Mists of Gold (meeting)

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?"