You've Got A Friend In Me [Willow]

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[attr="class","pltxt"]She stalked through the trees like her mother had showed her: haunches low to the ground, ears swiveling in every direction to take in the sound of the jungle, each step light as a feather. The jungle was so positively green and lush and beautiful that Harper kept getting distracted. Every few moments, she would hear something she had never heard before and lift her head curiously. The jungle, though the only place Harper had spent her young life, was definitely her favorite place to explore. She never needed to wonder what was beyond her pack’s territory. Everything she could ever explore was right here in the trees, close to the den where she still lived with her siblings and mother.

As her heart swelled at the thought of her immediate family, Harper found herself distracted even from her own inner thoughts as a large metallic green beetle scuttled across her path. An excited squeak flew from her tiny jaws before she could even think to stay quiet. Alarmed, the beetle changed its path and made its attempt to escape. Harper crouched and wiggled her rump once before pouncing on the helpless creature. Instinctively, she took the fat bug in her mouth and crunched down.

Immediately, she gave a yip and dropped her mangled prey. Her mouth was stained purple with the innards of the foul thing, and her tongue lolled out of her mouth in disgust. A bitter, horrid taste filled her senses and she stumbled around, making a racket. She hacked, shaking her head from side to side as if to shake off the bad taste. “Ack,” she spat, her wide green eyes bulging from the effort. “I’m never eating one of those again. Good riddance!”

The experience nowhere near behind her, Harper slinked around another tree, peering into the dense jungle. She shouldn’t stray too far from the den, least she gets lost in the brambles and vines. How boring it is to explore without any company. I wish Micah were here to play. Although Micah was already bigger than Harper, and becoming more brutish as the days go on, she wished her brother had come with her this morning. He was a rather good explorer, even if he was loud and always trying to munch on things he shouldn’t. That makes two of us now, she thought.

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Count | 395
Tagged | @willow
Muse | Decent
Notes | Sorry that this kind of sucks.

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The pup was nearly silent, save for the sound of her breathing as she struggled over an unkempt path in the depths of her jungle home. With considerable effort, she was picking her way through the dense brush. Surrounded by palm fronds larger than herself and towering trees, Willow scrambled over huge boulders covered in lichen and squeezed in between the branches of bushes – some of which had thorns, she had learned, as a paw had snagged on something earlier. It was enough to draw blood, but it wasn’t enough to stop Willow that day. Her unnaturally bright eyes searched through the greenery for other specks of color. She had been searching for flowers all afternoon, after careful instruction from her mother about which plants to avoid because those ones were poisonous. Already, her “hunt” had produced a rainbow of vivid hues: petals of fuchsia, scarlet, and yellow, taken from various plants she had found along the way.

It was a challenge to traverse through the untamed landscape for Willow, and she breathed heavily with exertion as she continued to linger further from the rest of her family – something that was normally unthinkable, but she had fallen victim to her own imagination and wandering paws. Willow was many things – unfortunately, graceful was not one of them. As her sisters’ limbs began to grow long and gangly with the passing weeks, Willow’s legs remained the same: short, unnaturally so, and her height seldom changed. No one ever told her that something was wrong, but Willow was old enough now to see the difference for herself.

Their mother had taken them to meet the rest of the pack, but Willow had not had the opportunity to see all of the new pups that Athena had promised would be waiting for them to play with. Willow was happy to have her sisters, maybe she would be even happier with more girls for her to make friends with. Lost to her thoughts, she turned one corner and came face to face with a stranger – a little stranger, not much larger than Willow. Startled, she sprang backward, freshly plucked blooms flying in all directions and eyes wide with obvious surprise. An ivory flower teetered between her dark-rimmed ears as she examined her new discovery. ”Oh! Hi.” The pup looked to be the same age as Willow and her litter, though she was bigger than Willow – everyone was bigger than Willow. The other pup’s fur was dark, a striking ebony shade. A single white patch on the chest stood in contrast to her black fur, and her eyes were pretty and green, like their verdant jungle homeland.

The young female had no time to be nervous about meeting someone new, too excited at the prospect of having someone new to play with. ”I’m Willow.” The dainty fae crouched down in a playful stance, her chest lowering closer to the ground. Her tail wagged in the air wildly behind her, its white tip a blur of motion in her excitement, a silent invitation to play. This new wolf didn’t look scary or mean, and if she was in the jungle, then that meant she was part of Valyn.  "Do you live here, too?"

words: 550

tag: @harper

ooc: ditto x3

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[attr="class","pltxt"]Harper's tiny muzzle wrinkled at the bitterness that still coated her tongue. Tail wagging happily behind her ebony body, she trotted through the trees, her forestry green eyes turned upwards to the thick canopy. Streams of sunlight filtered through the large leaves overhead, dazzling the pup as she gazed upwards. Her large paws stumbled through the undergrowth as she came around a thick tree trunk and came face to face with another pup. The newcomer sprang away from her in a burst of color. Startled, Harper blinked at the other pup. She was about the same height as her, with a dark, fluffy pelt streaked with silver. A dark stripe of fur stood out between the young wolf's ears, trailing down her forehead, where a blossom teetered on her skull. She was quite a comical sight, and before either of them even exchanged any formalities, Harper let out a yipping laugh. Petals floated down on the two pups like confetti. 

"I'm Willow."  The newcomer shook the flower off her head and crouched, her rump wiggling in the air behind her playfully. Harper copied her, stretching her front paws forward until they touched Willow's creamy white apendages. Her paws were strangely a different color than the rest of her pelt, an oddity that Harper had never seen before. She was peering at Harper with excitement, her eyes a strikingly vivid yellow. ”I’m Harper!” she barked in excitement. Another pup in Valyn! Micah would be so jealous!

"Do you live here, too?" ”Yes! I haven’t met anyone else yet, though. I want to, of course, but Mother says we need to be able to prove ourselves before we meet anyone else. It’s very important.” Harper chattered without pausing for breath, sitting up to puff out her white chest with pride.

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Count | 305
Tagged | @willow
Muse | Meh
Notes | This is so short. *cries*

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[Lethe]

Waryk Jungle was both the beauty and the beast. The tops of the trees burned with a heat that made the growing wolf want to point her eyes to the ground as the sun followed her in gallant beams, shedding light on the path in front of her in blotchy spots. It was lustrous, the beams glittering off of the moisture that was ever-present in the air, and settled over the young fae’s face like gossamer silk. It was a place of mist and mystique, of seraph-light and wildlife.

But it was hellish to walk through. It was as if she had stepped back into the Jurassic period, with looming trees with boughs as thick as whole wolves. They reached upwards despairingly, eternally damned to chase the sunlight that eluded them. Gnarled vines sprung from their roots, grasping at any spare limb that might come into contact with it. Bloated insects scurried from spiteful, lazy moss that swung from branches like clothes on a line. But when it rained, it was cataclysmic, ripping at the flora like tiny blades. Everything was soaked and sunken, and the delicate, beautiful butter- and dragonflies feared the bullets too much to come from their holes. And at night, the jungle turned malignant, as unfamiliar eyes shone like lanterns, glazed with hunger in the carnal darkness.

The jungle was an enigma, one that Lethe had lived in her whole life and still not come to truly understand. And yet, today, she was soft on her sister’s heels.

As she waxed with every cycle of the moon, her sister did not. Her legs seemed to stop growing weeks ago, and while she hadn’t lost a bit of her childlike enthusiasm, Lethe saw how her sister’s eyes fell when she watched her siblings run and play. Try as she might to keep up, already at about six months of age, Willow was disproportionate at best. Her body betrayed her, and Lethe hurt for her. Though the physically looked down upon her closest friend, she despaired for her to know that she was no less than the rest of them for her stature. For that, unbeknownst to her, she was wise beyond her years.

Willow had wandered off today, and as Lethe quietly caught up with her, she realized what she’d been looking for—more companions. She smiled despite herself, a simple curl of her lip towards her eyes that shone as orange as the sunset, a startling foil to her sister’s jarring yellow. Facing her sister, dancing in a play-bow, was a brackish dark female with a patch of white on her chest. Her eyes were dark green, a color that Lethe had never seen in a pair of eyes yet. She was big, probably about their age, and yet she overshadowed poor Willow with ease.

Lethe stepped towards them, quiet but not creeping. She flashed a warm smile at the two of them and sat on a log, perching like a watchful bird. “Who’s your mom?” she asked, bluntly but innocently, with genuine curiosity. She licked a paw absentmindedly and settled herself proudly, head high and chest puffed. While she had turned more serious with age, she was still childlike enough to mimic what she thought was pride and beauty. “My name is Lethe,” she announced to the new female. “I’m Will’s favorite sister.” She drawled on the words affectionately, smiling toothily at her sister, who was truly her favorite sibling, despite it all.

w o r d s : 590     m u s e : good!     t a g s : @willow, @harper

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She batted at Harper’s paws playfully, happy that the dark pup was just as eager to play. The other’s paws were inky black, and they were the same size as Willow’s, even though Will was born a month or two prior to her new friend’s litter. ”Yes! I haven’t met anyone else yet, though. I want to, of course, but Mother says we need to be able to prove ourselves before we meet anyone else. It’s very important.” Suddenly, Willow’s expression was crestfallen, the other pups’ words swirling around in her brain. She felt something in her chest, like butterflies trapped inside her ribcage, and she was unable to hide her worry. She was not good at hiding her emotions, her body language and expressive features always betraying her. The pup’s voice was uncertain and hushed, as if someone would overhear them. ”Prove ourselves? What… What do you mean? What do we have to do to prove ourselves?”

Heading turning quickly, Willow’s façade had adopted an undeniably worried look – there were things that she couldn’t do, like running a race with her sisters or catching any bugs when she tried to hunt. She was young, but she already understood that she was never going to be like Tempest or Lethe. What if the pack expected a feat of strength, or demonstration of courage. They would accept Lethe without a second though. She was the biggest of the litter, though The Boy may have been bigger if he was still around. The Boy wouldn’t have been happy there, or so she tried to convince herself, since Valyn wasn’t a place meant for males.

As if on cue, her sister appeared. She could smell her familiarity before she laid eyes upon Lethe, who looked too much like Willow to be anyone else but her sibling. All doubts ruminating in the small girl’s head were instantly forgotten. Lethe was her safety line, her world. If Lethe was going to stay with the pack, then they had to take Willow, too. The two had scarcely spent more than an hour apart from each other since the day they arrived in the world, on the first day of spring. She plucked a fallen flower from the dirt and dropped it at Lethe’s paws, like an offering to the alter of an ancient goddess. ”I was looking for new flowers, and I found a new pup instead! See, this is Harper. She’s part of Valyn, too.” She grinned, feeling rather proud that for once, she was the first pup to do something from the litter, finding a new friend out there in the open. For once, she wasn’t worried about whether their mother was worried about them as they wandered about.

words: 478

tags: @harper + Lethe

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[attr="class","pltxt"]Willow blinked up as her from her play-crouch, her brilliantly yelloweyes looking puzzled. ”Prove ourselves? What… What do you mean? What do we have to do to prove ourselves?” Harper’s ears flicked atop her head as she thought about what she had said. Her mother was always telling Harper and her siblings that they needed to be strong and fast in order to be liked by the rest of their packmates. Had Willow been told something different as she grew up? The black pup straightened slightly, opening her mouth to ask the smaller pup, when she was suddenly distracted by another voice. “Who’s your mom?”

The newcomer perched atop a brown log, half overrun with thick boughs of ivy and pink blossoms. Willow reacted immediately with a vicious wagging of her short tail, introducing Harper without the pup even needing to. The two were sisters the newcomer, Lethe, informed her. Harper stood up straighter, determined to make a good first impression. Lethe was pretty, her eyes a splash of orange against a muzzle of grey and white.

”My mom is Amara,” she chirped proudly. ”Who is yours?”

Now there were three of them. To Harper, this meant a proper adventure. What else were they to do to pass the time? The black pup was almost positive her mother was on a hunt, which sometimes meant a whole day or even two where the pups were left alone. Without ever having a group to explore with before, the prospect made Harper’s paws itch with excitement.

”You know what we should do?” she said, her rump wiggling excitedly and she looked back and forth between the sisters. ”We should go explore the ridge.” She spoke in a dramatic rasp, her eyes wide for effect. The Ridge of Vesirtin was at the very Northern portion of Valyn territory, farther than Harper had ever explored herself before. She had wanted to journey there before, but the time had never truly right. Until now.

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Count | 333
Tagged | @willow Lethe
Muse | Decent
Notes | FINALLY I AM SO SORRY FOR KEEPING YOU GUYS WAITING

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