It's Time

It wasn't long before a wolf she was actually familiar with appeared. She hadn't seen him at the challenge, but it had been hectic and difficult to follow what had happened so she couldn't be sure. It was nice to think that he had come just to her call, though, as a friend and not someone who had heard of a challenge and had come to gawp. She gave him a tired grin. "You are always welcome, Mercury. You're a friend, and whether or not you're in my pack or another or none at all that won't change." He's lent her an ear when she'd needed one, though she'd been a stranger to him, and asked the questions she'd needed to hear. That brief interlude had been a relaxing pleasure for her that she'd always be grateful for.

But another had joined them, another familiar face that made her light up. "Tyrfing!" she greeted him. "Thank you. I hadn't expected to be challenging for a pack when I woke up this morning, but I suppose it was meant to be." She wasn't sure if he intended to join or was just curious, but she was well aware of his skills and he'd be more than welcome. Her wariness of the Imperialis and the Saxe after what Chaos had done to her father was still... there, but she firmly believed that it wasn't one's family that made one who one was, and that the past was best left in the past.

The last to appear was a stranger, a blunt but friendly seeming yearling with an accent. "Hello, Tallulah, I am Corbie. You didn't miss much - the fight is never the important part. It's what you do after that matters."

Her mint colored eyes swept around them, but whether from disinterest or indecision no one else had followed her. With one wolf there only for support and not joining, and two only maybes, it wasn't much to start a pack on. Still. Corbie firmed her resolve, lifted her tired head, and drew together the ideas that had been forming for some time now into something approaching a cohesive whole. She took a deep breath.

"I wish for my pack to be a place of peace and rest for those in need," she began. "There are warlike packs enough, both good and what might be called evil, that the world does not need another one. Abaven was a school, a place of neutrality and learning, and it would be a pity to lose that. I am a farmer, and a brewer, not a scholar, but I believe in sharing that knowledge in a place of safety and truce, a place of hospitality. A village, not an army." Her expression tightened slightly, settled into harder lines, and her voice hardened. "That is not to say that I would allow my wolves to become targets for those who would take advantage of us. I am not a warrior, but I will meet violence with my own fangs to protect the peace of my pack and maintain safety for those who cannot. I will defend what is left of the good and honorable in this world. My pack will be a haven."

She turned her attention directly to Tyrfing, studying him intently. "I would welcome warriors who would help me to make and defend that place of peace for others, regardless of who and where they came from. It isn't our past that defines us, but our actions in the here and now." She broke the intensity of her gaze, sweeping it around at the three gathered. "It isn't much to start on," she said apologetically, "but it is something. I understand if it isn't what you are looking for, and I won't hold it against you if you walk away. I will keep looking." Mercury, she knew, had already stated he didn't intend to join, so it was with no expectation of him changing his mind that she smiled at him, accepting.