Even before he was born, the pack looked upon his mother's litter with much anticipation. His mother, Watchful Basil, was the swiftest chaser in the entirety of the pack -- not to say anything of his grandmother, Foxglove, who was both a founding member of Cyclone Pack as well as an extraordinarily talented herbalist. By the time he and his brother inhaled fresh air for the very first time, the pack had their expectations on them.
Named Beetle for his peculiar black eyes, the young male was always quite aware of the curious gazes that would linger on him and his brother Badger as they squabbled and played in the Nursery. However, when Badger began to show an interest in their Grandmother's art, Beetle found himself alone under the combined scrutiny of the pack. It was only in the company of the old Pathfinder did he find himself breathing easy, relaxing under her milky sightless eyes.
It was with the Pathfinder that he kept company when his mother left on her hunting excursions, and though the sightless hound could not teach him much, she told him tale after tale of the travels she'd been on- the things in the world she'd seen. Trees, she said, that tops brushed against the clouds. Bears with great white pelts and fangs the length of his head! He would come to treasure this time with Shasta; listening to her dry humor and thrilling stories even through her ailing health.
And then he met a Goddess.
The Goddess.
Sky Strider, in all of her glory, pawsteps as silent as falling snow as she made her way gracefully into the camp one early morning. He remembered her avidly; she had come on the day he was to be assigned into a hunting team, the dawn of his twelfth moon. He had woken early, and when he had first laid eyes upon the wolf with a pelt that bled into the warmth of the early morning sky, he had felt his stomach shift. He'd wanted to look away, but he found himself unable to; her beauty magnetic.
Her voice was soft as summer rain as she spoke to the Pathfinder, the old hound hardly half the Goddess' size but uncowering as she listened attentively. They would leave that afternoon, the Pathfinder announced later that day with the Goddess sitting patiently at her side. They would go to war. Every wolf of age would join them; Beetle would learn to kill before he would learn to hunt.
In the end, he could not recall much from the battlefield. Only that one moment, the world was chaos; blood roaring in his ears as he bit and clawed and shoved against the bodies around him- and in the next, the world was still and they were gathering and burying their dead. Among them, Shasta.
Her replacement repulsed him. Where the old she-wolf had been brave and self assured, Pondhawk hesitated. It was a sentiment shared among many in the pack as they watched as the new Pathfinder stuttered nervously over his words and shifted on his paws; the only time he showed any amount of competence being the battlefield. Regardless, it was Pondhawk who would bestow upon him his secondary name: Red, he'd said, for the way his pelt dripped with blood whenever he returned from a hunt.
If it was Pondhawk he imagined whenever he tore into an elk, the Pathfinder didn't need to know.
As things settled down, Red Beetle found his hatred for the new Pathfinder slowly fading; recognizing the grief and anger for what it was. He missed Shasta, he missed her desperately. Cyclone felt different without her to lead it; without her easy cadence and sly wit to brighten the rain-songs. His heart grew weary even as he faithfully served his pack; his world fading to a dull blur around him. It was only upon the arrival of a stranger did he feel his world come back into focus as he listened to the huntress' - Thaulka's - tale.
She had come from a pack diluted in illness; suffering and desperate as sickness after sickness seemed to follow them. She bid that none return the way she came, but as he listened to her, he felt something inside of him began to awaken. A part of him he had long thought dead; he could help them, he knew he could. He was not his Grandmother, nor his brother, but he was a hunter. He could help keep them fed as they recovered, could fetch the herbs they needed on his journeys as he often did for Badger Bite. He knew what he had to do.
Bidding farewell to his mother and his brother, Red Beetle set out to discover the world the Pathfinder had once told him of.
