when the floodwaters come it's gonna look like mud

Stagnating in his own sorrow was getting him nowhere. It was time to pick himself up and get to work. There was a vague idea of what he wanted to make of his future, it rattled around in the back of his skull at all times. He didn't want to be his parents. They had disappointed him, let him down, abandoned him. He wanted to make himself something new, and diverge from the paths they had laid before him. He would protect his home and his family, and he would do it with diplomacy. It was an unexplored avenue for the pallid male, but he was eager to give it a shot. It would require mentoring under someone he didn't know nearly as well as some of the hunters in the pack, but perhaps that was for the best.

Broad paws thumped heavily against the terrain, his bulky form cutting a path through the thicket in search of the Sequoia. He hadn't met Theory one on one before, at least not that he could remember. Nerves danced in his gut, but he ignored them for now. The weather was changing, each day it grew a bit cooler, and the rains came far more often. Perhaps the winter would be harsh as the last, and he would find in it the opportunity to witness the formation of connections between packs firsthand as they scrambled to survive a brutal winter like the last. Dark masked features were taut and pensive as he ranged deeper into the familiar territories of the pack, following a trail of the Sequoia's scent. He thought he could hear movement ahead, and the scent was certainly getting stronger. "Sequoia?" he called, vocals rumbling with an impossibly rich baritone that was already far deeper than one would expect of a yearling. "I was hoping to have a word, about my training?" he continued, though there was a very good chance he was talking to a squirrel skittering by, and not the leader of Abaven.