all.
Leading her children out to the moor's stone circle - all but Cairo, who was ill, and she would need to speak with one of the healers about him as well - she fixed them with a stern look. "Be on your best behavior," she warned them. "This pack is our home, and while they may not be blood family here, it is still important to be polite and treat everyone with respect. Someday you will be hunting or fighting alongside them, and you do not want them to know you as the spoiled little brat who was rude to them, then, do you?"
Lifting her muzzle, she sang out a call for the wolves of Celestial to join them for a meeting. Maybe Aurielle would call a proper summer meeting for any announcements she wished to make, but for now Gwen would make due as she had to.
OOC: attendance is mandatory unless on official absence. Deadline is 8/24 but would prefer posts ASAP.
Leading her children out to the moor's stone circle - all but Cairo, who was ill, and she would need to speak with one of the healers about him as well - she fixed them with a stern look. "Be on your best behavior," she warned them. "This pack is our home, and while they may not be blood family here, it is still important to be polite and treat everyone with respect. Someday you will be hunting or fighting alongside them, and you do not want them to know you as the spoiled little brat who was rude to them, then, do you?"
Lifting her muzzle, she sang out a call for the wolves of Celestial to join them for a meeting. Maybe Aurielle would call a proper summer meeting for any announcements she wished to make, but for now Gwen would make due as she had to.
OOC: attendance is mandatory unless on official absence. Deadline is 8/24 but would prefer posts ASAP.
08-18-2018, 08:14 AM
Artur followed in his mother's footsteps as she trotted from their den to the fascinating stone megaliths a short distance from the extensive den. They were, she'd told them, to meet the rest of the pack's members today. Artur, who had not yet met a wolf other than his mother and siblings, was wary. The only other living creature he'd known was Princess, his mother's cat friend, and she was obviously inferior to his family, so it didn't give him a lot of confidence that the pack would be any different. Still, these adults would be the ones who would be mentoring them in the various skills they needed once they were old enough to be apprenticed, so it wouldn't do to alienate them. He fully intended to apprentice to the greatest warrior in the pack as soon as he was able to, though he couldn't imagine a better warrior than an Adravendi and the only real Adravendis in the pack were he and his littermates and their mother, and he didn't know if he'd be allowed to apprentice to his mother.
Only half-listening to her lecture, Artur sat beside his mother with his head and ears high in a puppyish attempt at regal hauteur, waiting for the pack to appear.
Only half-listening to her lecture, Artur sat beside his mother with his head and ears high in a puppyish attempt at regal hauteur, waiting for the pack to appear.
08-18-2018, 05:03 PM
Justice was patrolling the border on the plains when, unexpectedly, she heard a distant call from Gwen calling the pack together in the moor. She was the Right Wing now, not just the Lead Legionary, which took some getting used to. In fact, the idea of Aurielle as the alpha instead of Regulus was odd enough, since she was just a yearling. Though with Gwen there as an alpha too maybe that wasn't going to be much of an issue.
It just worried her to have a yearling with no real life experience and a very, very sheltered childhood leading a pack. Sure, Regulus had been teaching her since she was a pup, but it wasn't practical experience. It was all theory, and she'd never had to worry about going hungry, or getting hurt, or killed, because of her decisions. There had always been the safety net there of knowing no matter what she did, the pack would be there to take up the slack and catch her if she fell. Hell, when Justice was younger than Aurielle she'd gotten lost and had to survive on her own for quite some time before she'd found her way back. She hadn't had the luxury of Aurielle's life. Even when Aurielle's mother and littermate went missing she hadn't really had to deal with the tragedy. She could always imagine that they were out there, happy and healthy somehow. And now they were back, just like that. She'd never really had to deal with loss. So how could she be expected to know how to make decisions that could lead to it for other wolves? Or to help a wolf going through it, if she'd never really felt it herself?
Well, Justice wasn't thinking into it quite that deeply, quite that articulately. She wasn't angry about it either. It was more of a vague feeling of discontent with the whole idea, with half-formed protests and thoughts swirling through her mind when she thought about her as alpha. Justice herself wasn't a leader, had no real desire to be a leader, and probably would have had almost as much of a problem with ANY leader as she did with a yearling, but it contributed to a general feeling of wariness and withdrawal as she waited to see how this regime change would play out.
Turns out that 'quiet' was a pretty good way to describe the change. The pack hadn't really done anything but loll around half-heartedly performing their various duties while they waited for someone to more determinedly take charge. Gwen was busy with her pups, though she still assigned border and hunting patrols to be shared between the three remaining warriors so that Regulus and Aurielle could spend more time with Solveiga and Aramis. So it was a little surprising to hear the fairly new mother calling the meeting instead of Aurielle. Where was Aurielle all the time anyway? It wasn't like she couldn't run the pack now that her family was all together or anything. It wasn't any different than when Regulus was running the pack, she was just as distant from everyone as he had been after he took over too. Was she ever going to have an alpha that was actually involved in their pack members' lives instead of disappearing all the time?
Despite her faint disgruntlement, she set out towards the meeting with curiosity and a jaunty trot. There wasn't much to break the monotony of hunt patrol, warrior patrol, sleep, eat, rinse, repeat. It didn't even matter what the meeting was about anymore, so long as there was something new and different happening that wasn't just another patrol by herself.
She did blink when she saw Gwenevere's pups, though. She had expected them to be smaller, somehow. They must have been older than she'd thought, though when she thought back to when they were born, they were about right for it. The boredom made the days kind of blend together and pass so quickly that she'd lost track. She eyed them warily - kids, in her experience, were mostly capable of shitting, eating, puking, and whining, but these ones seemed to be currently sitting there nicely so she edged closer. "Hey, Gwen, what's up?"
It just worried her to have a yearling with no real life experience and a very, very sheltered childhood leading a pack. Sure, Regulus had been teaching her since she was a pup, but it wasn't practical experience. It was all theory, and she'd never had to worry about going hungry, or getting hurt, or killed, because of her decisions. There had always been the safety net there of knowing no matter what she did, the pack would be there to take up the slack and catch her if she fell. Hell, when Justice was younger than Aurielle she'd gotten lost and had to survive on her own for quite some time before she'd found her way back. She hadn't had the luxury of Aurielle's life. Even when Aurielle's mother and littermate went missing she hadn't really had to deal with the tragedy. She could always imagine that they were out there, happy and healthy somehow. And now they were back, just like that. She'd never really had to deal with loss. So how could she be expected to know how to make decisions that could lead to it for other wolves? Or to help a wolf going through it, if she'd never really felt it herself?
Well, Justice wasn't thinking into it quite that deeply, quite that articulately. She wasn't angry about it either. It was more of a vague feeling of discontent with the whole idea, with half-formed protests and thoughts swirling through her mind when she thought about her as alpha. Justice herself wasn't a leader, had no real desire to be a leader, and probably would have had almost as much of a problem with ANY leader as she did with a yearling, but it contributed to a general feeling of wariness and withdrawal as she waited to see how this regime change would play out.
Turns out that 'quiet' was a pretty good way to describe the change. The pack hadn't really done anything but loll around half-heartedly performing their various duties while they waited for someone to more determinedly take charge. Gwen was busy with her pups, though she still assigned border and hunting patrols to be shared between the three remaining warriors so that Regulus and Aurielle could spend more time with Solveiga and Aramis. So it was a little surprising to hear the fairly new mother calling the meeting instead of Aurielle. Where was Aurielle all the time anyway? It wasn't like she couldn't run the pack now that her family was all together or anything. It wasn't any different than when Regulus was running the pack, she was just as distant from everyone as he had been after he took over too. Was she ever going to have an alpha that was actually involved in their pack members' lives instead of disappearing all the time?
Despite her faint disgruntlement, she set out towards the meeting with curiosity and a jaunty trot. There wasn't much to break the monotony of hunt patrol, warrior patrol, sleep, eat, rinse, repeat. It didn't even matter what the meeting was about anymore, so long as there was something new and different happening that wasn't just another patrol by herself.
She did blink when she saw Gwenevere's pups, though. She had expected them to be smaller, somehow. They must have been older than she'd thought, though when she thought back to when they were born, they were about right for it. The boredom made the days kind of blend together and pass so quickly that she'd lost track. She eyed them warily - kids, in her experience, were mostly capable of shitting, eating, puking, and whining, but these ones seemed to be currently sitting there nicely so she edged closer. "Hey, Gwen, what's up?"
08-18-2018, 09:04 PM
Viviane followed happily along behind her mother with her brothers and sister as she led them to the stone circle. They were going to meet the pack! She had been wondering what they would all be like. Would they be nice? Would they be really really big like Mama? Artur didn't think they would be all that great just because they weren't Adravendis, but Viviane sometimes thought that maybe Artur just didn't know enough yet to be able to know that sort of thing, no matter how confident he was about it. He wasn't really any older than they were. Just a couple minutes older than Caelia, and a couple minutes wasn't a lot. They were a LOT of minutes old now, so that was only a very small amount. He had almost the same number of minutes she did, so he wasn't smarter than her like he said. But, he probably didn't mean to be mean, he just got misunderstood sometimes. It got confusing sometimes, because Cairo thought just the opposite of Artur, and she didn't like to get caught up in between two opposing opinions. Why couldn't they just... both be right? Oh no, now she was nervous! She crowded closer to Merry, shifting and trying not to bounce while they waited.
08-19-2018, 03:37 PM
Ever a happy child, Geoffrey hummed cheerfully as he followed his mother to the meeting place. He was trying his best to follow her pawsteps, but it was proving difficult. Her stride was much longer than his so he had to jump from print to print. Every once in a while there would be some obstacle, some rock or stick that would complicate his jump, and he'd pause in his humming to think his next move over.
It was over one such pause that they seemed to arrive. His mother's voice pulled his attention away from the stick that blocked his path and he lifted his head to gaze up at her with wide, innocent eyes. Him, misbehave? Never.
That was a lie. He'd gotten in trouble (and watched his siblings get in trouble) enough times to know about when he could get away with stuff and when he could not, and this meeting thing seemed like serious business. It seemed like a 'could not' situation. He'd be on his best behavior.
While he welcomed Viv's closeness as the group took their seats, the boy shared none of his sister's misgivings. Or his brother's for that matter. In all honesty he was excited to meet the rest of the pack. They may not have been family, but he was more or less stuck with them and it made sense to make friends instead of enemies. He'd even brought his favor bone along to share. The deer femur had long since been picked clean, but it was still tasty and the knobs on either end made it good for tug o' war. Maybe when the meeting was over he'd see if he could get one of his new friends (and yes, he envisioned many) to play with him.
It was over one such pause that they seemed to arrive. His mother's voice pulled his attention away from the stick that blocked his path and he lifted his head to gaze up at her with wide, innocent eyes. Him, misbehave? Never.
That was a lie. He'd gotten in trouble (and watched his siblings get in trouble) enough times to know about when he could get away with stuff and when he could not, and this meeting thing seemed like serious business. It seemed like a 'could not' situation. He'd be on his best behavior.
While he welcomed Viv's closeness as the group took their seats, the boy shared none of his sister's misgivings. Or his brother's for that matter. In all honesty he was excited to meet the rest of the pack. They may not have been family, but he was more or less stuck with them and it made sense to make friends instead of enemies. He'd even brought his favor bone along to share. The deer femur had long since been picked clean, but it was still tasty and the knobs on either end made it good for tug o' war. Maybe when the meeting was over he'd see if he could get one of his new friends (and yes, he envisioned many) to play with him.
08-21-2018, 07:19 AM
Caelia's life experiences had been painfully limited, but it seemed that was about to change very quickly. She was grateful that her mother thought they old enough to explore parts of the moor on their own.. well, sort of, since they were always either being supervised or exploring with one another, or otherwise not very far out of their mother's reach. Caelia was eager to finally meet the rest of Celestial, though shared Artur's wariness on the subject. At their mother's word, she would behave, at least on the surface.. though she did firmly believe that those adopted into the family her mother had rightfully been born into were lesser, she too knew they would be the ones training them and teaching them valuable life skills. She would cooperate, lest she risk another lecture from her mother, which she was growing quickly tired of as she got older. Rebelling seemed more fruitless as time went on, and the sharp reprimands from Gwenevere were beginning to seem more like valuable lessons than annoying motherly nagging.
A her mother's comment about not wanting to seem like a spoiled little brat, she shook her head firmly from side to side. No, she most definitely didn't want to seem like any of those things, and she doubted her siblings did either. She leaned toward Artur's seriousness, finding less interest in mischief as, say, Geoffrey did.. but she loved them all the same. She moved quietly beside her siblings, watching with pride as her mother lifted her head to call the pack together - she hoped this meeting would be an interesting ones, and hoped the wolves of Celestial weren't as dreadfully boring as she feared they might be.
A her mother's comment about not wanting to seem like a spoiled little brat, she shook her head firmly from side to side. No, she most definitely didn't want to seem like any of those things, and she doubted her siblings did either. She leaned toward Artur's seriousness, finding less interest in mischief as, say, Geoffrey did.. but she loved them all the same. She moved quietly beside her siblings, watching with pride as her mother lifted her head to call the pack together - she hoped this meeting would be an interesting ones, and hoped the wolves of Celestial weren't as dreadfully boring as she feared they might be.