Chapter Text
The white one had been the first to open his eyes.
While his siblings had nuzzled their mother’s cold body for milk that would never come, he sought to crawl somewhere anywhere safer.
Then they were picked up by these two legged things that decided to bring them into the pack.
His siblings had all adapted in their own way. But he always remembered.
He knew that they lived in a world that was not theirs. He heard his packmate call him.
“Ghost! To me!” He called, grey eyes seeking him in the courtyard as the darkness fell.
His packmate seemed to be in a sullen mood to him. He pushed his nose under the packmates paw hanging at his side.
The paw went to work rubbing his sensitive nose yet the packmate’s eyes were far away. The white one wondered if perhaps the older female with the darkest brown fur on her head had upset his packmate again.
The direwolf known to most of the two legged things as Ghost reflected briefly on just how baffling they could be. They lived so many in one place, relying on others for their food, their shelter, their survival even as they did not love or even like one another.
Every passing moment another where they had to count upon the rules of the natural not taking their due for being so lax toward paying respect to them.
But then again, Ghost was happy to have become part of this strange pack if only for the fact that without them he and his siblings were alive because of it. As they traversed the courtyard, his younger sister came bounding into sight.
“Nymeria! What’re you doing out here by yourself?” His packmate asked with a surprised inflection. He knelt in front of their younger sister as her tongue hung out to help her cool herself. She was a decent size for age. Not as large as Ghost himself, but there was hardly a cousin or packmate that grew as fast as he did.
His packmate stopped rubbing Ghost’s nose in order to scratch behind Nymeria’s ear in just that way she liked. Her back left leg twitched involuntarily as she pushed the side of her head into his hand. He continued scratching for a few moments before standing again.
“I suppose you want to walk with me and Ghost?” He asked, gaining a low bark from the younger female.
His packmate simply nodded, only saying “Come along then.”
The white one knew his grey sister would be close behind. She liked the way his packmate treated her. Almost as much as she liked her own personal packmate, the small female with the dark hair and the grey eyes. When her packmate was occupied by being forced to sit, she would often seek out himself or his packmate in the hopes that they would be willing to play or explore with her. He and his packmate indulged her more than not.
It was good practice for all of them Ghost felt.
As they continued moving through the stone structures, his packmate seemed to withdraw into himself further. Like he didn’t want to return to the bedroom that housed the rest of his brothers. Ghost could understand the feeling. He looked after and loved his younger packmates where he could, but sometimes he just wanted to be left in the quiet.
The white one felt tonight merited a night of quiet. Without the loud one making so much noise that meant nothing, without the young ones needing to be careful around and without the one who looked so much like the older brownish haired female they all seemed to obey talking. Ghost pushed into the back of his packmate’s legs before moving ahead into a different direction in the place of stone.
“What is it Ghost?” His packmate asked, moving after him on instinct, their sister trailing behind them.
The white one led the grey eyed and grey furred siblings to the he and the grey eyed packmate often snuck to when they needed alone time. The shelter had not been disturbed since the last time they had been. He could smell it.
His packmate let out a surprised noise even as the smile quirked his lips. That was another thing that the two legged things did that he didn’t quite understand. But he knew that when his packmate looked as though he meant to do that, he was often in a better mood. The packmate the other two legs referred to as Jon flopped down as the bed before budging up to make room for himself and their other packmate.
Ghost moved up on the bed, Nymeria close after. They both curled into his side even as he turned on it to have his front facing them. As Ghost closed his eyes, he reflected again on how much things had changed for him and his siblings to be taken into this strange pack.
It was most certainly a good thing he thought.