Atreus was coming up on a year old soon, and restless with the seemingly unending days of puppyhood. His mother spoke often of how they needed to seize opportunities where they could find them, rather than hope someone in the pack would step up to give them a helping hand, but he had not listened. He should have - she may have spoken from experience and he was foolish to have disregarded the advice just because she was his mother, and not some great warrior. He had trained with his mother, of course, and his aunt Gossamer. But he had done nothing of real note to distinguish himself in any way. Today, the burly violet-toned youth had set out to do just that. Stalking along the border, he looked for trouble that he could set right. His first thought was to hunt for something and bring it back for the pack, but he was in the mood for trouble.

And trouble he found, when he found himself suddenly face to face with a lean tawny form. Both froze, the lithe young cougar as startled to find the sturdy young wolf as the other way around, but Atreus recovered first and lunged for the cat with a snarl. This was a good chance to distinguish himself - chasing a cougar out of pack lands! But the cougar wasn't going to just turn tail and run from a puppy, no matter how overgrown, and he moved to retaliate with a snarl of his own. They'd be evenly matched at best, and though Atreus wasn't going to back down, a fair fight would not end well for either of them.

With her children grown and out on their own most of the time, Aris had been working on getting back in shape post-puppies. That meant a lot of seemingly-random actions like different stretches, or carrying around increasingly heavy weights, and jogs interspersed with sprints, that she'd learned from experience were the best way to bring her muscles back into condition without hurting herself - warrior and healer both, she'd put a lot of thought into it. She was basically back to her old self at this point, but she thought that if she continued on as she was doing she might actually surpass her younger self. She'd been jogging around the border - combining her exercise with patrolling - when she heard a sudden snarl echo from in front of her, followed quickly by a cougar's yowl. Her own muzzle writhed into a snarl - that was Atreus! And as good as he thought he was, if he was going after a cougar he was bound to be in trouble. Kicking up into a sprint, she came upon the scene, taking in her son grappling with the big cat. Without hesitating, she slammed her much smaller body against the cat's hip, spinning him around and causing him to lose his grip on Atreus. Bouncing back, she set herself, ready.

Atreus was locked in a grim wrestle with the cougar when it was suddenly spinning away from him. The youth took the opportunity to leap back and reset, cold eyes tracking everything now that he was in a position to see. It was his mother that had distracted the cougar, and even now was facing it down. The cougar's eyes flicked between the two, clearly trying to decide if it was worth continuing the fight. But, though he was wary, he wasn't frightened enough to immediately run off when faced by a pup and a very small adult. They'd need to change that.

Leaping forward again, Atreus slashed his claws at the cougar's cheek, drawing blood as he took it by surprise. Wolves, in the cougar's limited experience, didn't have sharp claws, so he had been slow to dodge. This was an alarming development for the young cat...

When Atreus immediately attacked again instead of getting to safety, Aris clicked her tongue in exasperation. He wasn't experienced enough to fight a cougar, even a fairly young adult, but she was guessing that he had started the fight, judging by his enthusiasm for continuing it. Well, she had told him to distinguish himself, hadn't she? She supposed this would be what he'd thought she meant, and not... doing fight training with the other adults in the pack. Oh well. Done was done. Taking advantage of the cougar's distraction with Atreus's attack Aris leaped in again, her own claws flashing and catching the cougar's hip before she bounced away again.

With his mother's addition to the fight, Atreus pressed the attack. He slammed himself chest to chest with the big cat, nearly bowling over the lighter predator. As he did he bared the long, saber like fangs he'd inherited from his family - unknowingly, from both of his grandfathers - and slashed them through the meat of the cougar's shoulder. The cougar swatted at him in retaliation, but its satisfaction at the lacerations that suddenly bloomed with blood on the wolf's neck turned to a horrified yowl at the quills it found studding that paw. That was the last straw for the cat. Wolves just did not have sharp claws and long teeth, but they absolutely weren't like porcupines either! Holding its injured paw to its chest the cougar turned and fled.

It didn't take much more of a beating to convince the young cougar that it wasn't worth continuing the fight, not when the mutations both his opponents displayed made his inexperience clear. Outnumbered and outgunned the cat did the smart thing and fled. Aris swatted him in the hip one last time to speed him on his way. She watched him a moment before nodding in satisfaction, then turned to Atreus with a steely eyed gaze. He didn't wilt before it, but returned it icily, and she lifted her lip in a half grin. "All right, hero, first thing's first. Let's get the bleeding stopped on those wounds." Nosing into the first pouch at her shoulder, she pulled out out a roll of felted wool and pressed part of it onto the lacerations.

Atreus returned his mother's gaze levelly. He hadn't done anything wrong, and he wasn't going to pretend like he had just because she turned that stare on him. When she half-grinned at him though, and immediately began to dig around in her pouches to treat his wounds, he blinked in confusion at the sudden change of pace. He barely flinched at the pain when she pressed the wool down on the wounds, though, and just grimly endured the medical attention. He himself didn't know anything about the field, had little if any interest in it, but he could see the benefits of a fighter trained in healing as well. Well, technically she was, by rank, a healer trained in fighting, but he himself valued her fighting knowledge more. But, he could see the benefit. He'd need to remember that, in the future. His brother was a fighter interested in healing too - he could use that. He continued to muse on that as he stoically endured the pressure on his wounds.

Atreus was clearly doing his best to ignore what she was doing, and Aris rolled her eyes in amusement at his stoicism. It was ok to be in pain. It wasn't more manly to not feel anything. He was a puppy still; no one expected him to be a badass. He reminded her of her older brother Azure more and more every day. She wouldn't have been surprised to learn that he was in fact Azure's son and not hers, except that she had given birth to him so she knew better. Peeking under the pad of wool, she saw that the bleeding had stopped for now. Another quick dip into her pouches brought up a jar of first aid ointment. Yarrow and cinquefoil for preventing more bleeding, calendula and comfrey to promote healing, a bit of honey, all in a base of oil and beeswax. She took care to smear it into the wounds as well as over them, before covering it with a new felted wool pad, and then wrapping a soft, stretchy leather wrap around his neck to hold the leather in place.

Atreus couldn't help the soft, pained growl that rumbled in his chest when his mother began scrubbing some greasy substance into his wounds. It felt like she was digging around in there, though he could see she was just packing it with whatever that grease was. He could smell honey, and wax, but otherwise he had no idea what all the scents emitting from that stuff indicated. It made him want to sneeze, though, that was for sure. At least it would help him heal faster, so he wouldn't be held back by it. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief when she stopped, but grunted when she pressed a new pad down on the wounds to hold it in place while she started winding the leather wrap around him. It was kind of funny to see his much-smaller mother balancing against his shoulder while she reached up and over him with her paws and mouth to drop the leather on one side and catch it underneath with each wrap. She'd have a much easier time if she had "hands" like Zeejay, but it was a rare sort of mutation for wolves. Zeejay would probably be much better at it, but then again Zeejay would never be useful for anything other than healing anyway, so she was lucky she happened to have the hands for it.

Aris kept the leather wrap just tight enough to keep the ointment-coated pad in place without being so tight that it impeded Atreus' breathing before attaching the end to itself with a small, sharp, double sided metal hook she'd traded for specifically for this purpose. Taking the ointment back up again she dabbed it on his lesser cuts and scrapes, all of which had already stopped bleeding on their own. None of the other wounds was serious, but it wouldn't take much for one of them to get infected, so better to take care of them now than risk that. Satisfied, she put what was left of the supplies back in the pouches where they belonged, and scraped her paws through the dirt to clean them off. "All right, now that you're not going to bleed to death, we're going to follow that cougar to make sure it headed over the boundary and didn't stop to hole up somewhere in pack lands. A wounded predator like that is even more dangerous and unpredictable than one that isn't, so it isn't safe to leave it. Since you wounded it, its your responsibility to see it through, regardless of injury."

Finally, his mother was finished poking and prodding his wounds, and put away all the extra stuff. Then she proceeded to explain that, wounded or not, it was his responsibility to follow through with the injured cougar and be certain it was gone completely. The way she glared at him, he thought she expected him to whine or argue about it, but he just nodded. He didn't care that he was wounded, and it made sense to him, so why would he argue about it? Clearly she was waiting for him to take the lead on it, so he dropped his head to get the cougar's scent - made especially obvious because of the blood trail, and moved to follow it.

-end-