[Wild Roses] Trickwood Unification
Title: polite conversation
'Verse/characters: Trickwood Unification; Belladonna, Aoife, Donel, Ruadhan, Ilne, Hernén
Prompt: 24C "revolution"
Word Count: 452
Notes: You haven't met Aoife before; she's the current Bordeaux pack second--Bordeaux decided they weren't okay with Donel hanging around a great whacking herd of other wolves without a few of them around to watch his back. Ilne's appeared in waiting for the yelling to stop and winter comes knocking--she tends to follow Donel's slightly rabid younger brother around and does clean up duty. Belladonna, of course, follows the original rabid mageblood around.
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Belladonna had claimed a stack of saddle blankets for her own earlier in the afternoon, broad enough to lie down on her side on if she felt fourlegged. Currently she was sitting twolegged, feet tucked under the opposite thighs, hands dangling in the cradle her legs made as a result.
Her crazy mageblood was tallying the month's news with his brothers; she'd exchanged nods with the oldest one's pale shadow, whose name she still hadn't heard, and done the usual faint flat challenging stare with Ilne, who'd looked away first.
"How's the revolution going?" she asked the pale shadow, who was sitting on her haunches in the third point of a triangle, if you assumed the other two magebloods for the other points. She didn't bother to use the trade-tongues, stuck instead to proper nuanced wolf. The magebloods were having their own conversation, after all, with Ilne interjecting here and there like any good beta.
"Oh, well enough," the pale shadow replied in kind, in the cant of her head and a gruff chuckle.
" . . What revolution are we talking about, Aoife?" the oldest mageblood asked, giving his pale shadow a packleader's look, and that made Belladonna wish she could lay her ears properly back. She hadn't known that one spoke wolf.
The pale shadow--Aoife, Belladonna corrected herself--lowered her head, ears flattening briefly to 'chastised' before she raised her head again and curled into a human shape, kneeling, heels tucked beneath her hips. She was even paler twolegged, lashes and brows invisible against her skin. "Remember that manticore nest we took out last month?"
Belladonna's mageblood looked like he wanted to ask which one that'd been--Belladonna herself could think of five off the tips of her claws--but held his tongue as the oldest one nodded.
"Well, turns out the local lord's people didn't like him much--only followed him because he could keep the manticores off them all."
"Uh, oh," Ilne's mageblood muttered, and Aoife's gave him a glance before looking back down at Aoife.
"Why didn't you mention--?"
Ilne was the wolf who snorted loudest, so it was her the humans looked at next. While they weren't looking Aoife stood up and straightened her tunic, laid a hand on the knife-hilt on her belt absently as she rocked back onto her heels from her toes.
"We assumed you knew," Ilne was saying. "Everywhere, barely bears mentioning. Like asking how the weather is where someone's been, in case you're headed there next."
The humans trade a few looks, and it gave Belladonna a faint curl of pride in her belly that it was her mageblood who looked at all three wolves, her last, and strongest, and said "Hey, Belladonna--what's the latest from the howl?"
'Verse/characters: Trickwood Unification; Belladonna, Aoife, Donel, Ruadhan, Ilne, Hernén
Prompt: 24C "revolution"
Word Count: 452
Notes: You haven't met Aoife before; she's the current Bordeaux pack second--Bordeaux decided they weren't okay with Donel hanging around a great whacking herd of other wolves without a few of them around to watch his back. Ilne's appeared in waiting for the yelling to stop and winter comes knocking--she tends to follow Donel's slightly rabid younger brother around and does clean up duty. Belladonna, of course, follows the original rabid mageblood around.
---------
Belladonna had claimed a stack of saddle blankets for her own earlier in the afternoon, broad enough to lie down on her side on if she felt fourlegged. Currently she was sitting twolegged, feet tucked under the opposite thighs, hands dangling in the cradle her legs made as a result.
Her crazy mageblood was tallying the month's news with his brothers; she'd exchanged nods with the oldest one's pale shadow, whose name she still hadn't heard, and done the usual faint flat challenging stare with Ilne, who'd looked away first.
"How's the revolution going?" she asked the pale shadow, who was sitting on her haunches in the third point of a triangle, if you assumed the other two magebloods for the other points. She didn't bother to use the trade-tongues, stuck instead to proper nuanced wolf. The magebloods were having their own conversation, after all, with Ilne interjecting here and there like any good beta.
"Oh, well enough," the pale shadow replied in kind, in the cant of her head and a gruff chuckle.
" . . What revolution are we talking about, Aoife?" the oldest mageblood asked, giving his pale shadow a packleader's look, and that made Belladonna wish she could lay her ears properly back. She hadn't known that one spoke wolf.
The pale shadow--Aoife, Belladonna corrected herself--lowered her head, ears flattening briefly to 'chastised' before she raised her head again and curled into a human shape, kneeling, heels tucked beneath her hips. She was even paler twolegged, lashes and brows invisible against her skin. "Remember that manticore nest we took out last month?"
Belladonna's mageblood looked like he wanted to ask which one that'd been--Belladonna herself could think of five off the tips of her claws--but held his tongue as the oldest one nodded.
"Well, turns out the local lord's people didn't like him much--only followed him because he could keep the manticores off them all."
"Uh, oh," Ilne's mageblood muttered, and Aoife's gave him a glance before looking back down at Aoife.
"Why didn't you mention--?"
Ilne was the wolf who snorted loudest, so it was her the humans looked at next. While they weren't looking Aoife stood up and straightened her tunic, laid a hand on the knife-hilt on her belt absently as she rocked back onto her heels from her toes.
"We assumed you knew," Ilne was saying. "Everywhere, barely bears mentioning. Like asking how the weather is where someone's been, in case you're headed there next."
The humans trade a few looks, and it gave Belladonna a faint curl of pride in her belly that it was her mageblood who looked at all three wolves, her last, and strongest, and said "Hey, Belladonna--what's the latest from the howl?"