A wolf named Thornbush trapped in thorns (Open)

[Deleted]

Thornbush was trotting along, smiling and happy, then...... "Ouch!" he yelped as he fell into a pit of thorns. He landed on his back, and crashed to the bottom, driving the thorns into his back and branches entangled his paws. Others pressed into his soft belly. "Someone, help!" he yelled.

[Cascade]

This was the first time she had been away from home. Well, that wasn't strictly true. She had taken walks in the heathlands with her family as a pup, and when she got slightly older she had been permitted to accompany the pack on hunts in the plains, but this was the first time that Ashling had been off-territory on her own. Having gotten permission from her father—that is, having speedily asked his groggy, barely-woken self if she could go on an adventure and running off as soon as he said "Huh?"—the slate blue wolf had been making good on her intentions to get to know the rest of the valley.

Mostly this involved getting extraordinarily lost. She hadn't seen hide nor hair of a familiar sight or even another wolf in hours, and the terrain of this new place was completely foreign to her. Enraptured by the falls and distracted by her own somewhat perilous circumstances, the young wolf was barely registered the pained cries coming from a nearby ditch. But the word "help" finally reached her ears, and she snapped to attention, quickly looking around to try and locate the source of the cry.

"Hello?" she called out, pacing around the perimeter of the ditch and trying to spot someone through the thick brambles, "Is anybody down there?"

[Deleted]

"Help!" Thornbush yelped. His red fur was now dotted with rivers of blood from the thorns. "I'm trapped." He saw Ashling. "Please help me." he said. One thorn was also getting to close to one eye for comfort.

[Cascade]

The young wolf, just barely grown enough to no longer be considered a pup, was at a loss at what to do when she finally spotted her frazzled friend stuck in a thick bed of thorns. "Oh geez...try not to move, you'll just make it worse!" Looking around frantically, Ashling spied a broken branch with a sharp edge. Tearing it free from the trunk with considerable effort, she took it in her jaws and carefully slid down to where the thorns were wrapped around Thornbrush's paws. "Mmpph. Mmph?" was all she managed to get out as she began chipping away at the thorny vines with the improvised tool.

[Deleted]

Thornbush stopped moving. He was keeping track of the thorn that seemed eager to get to his eye.

[Cascade]

"Aaaand...gotcha!" the pup exclaimed as she finally broke the stranger free of his thorny entanglements. She took great care to slowly drag each branch away from his body until he was completely free, earning herself a few cuts on her front limbs in the process. Ashling winced at the sting of the wounds, but they bled little and she knew it wasn't too serious. "That was a close one, huh?" she was panting with the effort, but proud of her good deed, imagining the praise that each of her female role models would bestow upon her if they knew of her brave accomplishment.

'You are a credit to your pack,' said Treason in her mind.

'Your swift action is befitting of any good leader,' said Perjury with her usual formality, but a scant bit of hidden admiration in her tone.

'Your valiant rescue has not gone unnoticed in the eyes of the immortals," boomed White Magic from on high. Wow, even the great healer herself was making an appearance in Ashling's fantasy theater, what an honor. The blue pup sighed wistfully as this parade of commendation unfolded inside her head, utterly distracting her from the reality at hand.

[Deleted]

Thornbush saw that his rescuer was deep in thought, so he stayed silent and licked his wounds.

[Cascade]

((Could you write a little more? ^^; It's hard for me to respond meaningfully to one sentence.))

[Deleted]

(Ok) Thornbush looked at her. He knew better then to talk, so he sat, trying to reach his back. Ashling was clearly preoccupied. He was trying to find a thorn in his paw that he knew was somewhere, and a chipmuck scuttled by. He started to stalk it, but he was unsuccessful.

[Cascade]

Ashling was lost in dreamland for a few moments more before she realized that she had completely spaced out in front of this other wolf. Shaking the thoughts from her head, she cleared her throat and shot him a sideways glance, hoping he hadn't been too weirded out by her trance. That kind of thing was a little weird, and besides, why settle for imaginary gratitude when there was doubtlessly a rich bounty of real gratitude in the heart of the wolf right in front of her?

"You're a little banged up, eh?" she said with a critical eye on his many scratches, "But you can count yourself lucky that it wasn't worse. I'm Ashling—" she resisted the urge to add "future queen on high and protector of the realm" to the end of that, "—and what do they call you?"

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He looked at her. "They call me Thornbush because I have claws like thorns." He was a young nobody, but his family were dethroned alphas. No one believed he would make it to the leader, but he was trying. "So, why do they call you Ashling?" he asked.

[Cascade]

The pup couldn't help but snicker when she mentioned his name, unable to ignore the irony of the situation. "Pfft...sorry, sorry, it's just kinda funny, you know?" A wolf named Thornbush in his own thorny situation...good thing she had been there at the right place and the right, or he might have died the most groan-worthy death imaginable. What an utter sacrifice of dignity that would have been.

She didn't let herself dwell on it too long, though. He'd just had a rough time and she wasn't going to help by rubbing salt in the wound. Well...she had already made fun of him a little, but not excessively or anything. "Hmmm...my name, huh?" Ashling pondered aloud, trying to pull the topic of conversation away from his embarrassment. "I don't know why, but apparently my mother was going to name me 'Blue 2' right after I was born, so I'm pretty glad she took a bit more time to mull it over." Ashling looked at Thornbush with pride, chest puffed out, "Alphess Treason says I've got spunk. I bet I could take you and your thorn claws any day and tie you in a knot! Not that I'm trying to start a fight or anything. But if I did I would win. Just saying."

[Deleted]

Thornbush snorted. His family was alphas to! But they were gone, and Thornbush was all that was left of his family.

[Cascade]

Ashling cocked her head at the other pup, still smiling, "You don't say much, do you?" she asked, wagging her tail lightly. "Sorry I made fun of your name, and sorry I said I could kick your butt. Even though it was pretty funny and I totally could if I wanted to." She was not yet a master of the delicate art of apologizing, but she was as sincere as her heart could be. This was, admittedly, not much.

"So how come you're out here all alone?" she asked, oblivious to the obvious observation that the same could be asked of her, "Do you have a pack?"

[Deleted]

Thornbush grew stiff. This was not a safe topic, and one he did not like to talk about. "No, I was born to a alpha pair, but they weren't a pack. My father was dead when I was born, my pack, they overthrew my parents. Killed my father, and exiled my mother." His gold eyes were fixed on the ground, a tear welled in one eye.