yipie I oh, yipie I ay

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clickity click (I mean if you want to)

In the heat of midday, sunspots cloud the vision of any creature desperate, or foolish, or lost enough to find themselves here. Here is a point vaguely in the north-eastern corner of the badlands, more specifically, a shallow, wind-rippled valley between two dunes. There is nothing the least exciting about the place, the kind of setting that might constitute a 2-second pan-over between National Geographic scenes, but nothing much else besides. Even the wind seems disinterested in puttering between the dunes here. 

There is nothing, and then there is a coyote. She's a scrawny, smallish thing, liable to be missed behind the glare of the sun off sand. If anyone had bothered to be around, they'd probably have put off her appearance to a trick of the sun. The coyote herself does not seem to notice that she has stepped from one world to the next, already ascending the eastern-most dune. The lone female, highlighted by midday sun as she lopes doggedly on, might even warrant a 5-second cutaway had the camera crew still been around. 

Lark, however, is busy with her own set of problems, and would not consider slipping from one desert to another to be one of them, had she been aware of it. She's got a botched hunt behind her, which would be fine were it not for the cactus-part stuck just under her chin. It's a fun little reminder of her prickly failure, and makes moving her head rather undesirable. She just needs to keep heading west (she's most definitely going east).

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Another use for his no-longer-very-shiny stick has been discovered.

Shiloh sits with the pads of his hind feet facing outward, giving them a chance to rest from the endless sand. He is twisted at an awkward angle, gripping his knife by its hilt to scratch a hard to reach spot at the base of his spine. He digs out a chunk of undercoat, which rolls away like a tumbleweed, and his left leg starts working from the phantom sensation it’s the thing scratching his itch.

His lungs will not expand at this angle, so when he must breathe he uncoils and drops his shiny stick and sits with his tongue lolling. Then his big ears swivel, slowly turning to try and capture sound in their fluffy lobes. His nose works feverishly.

He can smell wolf. It’s strong. It’s overbearing. It’s him. He has recently been rolled over by a ginger menace, and there is a drop or two of Kincaid’s blood on the rusted edge of the shiny stick. (In hindsight, he would rate it as an overall pleasant experience.)

But he can smell something else over his own unfamiliar odor, and after a moment, he must rise and investigate. He stands and trots away, then lunges back to snatch his knife off the sand. Then he lopes in his easy, wraithlike way, long limbs eating up the distance between himself and a smaller, prettier coyote wandering the same desert. He knows good and well Kincaid is around nearby and he’s leading him right to her, but perhaps that’s in his best interest. Once he spots her, he can see she’d make an easier snack for his friend than he.

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Eventually, even she notices the presence of another. The scent comes first; coyote and wolf. She does not much care for the latter, and so she pauses, risking a squint over the dunes despite the poking under her neck. She considers reconsidering the trajectory of her path, but the spindly figure she sees crest the next dune is decidedly no wolf. Still, he's suspicious enough to warrant a pause before she lets loose a shrill cry of greeting, toneless and short in the manner of their kind. A little nearer still, her head held at this new angle that seems to keep poking to a minimum. 

He's got something special in his mouth. She knows this, because one does not carry something through the heat of the desert unless they have to. Her mother had an exceedingly large tooth, once, before she'd lost it. Lark's never had anything. He comes nearer still, and her left ear begins to twist atop her crown, curiosity apparent. She wants his — a squint, trying to make out the edges of the object — stick. 

She draws a little closer, tongue swiping over her lips. Drifting, carefully, she approaches with jaw slightly agape; attempting to grab hold of the shiny edge in the most polite way possible. The cactus stuck fast in the hollow of her neck makes navigating her approach exceedingly difficult. Still, she's determined to at least grasp it for a moment, though remains light on her paws as she finally makes her first attempt at a grab, tail wagging to prove she's trying her utmost to remain polite about the whole thing.

[narrow]
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Kincaid had never minded the sand, nor the heat overmuch. He was a creature of the desert, and although he still grew a thick winter pelt when the season turned, it was quickly thinning into more comfortable attire.

He was almost the same color as the sand as he slunk up over the dune and laid on his belly at the top of the rise. The coyote — his coyote — was being approached by another, who apparently wanted their stick. A low growl, inaudible to the pair of them, began ticking in his throat at this implicit threat.

But they were both so little, so inconsequential. He did not stir for a moment, waiting to see what might happen next. 

As he watched, he noticed a strange growth on the female's neck. His features twisted in a natural fear-disgust reaction, but softened into pity when he recognized the cactus for what it was. "Poor girl," he murmured to himself.

But he had seen enough. The male rose and called down to the pair,

"That don't belong to you, missy," in a low, warning sort of tone. He was speaking, of course, of coyote and Shiny Stick both.

+1 Formation Points

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He cries back to her, and the sound is even less pleasant to the ear. His tongue is crammed against the gnawed hilt of the shiny stick, which hinders his ability to sing his scream-song. She’ll get the gist, he thinks, ever the optimist when he’s on parade with his something special clutched in his teeth.

He doesn’t see right away in her eyes that she’s not looking at him — she’s looking at the knife, which everybody wants. But this is Shiloh’s knife, which only he can carry without being bitten. He’s just now starting to suspect the trick is to bite the right end of it, but he hasn’t shared this with anyone yet. Not even Kincaid. It’s better if Kincaid thinks only he can hold it, too, because Kincaid is bigger and stronger and might just take the shiny stick and go.

But Lark comes at him with her mouth open and, unlike Kincaid, goes directly for it. More politely, without the faux-snarling and pretense of play. Shiloh is less polite. His hackles stand on end and his big ears flatten. His lips curl off his (relatively) large teeth and he gives her a little warning, dancing in a circle for as long as she pursues the knife. If she does speed up and take the blade, he’ll initiate tug-of-war sequence.

He hears Kincaid speak in the background, and he eyes the she-coyote smugly. There’s the bully now — just try and take it! Shiloh doesn’t know yet that he belongs to anyone.

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In the face of the stick bearer's aggression, she can only wag her tail a little more forcefully. She doesn't want to take it, she tries to convey with a look, she only wants to hold it. Just for a second. She's beginning to think this coyote must be powerful indeed, to have acquired something as special as his stick. A pleading bark that comes out more like a chirp, and then, her window; a careful little leap and she's got it. Fangs clack against metal, the strangeness of the material enough to have her jaws clatter against it instead of clamping down, and when the stranger tugs, it slips away just as easily. There's hurt in her mouth, but she's curious enough to have her disregard it. 

She's ready to make another try for it when Kincaid's voice calls out, and the low jolt of fear is enough for her to briefly forget the cactus situation as she spins away from Shiloh. Her gaze finds the wolf and she immediately stiffens, tail falling fast. Head whips up to see him better, and —

A yip as the fun new angle of her head and neck allow the cactus to find some position better benefitting its ability to poke its spines into her neck. Another shout as she drops her head again, but that only serves to apply more pressure to the spines now firmly rooted in her neck. Gaze returns to the now-smug stick-bearer, and in a heartbeat, she realizes; "Trick!" First, he will not share his special stick and now he has brought a wolf. No doubt he has something to do with the poking cactus too. She swipes at it clumsily as she takes a few backpedaling steps, attention shifting between the coyote and the wolf. She's not sure what's going down, but she's unwilling to make a run for it.

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Kincaid thought he might have a thing about coyotes, now that he was faced with two of them. They were just so cute and small, and their big rabbit ears made his heart happy. This had better not awaken anything in me, he thought as he made his way toward them, head slung low and brushy tail wagging near his hocks.

"I ain't here to hurtcha, honey," he said, coming near enough to become a point to their triangle. He eyed his coyote for signs of damage, but determined that the female had not done him any harm with her attempts at thievery. "Looks like you got yourself in a right mess," he said, turning his attention back to the stranger. His gaze lingered on her cactus, and he tilted his head to try and get a better angle.

"You want help gettin' that off?" he offered, thinking he might have a workable solution.

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The larger coyote’s brow furrows thoughtfully as he puts away his teeth — but she looks very fast and very slippery. His ears rise and stand pricked atop his head, which cocks to the side at her accusation. She has some nerve accusing him of being a trickster, when he just knows she’s plotting to take away his stick! But at the same time, he can see where she got the idea. (And he is a trickster, just like she is and every coyote and every coyote’s forebears.)

Then he sees the chunk of cactus clinging to her neck when she paws at it, and his head cants in the other direction. His tongue works at the knife’s hilt, which he thinks to spit on the ground so he can try and take her sharp object away and see how she likes it.

Kincaid rescues him from this terrible mistake by stepping in. He calls the burr a mess and offers his help. After proving to be in mint condition following the wolf’s inspection, he looks expectantly to Lark. She’ll be extra dangerous, he thinks, once freed of her albatross.

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Not a trick, then. Wide eyes blink at the approach of the coyote's wolf (oblivious too to the fact that it is the other way around), but she does not move, save for a little nervous shifting of her paws. When he mentions her cactus, her gaze drops, as if she might be able to spot it through her muzzle. He offers a fairly accurate description of her situation, and while her attention is fixed largely on the wolf, she can not help but stare sidelong at the coyote a moment when the stick shifts slightly in his grip. 

Her cactus is the object of scrutiny, then, and when the offer is made to rid her of it she does not think before agreeing with a curt nod. Thinking may have been the better course of action. The movement is enough to have the barbs that managed to lodge in her skin pull and tear at it, and a small warbling whine leaves her as she dances a little nearer to the wolf, sail-like ears twisted toward him
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Those ears — Kincaid could hardly take it. He wanted to bite them (very gently!) and all the flapping around they were doing was not helping to quell those instincts. But, he was a reasoning man, and so he politely controlled himself and made his body small and non-threatening when the girl came closer.

“Atta girl,” he praised, taking a step toward her in turn. “Hold still and lemme see.” He was ducking down ready, eyeing the cholla burr from different angles. It didn't look good, but, “Could've been a lot worse. I seen things stuck up with cholla woulda been better off dead — only no one could put 'em down without gettin' a  mouthfulla stickers, get themselves in the same situation. So we just let 'em die, slow in the sun.” He made a sad, clucking sound. “What a way to go, huh?”

Kincaid stepped back and looked back toward his coyote. “Alright. I'm gonna get her by the scruff — real gentle, Missy, don't you worry — and I want you to go in with that stick and try to lever it out. Alright?”

He did not wait for permission before trying to make a grab for the girl's scruff. But it was, as promised, a very gentle grip.

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Well, she doesn’t seem so dangerous now, making that little tremulous whining sound. She is ready to be rid of her sharp object, and he supposes he would feel the same if the shiny stick was buried in his throat. Kincaid declares it’s a cholla burr, and he twitches an ear in recognition. Even he knows to beware of the leaping cholla — only he would not have recognized it, either, had he run into it.

He is unconsciously gnawing the shiny stick when Kincaid addresses him. At this, his ears stand close together and his halcyon gaze rests on him, then swings back toward Lark. As he just used it to dig out a clump of his old coat, he supposes he can finagle it. He also supposes he does not want her to die slow in the sun. She is alone as far as he can tell, and he knows what it is to be alone.

When Kincaid has her by the scruff of her neck, he pads closer and tilts his head one way, then the other. He does not know how to wield a knife, but he knows he is the chosen holder of the shiny stick and if he cannot manage it, someone else might take it away. So, he adjusts, eyes straining to see the burr and the edge of the rusty broken blade at the same time. And he combs it down the front of her neck until the metal is underneath the spines, and he keeps going. He can only imagine this hurts, so as soon as he thinks he has a good angle, he jerks his head to fling the cholla burr like he’s ripping off a bandage.

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Her eyes widen cartoonishly at the concept, but she remains entirely motionless, affording the wolf a better view while simultaneously willing it to fall out of her neck with all her might. Lark is very glad that they all seem to be on the same page re: not dying slow in the sun, though the thought has her wilt all the same. While she's not very fond of the idea of Kincaid grabbing hold of her scruff, the concept is distracting enough to have a reflex reaction to his approach significantly ineffective. She can not help but skitter sideways a few centimeters, but she doesn't really want to slip away and meet some terrible fate out on the dunes. And so she stills when Kincaid's jaws close on her scruff, ears sweeping back and forward again as her attention turns now to the coyote. 

The fact that the stick will be very close to her mouth plays some role in her decision to remain still and cooperative. Her eyes cross as it comes near, coyote attached, whites showing as they roll down to follow it. She could grab it now, she thinks, she mustn't. Still, her jaw twitches at the thought, and then it is twitching to let slip small high-pitched sounds because that hurts. Small, grumbling complaints leak continuously from her maw, but she knows better than to move now with the number of sharpy, pokey objects at her neck doubled.

Shiloh jerks his head and a yowl leaves hers, the cactus enjoying a brief flight before falling to the sand. She springs vertically, dislodging herself heedlessly from the wolf's grip, lurching to the side and barely hitting the sand before leaping again, landing and skittering away. Short, sharp bark of pain leaves her, nerves singing and ready to sprint in the opposite direction. She hurts, yes, and there is a little less fur and skin on her neck than there used to be, but she is free and spared the fate worse than death she'd learned about only seconds before. A moment to reflect, and then she prances back toward the pair, tail wagging behind her (and not in a polite stick-stealing way, this time). 

"Not gonna die slow?" she presses, wanting to be entirely sure that the threat is passed. But her excitement (no doubt fueled by adrenaline) needs no further stoking, and she does not necessarily wait for an answer before moving to place a swift, grateful lick to the underside of the wolf's jaw, an apologetic dip of her neck to the coyote; "sorry 'bout your stick." she's no further desire to make a grab for it, now that he's proven to be a more than capable stick-bearer and prevented her lonely death.

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He could not, of course, fully rid Shiloh of his coyote-scent, but he'd done a good job in the past few days of covering it up with his own. Whatever was left over was easily overlooked; Kincaid didn't mind it, really. But it was a lot stronger than he was accustomed to on the girl, who had not yet been subjected to Kincaid's invasive grooming tendencies. It was a lot stronger, and her fur was tickling his nose, and it was not long before he was sure he was going to sneeze and ruin the whole operation. Instead, he held his breath, until the girl was flailing and yowling and slipping away.

Then he sneezed, and sneezed again, and finally caught his breath in time for the girl to come skittering back in thanks. Kincaid's ears pricked, and he shot a glad, chuffed look in Shiloh's direction.

"You're alright," he agreed, dipping his head to tap his nose against her chin, hoping to get her to lift it. "Lemme see. Can you feel anymore stickers in there, or did they all come out with the wood?" There were none that he could see, at least not through the blood and fur, so he hoped it was a job well done. Another look was turned on Shiloh, this one quite speculative. "That stick sure is somethin'," he said, now that it was brought up. "Or is that all you? Angel powers?"

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Even as Lark cries out and darts off, Shiloh cuts his eyes warily at her burr before reaching Kincaid’s side with a featherlight jump. He drops the knife at their paws and sets one of his on top of it in triumph, head tilted back so he can see what the wolf thinks of this. See? He’s a useful coyote. No one will die slow in the sun on his watch.

The littler coyote skitters back and his claws knead the shiny stick protectively. She isn’t looking at it, now, however, but at his wolf, whom she licks gratefully. Shiloh’s tail wags behind him, then he gives a sage dip of his head in return.

“That’s alright,” he tells her. “Everybody does it.”

While she’s inspected, Shiloh picks up the shiny stick and trots over to the burr, then turns his back on it and uses his hind feet to kick sand over it. You won’t hurt anybody anymore! While he’s still burying the dangerous item, he turns a look on Kincaid and only winks in response.

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---

sorry for the shortness!

Forgiveness is granted, and she decides then the stick-bearer is very powerful and wise. He, too, receives a grateful lick; she even manages to avoid glancing at the knife she knows is beneath his paw just a short distance from her muzzle. Her attention is shifted once more to the wolf, and she's still for inspection, craning her chin upward at his behest. The pair have all her trust, now, even though the scent of wolf at such close range is still a novelty. She sniffs, then shakes her head in a glad negative. 

Drawn by the movement, she watches as Shiloh sends sand over the burrow, ears angling first toward Kincaid and then Shiloh at the mention of angel powers. She does not know what that means, nor does she know what an angle is; she can only assume the stick-bearer is in possession of them. It makes him all the more impressive, and her eyes follow him as she asks, "can I come with you?" She does not know who they are, really, or where they're going. She knows only that they have rescued her from a slow death, one of them has angel powers, and there is safety in numbers. 

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She totally wants me, thought Kincaid, who adjusted his posture accordingly so as to look more impressive. He answered her quite readily, “'Course you can, sweetheart,” and only afterward cut a querying look to Shiloh. He knew that his coyote was protective of their stick, but the girl had promise (sort of) to leave it be.

And besides — he was sure they could take her, between the two of them. What was the harm!

Kincaid sidled a little closer to carefully catalog her scent, although he was far more careful about Lark's personal space than about Shiloh's.

“What's your name?” he asked her. “I'm Kincaid, and this is Shiloh, resident angel.”

+2 Formation Points

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A lick is tantamount to acceptance in Shiloh’s small world, so they are now Friends. Because there are only Friends, Enemies, and Food, and Lark has bestowed a lick and eating her would be frowned upon even in morally lenient coyote society.

So, when Kincaid looks to him as if he has any say in the matter, he looks back and opens his mouth and lets his tongue loll. That is the best smile he can give that doesn’t look like a snarl, and he is pleased with this development. (Hopefully she doesn’t ask what an angel is, because he couldn’t tell her.)

Kincaid asks for her name, but even quiet Shiloh has a question to pile on. “And where did you come from?” It is strange to find a little coyote like Lark alone in the world. He has already reassured himself that she is not anymore.

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Kincaid, agrees, and so it is done. The pair have gained a stubborn third, who fully intends to stick to them as the cholla burr had to her throat. She echoes the stick-bearer's easy smile, tail moving behind her. She surely will live a great deal longer in the company of others, who's effectiveness in delaying her death has already been proven. "Lark," comes her quick reply as the wolf and the angel gain names, only a twist of her ear toward Kincaid as he sidles near, not particularly minding him in her personal space now that they are to be companions. 

Gaze finds Shiloh, a shrug of her shoulders follows. It doesn't particularly matter, now, but she motions vaguely to the north-east with an accompanying, "that way". When the two move off, she will be at their heels; come nightfall, her eerie, off-pitch calls will surely be a solo act no longer. 

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