Bitter Springs

A long time ago, there was a wolf named Desert Lily – but that wolf is now dead.

Desert Lily was a part of a small traveling caravan, which primarily worked selling foreign herbs to different biomes, alongside a few other small trinkets and wares. She was barely a yearling at the time – and while Lily wasn't much of a fighter, she enjoyed her life on the road, and getting to visit all the different cultures of wolves from various packs.

She even ended up falling in love with another young caravan guard named Boone, who later became her mate. While they did not have much to their name, Lily was happy, and could have lived the rest of her life out on the road, and with her love. Until one day, tragedy struck – when their caravan were attacked by the Brokenfang pack – a highly-organized group of raiders, who proceeded to massacre the caravan guards.

All valuables small enough to be carried were taken, while everything else was destroyed. Most of the guards were killed, with a few severely wounded, and left to die in the blistering sun – including her mate. The rest of the survivors and Lily herself were forcibly dragged away by the raiders to the Quarry – a camp which sold wolves into slavery to other packs.

Lily was given the so-called "honor" of becoming the mate of Brokenfang – the leader of the raider pack, who had taken a liking to her. He doted on her with jewelry, giving her the best dens and food available, usually only reserved for their captors, and did not force her to work like most of the others. Although Lily despised Brokenfang, the other slaves believed she had aligned herself with the raiders and resented her for her special treatment – though they did not know

Despite being Brokenfang's favorite however, the raiders were not dumb – so Lily was still muzzled. She could still eat and drink, but was unable to bite or fight back against her captors. However, Lily began to formulate an alternative plan of escape.

One day, Lily begged Brokenfang to allow her to return to her duties as an herb-gatherer – as she felt guilty simply sitting by while all the other wolves worked so hard. Slightly amused, Brokenfang agreed – the Quarry always was lacking in good herbalists anyway. Although the camp was far too closely guarded to allow her to slip away, Lily quickly noticed that most of the guards in the Quarry were hired for their muscle, not their brains – and most of them could barely tell a raspberry from a holly bush.

Eventually, Lily was able to gather a small cache of datura flowers – also known as the desert thorn-apple. She began gradually slipping them into the Quarry's main water supply over the next three days. She even nibbled on a few of the petals herself, so when the whole pack quickly began to fall deathly ill, she too would show symptoms, and would be less likely to be suspected.

However, her revenge came with a terrible consequence. As the waters did not discriminate – and the mass-poisoning resulted in the deaths of not only her captors, but also the deaths of nearly every other innocent wolf and pup who had been stolen from their families, just like her.

For a time, Lily tried to convince herself that this was the only way – and surely, even death had to be a better fate than a lifetime spent in slavery. But she was never unable to overcome the guilt over what she had done.
She knew Boone was alive, and likely still searching for her – but she knew she could never return to him. After recovering from her own near-fatal poisoning, Lily believed that a part of herself had also died that day, along with all those other innocent wolves.

So after her escape, she left some fur and paw-prints by the side of a rushing river – hoping to mislead anyone who found it to believe she had swept away by the current, so Boone could at least have some closure. Finally, she left the last part of herself behind by disguising her scent and fur, and changing her name to Bitter Springs. Although Bitter Springs had changed so much since she had separated from her mate, she suspected he probably wouldn't have even recognized her anyways.

However, unlike her mate, Bitter Springs has no desire to spend the rest of her live hunting down raiders in revenge. All she wants is to just find a new life, and leave her past behind. ...As well as one can, anyways. She now lives as a lone wolf, occasionally working part time jobs with other caravans, as well as an occasional bartender at the Oasis.

While they still do not know the cause of the mass-poisoning at the Quarry, slavers who frequented the Oasis often began falling quite ill without cause. A few months later, the Quarry wolves implemented a ban on all psychoactive substances for their wolves, citing reasons of spiritual and bodily purity.