Orange

egg gladiator puppy
survived until weaning

Orange

When Decoy moved into the Satellite pack with her four newborn puppies, the first thing she announced was that she was throwing her litter into a life-or-death competition. She got quite a few strange looks after that.

However, Decoy stayed true to her word- which is how Orange's first realization was that it was cold. Very cold. She and her sisters had to survive on their own through the depths of winter, with no help from adults.

The four stuck together as they grew. Orange and her siblings were quite close- maybe because of their situation? None of them knew and none of them particularly cared, what they cared about was making it to spring.

Not all of them did.

On the day she turned one month old, Orange awoke next to only Grapefruit. She knew how strange this was. Normally they all woke up huddled in a pile to keep warm. After only a few moments of wondering, loud yapping made Orange look up and startled Grapefruit awake. Their sister, Lemon, was running back covered in bee stings. What a great  "leader of the bees".

The trio waited until noon. Lime never came back.

The pack found her lifeless body several miles downstream, washed up on the banks of a river.

Now overcome by grief, the remaining three vowed to live for her. Orange was scared. Terribly scared. Who would die next?

Throughout the weeks after Lime's death, Orange let Lemon and Grapefruit take the lead. They made the decisions and chose what to do. Neither were perfect leaders - they were puppies after all - but somehow they kept the little band of helpless pups live long enough to survive the frigid winter.

Orange never quite recovered from Lime's death. On the first day of spring, exactly two months after Lime's death, she snuck away to join the Clouded Skies pack. She didn't look back. Her only hope was that her sisters would survive too.