New Leaves on the Trees [Pack Meeting. Mandatory]

Justice had been working on the thigh bone of a deer, gnawing at the last bits of meat and gristle on it, and had just cracked it open for the rich marrow when Aurielle called a meeting. The wounds from her vicious fight against Dragon and his cats in the tournament was healing well enough, though the marks across her face were still angry and red, and she suspected that the thick, ropey gash was going to scar pretty badly no matter what she did, but it had healed enough to let her crack open bones again. Though apparently she wasn't going to get time to finish them. Justice glanced down at the bone regretfully, but it was spring and she wasn't really all that hungry so it didn't really matter if the now-exposed marrow would be wasted by drying out while she was at the meeting. Still, she snuck a quick slurp of the rich stuff before she abandoned her snack and trotted toward the meeting. She seated herself among those already there and turned her attention to Aurielle.

The meeting began with a memorial for Gwenevere, and Justice looked aside and shifted uncomfortably. She'd been there when Gwen had gotten the injury that had later led to her getting ill, and she felt in large part like it was her fault. If she'd been faster, the pups would still have a mother, for a few years yet anyway. She snuck a guilty glance at the pups, then revised her view of them. Not pups, really. Even if they hadn't already been yearlings - which, now that she thought about it, they probably were - Gwen had raised them to be mature young adults, probably more so than Justice ever had been at that age even with her rough schooling alone in the wild.

Aurielle quickly moved on to other things. The rest of her family was ill - whimsically, Justice wondered to herself if they were even there still, since no one except Aurielle ever saw them anymore - and there were alliances announced. Aurielle's unexpected admonition to them to treat their allies well came out of nowhere, and Justice shot her an incredulous glance. Hell, she was too surprised to even do a proper offended glare. Like, what the actual fuck? She couldn't say what she was more offended by, the insinuation that anyone who disrespected one of their allies was a traitor to the pack, or the assumption that they were pups who needed to be told to play nice. She settled for huffing out her breath in a very offended manner.

Luckily for her, before she could come out of her surprise enough to formulate something scathing reply, Aurielle had moved on to something that captured Justice's attention away from being offended. The pack's ranks and rules were getting a face-lift, and Justice pricked up her ears to follow. Well, she was definitely not in the runnings for a beta position. As eager as she was to be in charge of something, diplomacy was far from a strong point for her and she had no problem admitting that she'd not be a good fit for it. She pricked up even more at the announcement of a festival. Festivals usually had great sparring, since there would be a lot of strangers there. Sparring with people you knew could get old, since eventually you learned all their quirks.

"So can we be part of more than one circle?" she asked as Aurielle opened things up for them to ask questions. "Since there aren't any ranks that are specifically for two skills - would we have to pick between them or would we be able to just be in both? And about picking apprentices - what if more than one wolf wants to apprentice a pup? Would you decide?" Probably not an issue considering how few adults were in the pack at the moment but definitely a good thing to know for future conflict. "And what if someone wants to apprentice in more than one circle, would they need to find two mentors?" She tilted her head to the side, considering if she had any more questions to fire out, then added, "For the festival, what if we switch out guards partway through so everyone can get a chance to be there?"