Saturn

Founding Member of The Sanctuary Pack

Personality: The first truly wild wolf to join The Sanctuary Pack, Saturn serves as a vital guide to her packmates, teaching them how to survive in the wilderness. Unrelentingly good-natured, she gets along with almost everyone, but avoids pups when she can-- they make her uneasy. Although friendly with Seven and Rover, she shares a special bond with Finch, the pack's breeding male. If he can get over his awkwardness, the two of them might end up more than friends.

Naming Convention: Space-themed, 6th generation

Saturn was born into the Oaktree Pack, in rich lowland forests. The game had been plentiful, the hunting easy, the pack friendly. She'd stuck with them as long as she could. 

Four litters came and went after hers; all of her litter mates had long departed to find packs of their own. The den become cramped, with her still in it. The younger pups began to crowd her out: crying newborns and clumsy puppies and awkward teenagers.

Her parents hinted she should follow her litter mates- Saturn ignored them. Then they goaded--  Saturn ignored that, too. She liked her life with the Oaktree Pack.

At last, the eldest of her younger sisters- Polaris- challenged Saturn for her place, bristling and snarling; an aggressive display completely alien in the peaceful pack. Saturn looked to her parents for help, baffled. They looked away.

Saturn- never an enthusiastic fighter, even in play- couldn't put up much of a defence. Eventually, badly wounded, she was forced to flee her birth pack, and wandered alone for a time. She met with Pack Leader Seven in the teeth of  a torrential rainstorm. Seven offered her shelter, and listened to her sad story with a look of understanding. 

She said that, until recently, she had been alone too-- but not anymore. And, she said, Saturn didn't have to be alone, either: she could come to Sanctuary. 

Settled with her new pack, Saturn finds herself in an unfamiliar position of importance: no longer the hanger-on, her knowledge of the Wild is vital to her packmates. Without her knowledge of herbs, the Sanctuary wolves would be helpless against injury and illness. The responsibility is daunting-- but the opportunity it represents might just be worth the risk.

Over the years:

Saturn became mates with Finch, having a litter with him and bearing Dace and Grayling, the pack's first pups.

This unplanned litter strained Finch and Saturn's relationship as Saturn- who was driven out of her birth pack by pups- was uneasy around young wolves. She grew estranged with her mate and her pups, and broke off the relationship. 

When Dace and Grayling were lost in a winter storm, Saturn and Finch tracked them down, and the estranged family reconciled to a degree, finding peace, although they remained somewhat distant from one another. 

Saturn gradually grew more easy around pups, growing close with her apprentice, Eight, and later her grand-daughter Perch, who Dace left in Saturn's care frequently, being too absorbed with her own ambitions to be the pup's sole caregiver. She still didn't want pups of her own, however, and stuck with that decision for the rest of her life, never bearing another litter.

While she didn't particularly want more pups or another mate, Saturn had close ties within the pack, becoming good friends with the hunter Hat Trick, and maintaining close ties with the rest of the founding wolves of the pack-- Seven, Rover, and even Finch, once the two were distant enough from their break-up to become friend again.

Saturn also grew closer with her son, Grayling, in adulthood, as his frail health saw him sent to the healer's den frequently, and the two saw a lot of one another. She never grew close to her daughter, Dace, in the same way, and the two maintained a civil but somewhat cool relationship.

She passed from complications due to old age in the pack's third winter. Rejected and chased away by the pack of her birth, Saturn died surrounded by loved ones in the pack of her choosing, secure in their affection and her place in Sanctuary's legacy.

[Art of Saturn by Kipling #11426]