Rowan’s Shade Pack Summary: Yr 1
Enit had emerged from the spirit world at the beginning of Spring, into a world of green, of sunlight, of multitudes of sights and scents that nearly overwhelmed the senses of her mortal wolf form. Her first months she spent experimenting with the mortal world, exploring different areas and inviting into the pack those wolves whose spirits she felt would work well in her pack.
Over the year the pack lived in the Deciduous Forest, the pack moved to the Swamp for the winter, and after careful consideration and discussion with her scouts, Enit has decided to move the pack to the Riparian Woodland now that Spring has arrived.
(to see a full story like write up of pack members click the read more! Fair warning, it’s LONG)
Her first pick, her partner, was Pietro, an intriguing and entertainingly arrogant young wolf who she immediately felt attached to. Having him scout new areas was beneficial to the pack as a whole, because while he was good at helping her get her pack shaped up, his know-it-all attitude and biting snark occasionally riled up the pack members more than she liked. When Enit had shared some of her spiritual aspects with him, she was not surprised to find that it had enhanced his toothy grin, making him seem even more intimidating than before.
Her second scout, Tara, was a blessing she hadn’t realized she’d been getting - Enit had considered her to be a smart and capable wolf on meeting her, but Tara’s dedication to her role surprised and astounded her! While Pietro may have claimed to be “the best, most adept and highly skilled” wolf in the pack, the true honor may just have lain with Tara - she traveled the lands, scouted out new trails, and discovered new areas with an almost supernatural ease, all while avoiding many of the dangers and illnesses that could befall a wolf in strange lands. Enit was not surprised to find that the spiritual aspect she shared with Tara granted her a phantom-like presence, allowing her to flit from place to place without attracting too much attention.
The hunting groups - oh, Enit had to work at picking the right wolves for them!
Her first group, Orion’s Pack, were a friendly and outgoing bunch, always full of energy, yipping and barking and howling and roughhousing all day long. Enit had to admit, she did enjoy their energy, and joined in on the wrestling often. It did help her feel more like a Real Wolf. They weren’t the most focused or best coordinated wolves, she had to admit - Rigel, who’d gained the hazy aspect from Enit’s spirit, most often stumbled upon a good trail as she idly wandered across a field or among the trees out of sheer luck and the fact that her presence was difficult to discern in certain lighting. The Chasers worked decently well together - Bellatrix could get over-enthusiastic and occasionally overshoot their target, but with Meissa and Saiph’s assistance and direction the three managed to get the prey to go where they wanted it to. Mintaka...well, Enit was relatively certain it was only her spirit aspect that gave Mintaka a larger, more robust set of teeth that helped her as a finisher - Mintaka was often distracted by something or the other and would jump at the prey sometimes at nearly the last second. Still, the group worked very well together and Enit enjoyed their presence in her pack immensely.
Her second group, Orion’s Club, was quite a different story. There were only three so far, though Enit had chose two of the adolescent pups to join once they were old enough, but those three could sometimes pull in more prey than her first group of hunters. Enit’s spiritual aspect had granted Alnilam More Sight, All Sight, More Eyes and More Vision, and between that and her exceptional scent skills she was a formidable stalker. Betel - Enit had to admit, Betel was a terror. Aggressive and domineering, she made an excellent Chaser all on her own, and with Enit’s spiritual aspect accenting her limbs, she could pull off maneuvers that made the rest of the pack’s heads spin. Alnitak had been meant to be a placeholder, her anxious and shy nature so at odds with Alnilam’s and Betel’s more outgoing and loud ones, but she had been blessed with the phantom presence much like Tara, deepened by her natural quietness to the point that much of the prey Betel chased to her didn’t notice Alnitak until she rose, like a ghost, to fall upon them and wrestle them to the ground. Enit hadn’t been sure about this pack of hunters, but she had to admit they were exceptionally skilled and she didn’t think her pack would do well without them, even if Alnitak and Betel tended to harass and pick fights with other members of the pack almost daily. At the very least they listened to her and backed down when she told them to. Keeping the respect of the more aggressive and domineering members of her pack was something Enit knew she had to maintain if she wanted her pack to continue to thrive.
Enit had chosen Persie as the pack herbalist out of necessity more than anything else - illnesses and injuries had begun to be a problem and when enit stumbled upon the herbalist bear in the woods she knew she had to send someone to learn from him, and soon - but the wolf’s dutiful nature proved to be a boon in that field. She paid careful attention to Herbert’s lessons, and noted each characteristic of every single herb with an extraordinary focus. She might not have been a very outstanding wolf at the beginning, but after months of hard work, learning, and practice Persie showed herself to be a valuable and important member of the pack. Without her Enit was sure her pack would be suffering, and some of her pack might not even have made it through the first year.
Aala was a young and serious minded Wolf that Enit had mistaken for Persie upon their first meeting - the two wolves were similar enough to be littermates, though they weren’t! Enit hadn’t been sure if the young wolf would be a permanent member of the pack, and Aala herself hadn’t seemed certain either. She seemed to waffle between staying and going, occasionally traveling out to the edges of the pack’s territory and traveling the boundary before coming back to the dens with a furrowed brow and thoughtful expression. Once the packs first pups were born, however, Aala found her purpose. She was a serious but caring pupsitter, taking care of all pups given to her care with skillful gentleness. The pups all loved their “AuntAla” and she in turn helped them grow into strong and capable young wolves.
Speaking of pups - most of the pups born the first year were, well, test pups. Enit wasn’t sure how pregnancy and pups worked really - spirits didn’t mate, didn’t carry anything inside of them, didn’t give birth. Sometimes spirits could become so full of energy that something split from them and became a spirit of its own, but the feel of it, the experience of it, Enit learned, was completely different than that of mortal mating, pregnancy and birth. She was honestly fascinated by the whole matter, both when it included her and when it didn’t, and she honestly influenced more pregnancies and births than she probably should have. Only after she started to think of the care the pups would need did she realize that she may have taken on too much for her pack to handle, and the situation had to be rectified. So Enit decided to undo some of the pups, or rather, the pup’s mortal forms. It was delicate work, and she had to hole herself up in the portal-den to do it, but it wasn’t painful or detrimental. As far as she knew. The pup’s spirits would continue on, their sparks returning from where they came, and only their mortal forms would be undone, crumbling away to return to the earth. Enit thought she handled the situation quite well - until she realized that the mortal wolves of her pack had little understanding of the spirit realm, and the eternal lives and cycles of spirits that inhabited mortal forms. It was an alien thing to them, something fearful and awe inspiring and so, so different from their own physical lives. She tried to explain that the pups hadn’t died, that they hadn’t suffered (at least she didn’t think they did, at least their spirits hadn’t), but the mother wolves couldn’t understand. Enit felt true hurt and sympathy upon seeing the sadness and pain in them - she’d never meant for that to happen. She did love her wolf pack, as much as a spirit as herself, one from a far different plane than the spirits of mortal beings, could love the physical containers of lesser spirits. So she went back to the portal-den, and clawed against the strands of existence as delicately as she could, her work as tiring as careful as before, and erased the memories of the pups from the pack’s minds until they were only vague half-dreams that returned to them, sometimes, in the darkest hours of the night.
There were three pups in the pack, however, that Enit had decided would grow to become new members. Two were of her own pack - a daughter of Pietro and Saiph, and a daughter of Pietro and Mintaka - who had caught her eye and her not-quite-mortal heart. That they were adorable when biting at each other and wrestling and rolling about helped her decision as well. The third was a young pup she had found at the edge of her territory while patrolling one day, a gray-and-white splotched pup with an independent streak that had told her she was “esploreen da hole wowld” all by herself. Enit thought she was wonderful, so she plucked the pup up and carried her back to her den, where Aala, ignoring the pale pup’s indignant growls, tucked the little one under a paw and told Enit she would make sure she stayed put.
The pack had spent most of the year in the temperate weathered leafy forest where Enit had first emerged, but as winter drew closer and the mortal wolves began to speak of the chill of it, the lack of prey and the illness it could bring, Enit decided that a move was in order. As the last of fall waned, she took her pack and traveled to the warmer, and stinkier, but far more interesting swamps to the south. They spent the winter there, under the heavy boughs of the Rowan tree that moved along with them to the wonder and amazement of the mortal wolves, but as time went on Enit wondered if the choice had been a good one. Hunting was difficult - even though her hunters were skilled they could only bring back the smallest of prey, complaining of the damp stink of the place making it difficult to locate trails, saying that the soft mucky ground grabbed at their paws and slowed them down. Enit herself found the entire place absolutely wonderful, intriguing, full of sights and sounds and textures she could not get enough of, but she had to admit that raising a pack in the swamp did not seem to be the best idea. She consulted with Pietro and Tara, and sent them out to scout a new area for the pack to live in, and after many discussions they settled on a wooded territory threaded through with rivers. While the pack stocked up on what food they could and prepared to move, Enit headed out to ready the new territory and prepare a place for them.