Þat mælti mín móðir

Corbie heard the challenge rising over the range, and went very still. This was what it came down to then, didn't it? For all her neutrality, for all her offers of trade and friendship, there were still those who thought it was easier just to take in blood and violence what she'd been willing to offer them without. She rose to her paws in the darkness of the flock-guardian shelter and moved into the moonlight to weave her way through the grasses and the sheep like a wraith. Stepping up to the group to bar their way, she saw only Alarr had made it there yet. "It's not too late for you to change your mind and leave," she told the invading alpha without emotion. "If you truly are so poor in resources that you must raid rather than give an equal value for them, we have never been unwilling to give charity to those who need it. Our offer of peace and friendship is extended to all, equally. But if you continue on this path, wolf, you will have shown your wolves to be nothing more than thieves and honorless bullies. Is that the path you want?" She held herself ready - though she'd needed, for her own sense of worth, to give them the chance to leave without consequence, she was not naive enough to think that they'd choose to do the right thing. This would not be the first time she'd fought to protect something worth protecting, from someone she believed was not worthy of it... Avalon's very existence had sprang from that. She would stand her ground.