Aureus Canis - Saturday Afternoon

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A little earlier in the day, Jennie is out waiting for Rahne to come help her coordinate her new form when she is ambushed.



To Jennie's delight, it had snowed the night previous. Even after living in New York for over two years, it still had not lost any of it's wonder to Jennie. After scratching at the porch door and a rather pointed whine at the Groundskeeper, she was out and about and discovering enhanced smell without the added wacky fun of kidnapping and having someone play silly buggers with your genetic code. For one thing, snow was rather prickly. To her nose and to her bare paws. She paused in her inspection of the ground underneath the layer of snow and paused, ears pricking. Something was twitching the hairs on the back of her neck. She tilted her head, confused.

Which availed her little when, out of nowhere, something huge, shaggy and grey erupted from behind a bush, slammed into her ribcage and sent her sprawling into the snow.

Later, Jennie would not be ashamed to admit that her reaction to this was a very loud YIPE!!. She pulled herself to her feet quickly and shook the snow off her coat. She spun frantically looking for her assailant and stopped when she caught sight of it. Or rather, him.

It was a wolf. Large, gray, and looking infuriatingly pleased with himself. Jennie snorted in disbelief.

Then she crouched low, wagging her tail. Her bodylanguge screamed "bring it!"

Marius half-opened his mouth, the corners of his lips curling upwards in an unmistakable translation of a smirk. Twenty minutes of stalking, skulking, and a steady accumulation of icechunks between his toes had paid off. Though he would freely admit waking up to a face-full of a currently canine teammate's tongue was hardly anything to get worked about, he hadn't let that stop him from asking for an emergency donation. He anticipated this was going to be amusing, not the least of which because, whilst Jennie had been reduced to the size of a large Labrador, at the normal height of 6'1" Marius had not undergone any fundamental change of mass.

Still grinning, Marius lowered the front half of his body and made ready for battle.

The fight was quick, and slightly embarrassing for the smaller combatant. Not only was her opponent much larger, but also had the added advantage of training and being able to move quickly in that shape. Which is why at the end of it, Jennie was left pinned under Marius's right paw, with her trying in vain to snap at the other leg he held teasingly in front of her face.

Rahne hadn't actually thought about Jennie in connection to Marius's request, an oversight which she was shaking her head over about as soon as she spotted them. In responding to Jennie's request she had come outside on two legs to work the doorknob but in the morphing-fabric outfit for a quick change, but since the clothing was more suited for summer weather, she was in a transitional form with a thick coat of fur and thus semi-comfortably barefoot in the snow. Approaching from downwind was purely habit.

She covered her eyes briefly with one clawed hand, then dropped to all fours and proceeded to raise her head and howl.

Jennie stopped and snapped her jaws shut. She looked towards the direction of the howl and spotted another large wolf. This one russet-furred. Her tail gave a half-hearted wag and Jennie looked about as sheepish as a dog could.

oh yeah, I was supposed to be waiting for her.

Rahne lowered her head and loped forward, eyeing Marius speculatively. She was smaller than he was, but charging the foreleg he was using to hold Jennie down would probably still either dislodge him or require him to dodge. Not that she minded a little canine roughhousing, of course, but if Jennie was going to practice moving around on all fours it would eventually be necessary to let her up.

Further action proved unnecessary; Marius considered his vengeance achieved. He stepped off Jennie's ribcage and slid himself a few steps back towards human, maintaining as heavy a coat as possible.

"Oi, Rahne," he said, lisping a little around the muzzle. "Wondered when you'd be along." He jerked his head towards Jennie, chunks of snow raining from his ruff. "She started it, I assure you."

Jennie's indignant yelp carried shades of "I did not!!" but as such, she was stuck to only canine vocal cords. If she had been able, she would have stuck her tongue out at Marius. The wrestling she could accept as fair payback, but the shifting back was just being petty.

Marius rolled his eyes, correctly interpreting the tone despite its lack of words. "An' what do you call sneakin' into my room at an unholy hour with the express intent of awakening me in the most jarring manner possible? This thrashin' you've brought purely upon yourself. Let this be a lesson in what comes of usin' your canine powers for evil."

Rahne shook her head and shifted back barely far enough to talk. "Aye, I remember teaching you that too," she said teasingly, sending a small shower of snow in his general direction with a swipe of her tail. She lowered her muzzle to touch noses briefly with Jennie. "I'll not talk about how long it took me to quit tripping over my extra feet." Technically she'd managed to run within the first few minutes, but it hadn't been particularly graceful. "So... want to play?" She shifted back and her ears pricked up, tail wagging, her body as a whole repeating the question.

Jennie's tail wagged in response, and she barked. The look she gave Marius had shades of she likes me better, and circled Rahne. What she really wanted to do was see how fast she could now run.

Marius gave another doggie grin. "Believe I'll leave you two ladies to it, then -- must be off. Floors to clean, shelves to stock an' that." He put his arms out in front of him and stretched, dog-like, and slowly shifting as he finished with, "No losin' an eye now."

Tail swishing, the now-full wolf turned tail and trotted off through the snow.

Rahne lolled her tongue out and shook herself, laughing as he departed. Then she nosed Jennie again, stretched, and lifted her muzzle toward the wind. Shall we go?

We shall! Later, she would try to come up with sufficient vengeance for the butt-kicking. It may seem like a never-ending cycle to an outside observer, but it kept Jennie from getting bored.

She wagged her tail and then with a backward glance at Rahne, she took off at a leisurely run, waiting for the older girl to catch up and then trying to keep pace. Once she got over the inital weirdness of muscles moving in strange ways, she relaxed into the run, bounding in and out of snow drifts when they came upon them.

Running through snow always gave Rahne a slight pang of homesickness, not for Scotland but for Asgard and Hrimhari's pack, where she had spent quite a lot of time doing just that. She'd been pretty well run off her feet at first, until both her technique and her endurance had built up to the point she could keep up with the pack -- if not the frontrunners of it -- for hours. Relative to that, she was always going to be a little bit out of shape back home just because she didn't have time to spend the entire day running.

But it was still really nice when she got the chance. She jumped over the first few snowdrifts out of habit, then deliberately plowed into the next deep one, getting a mouthful of snow and half-burying herself.

Jennie crashed headfirst into her next snowdrift, emerging caked in snow and shaking herself vigorously. She was beginning to adjust to her smell and hearing, compensating for her eyesight. The color-blindedness had taken a while to get used to, but now she was discovering that she really didn't need it when she could smell everything. The world itself was muted due to the snow, but her nose was telling her that there were charming woodland critters nearby. They didn't smell bad exactly, and they didn't smell good either. Just there. Jennie's body was that of a dog, but her mind and instincts were still fully human.

Rahne had developed a taste for hunting, but she wasn't hungry right now, either. She smelled the creatures too and went quiet as she cleared out of the drift. At least two rabbits, probably wary of the noise but not yet panicked. A squirrel, a bit farther off. Even if you weren't going to eat them, it was fun to sneak up and just watch them sometimes.

Jennie followed Rahne's lead, crouching low to the ground and moving slowly as possibly. She was still much clumsier than Rahne, as the older girl moved with a grace that Jennie would have envied even if she still had her own body. Jennie stepped into a snowdrift and plunged halfway up to her shoulder, stumbling. The rabbits had the sense to flee. But the squirrel was still far enough away that he did not sense anything. Jennie cast an apologetic look at Rahne.

Rahne wagged her tail in a friendly way -- it wasn't anything to worry about -- and chose a more stable route toward the squirrel.

They came within bare feet without mishap, almost close enough to snatch him up or touch the fluffy tail if they'd wanted. Rahne lowered herself gently to the snow, glancing back cheerfully at Jennie. The squirrel dug three holes, chittering a bit unhappily, and finally came up with a nut on the fourth.

Then the wind shifted, not blowing from them but carrying a whiff of Marius from the near distance, and the squirrel straightened up and hastily sprang for the tree.

Jennie sighed. That boy ruins all of my fun. She looked over at Rahne and gestured with a jerk of her head, and then set off into the woods proper, where she was sure there would be a great many other things to explore.