︴▹ falcon 🍀

In a southern pack of prairie and desert scrubland hunters, a litter of five pups was born. Like many wolves in the pack, all of them had fairly plain coats, ranging from pale brown to golden-brown. Some had paler bellies or darker patches on their backs, but overall they were all quite similar. Their mother, Hare Foot, was proud of her litter, and so was their father, Eagle Fang. The pups had been born in late spring, and they were all strong and healthy; they would be good hunters and scouts one day.

When the puppies became adolescents, however, one of the puppies started to stand out – and not in a good way. This puppy had been named Falcon, and he wasn't good at much at all. He seemed to have the makings of a chaser with his lean build, long limbs, and constant energy, but all his energy went into being annoying instead of actually trying to learn for his planned future role.

Even the northern fringes of the desert were a harsh environment, and though the pack had flourished in the spring and early summer, the scorching heat of mid-summer had taken its toll on them, and even now in the later days of autumn they were struggling. Winter, the mild season in the desert regions, was approaching, but the pack had no time for failure or mischief. Falcon got a harsh scolding and was warned that if he didn't start trying, the pack would sell him to an allied pack in a gentler climate.

But Falcon still didn't listen, and the next thing he knew he was being taken to the Blue Grass Hill Pack that lived on the prairie-grassland border. This pack lived in a much easier climate, but they still didn't tolerate misbehavior. Falcon stayed there for all of two months before, at the age of only nine months, he ran away in the night and vanished into the western grasslands.

He spent the next three months, most of spring, hiding in the western grasslands and mountain foothills, getting food mainly by stealing from other packs. During this time, he became more resourceful and less lazy; if he tried stealing food too slowly, he was caught. So he started to become much faster and more agile - ironically becoming an ideal chaser, which was exactly the fate he had run away from.

Summer came and Falcon started to struggle more and more with his food-stealing endeavours. The grass had become dry and short and it was too hard to sneak up, even though his tawny coat blended in. He decided to try his luck in the mountains, hoping that he would be able to hide more successfully with denser coverage of rocks and trees. Anyway, the days were hot and the nights mild at their coldest, so he imagined the mountains would be both much more habitable than they would be at other times of year, and a welcome relief from the heat.

Falcon was lucky in that his guesses were true - the mountains were a better place for him to steal food and blend in, along with being quite mild overall. All throughout the rest of summer and autumn, Falcon stayed there, ranging throughout the mountains in his constant search for food. But as the start of winter drew near, in the final days of autumn, Falcon's luck ran out.

It had been cold for the past few days, and when Falcon awoke that evening, he was surprised to see a thick layer of snow covering most of the ground. He was quite high up at that point, and his thin coat was very unhelpful in such cold weather, so he had been planning to head down the mountain sometime that day anyway. He set off, hoping to be down in the foothills before the following evening, but he was met with a very unwelcome surprise when he got to the bottom of a narrow gorge running down the mountain and found it entirely blocked off with snow. It was clear that he wouldn't be able to get through.

He backtracked and found a narrow crevice that split off from the main gorge. Following it, he managed to get out of the gorge, but found himself in an unfamiliar part of the mountains, on steep and treacherous slopes. He couldn't see any other option, so he set off down the mountainside, trying to reach a promising-looking valley that he saw far below him.

Dusk was falling and Falcon still hadn't reached the bottom. He had been travelling for an entire day through the snow now, and he was exhausted, cold, and hungry. Then, as he neared the valley, disaster struck. The snow suddenly gave way below him and he found himself falling from another ledge, higher than the previous ones. He landed badly on hard snow, and when he tried to get up, he found that his foreleg was badly injured, and he could barely put weight on it. He was now in the valley, but not in a very good state.

Falcon limped down the gentle slope that remained and managed to make his way into the shelter of a pine forest before collapsing, exhausted, where he immediately fell asleep. He was awoken a few hours later by a wolf standing in front of him, a dark-furred female with paler elbows. She stared at him and then asked, "Are you hurt?"

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Falcon looked down at the excited puppies sitting by his paws with a smile. "So I said yes," he continued his story, "and she took me back to the pack. Lichen, who was the herbaist at the time, helped to fix up my paw, and then when it was all better I decided to become a chaser for the pack."

"Really?" one of the pups, Grey Hare, asked. He looked up at Falcon with wide eyes. "So you're one of the very first wolves to join?"

Falcon chuckled. "Not quite, I'm afraid. But I was definitely an earlier member of the pack."

Muddy Shadow, who had been thinking hard about the story, suddenly asked, "The wolf who found you, who was she? I've never seen a wolf like that."

"Her name was Nightjar," Falcon replied. "She was our first scout."

"But she's not here now?" asked Quick Dragonfly. He flattened his ears, confused.

Falcon smiled sadly. "I'm afraid not. She joined the ancestors… a few years ago, now, I think. She was a wonderful scout."

"Oh," said Quick Dragonfly. He looked a bit ashamed for asking.

"Don't worry about it," Falcon said quickly, not wanting to upset the pup. "Anyway," he added, "I think it's about time that you pups went to sleep. It's nearly night."