[althea]

@waka 

When one's diet consistent primarily of the flesh of deer and other related animals, it was problematic when said creatures were overcome with a blight of unknown origin. Especially when one had no idea how to catch smaller prey. She had lived much of her life amongst barren plains where the only animals to be found were hungry, savage wolves and the few animals they had not hunted to extinction. Like the prairie deer and the roaming bison, whose thick hides were only pierced by those with the sharpest teeth. Like her. But sharp teeth weren't the most useful when trying to catch rabbits that dove into their little warrens, beyond her grasping jaws. Even her fleet feet were no match for them when she was so unused to the uneven forest floor. If she even tried to run at a full sprint, she would trip and go flying into a nearby tree.

Thus, Althea had to turn her attention to different sources of sustenance. She didn't want to be a dead weight, relying on the work of others to get by the days. So much of her life had been focused around providing food for others, often in exchange for protection. But now, she was relying on her pack-mates (the word was unfamiliar and foreign to her thoughts) to get by. And, unfortunately, she didn't like it.

She had been so easily accepted in with little thought to the matter. In mere moments she had gone from being alone to being in a pack, something she hadn't been apart of in... so long. And the differences between her homelands and its cruel natives versus Alteron contrasted so much that Althea was in culture shock. There were not jaws snapping at her heels as she fled from punishment for not completing even the simplest of duties. No one leered at her as she walk, whispering biting words when they knew she could not respond without snapping (literally) at them. Everything was so different here. She didn't have to fight for her life, not for the time being.

Albeit, she did have to fight to hunt for food so that she didn't have to feel as if she were a burden upon those around her. Such a struggle was mostly centered around finding a new source of food and not yet catching it. She was unfamiliar with the sort of biomes that Alteron's territory was comprised of, especially the temperate forest and waterways. Fish were a new sight to the young female, having brought her wonder during the first few weeks of her stay. She was only used to the occasional creek fish, nothing more. Completely unlike the trout and salmon that she would catch flashes of when she walked along the lakebeds and riverbeds. They were foreign and intrigued her to little end, especially when she learned that some members knew how to catch them.

Frankly speaking, it was beneath her pride to find someone to teach her how to catch fish. Or to even somehow convey that she wanted to learn how. In her eyes, the only solution was to simply find out herself. And how, one might ask? Well. She was going to figure it out as she went.

Currently, she figured that perhaps it would be best if she stand in the shallows of one river, violet eyes scanning the water as she tried to keep herself from wincing at the frigid waters. Her shadow was away from the water (albeit, she didn't know that would help her endeavors) and, to her luck, she saw a flash of color beneath the small, rippling waves. Diving forward, the wolf snapped her flailing jaws at the fish to no avail, her mouth filling with nothing but water. To her surprise, the area beyond the shallows was far deeper than expected.

Unfortunate when one considered that she didn't know how to swim.

Below the surface, she gasped, flailing as chilled water filled her system. Some part of her begged her to remain calm but the choking feeling in her thought and the lack of air in her lungs was almost overwhelming. In a stroke of luck, however, one of her struggling paws found the river's bottom, kicking off so that she might find a way back into the shallows. Indeed, she did, heaving herself from the depths and struggling toward the riverbed.

There, she stood, unwilling to humiliate herself further by collapsing. She coughed up water, chest heaving as her form--its skinniness silhouetted by her soaked fur--trembled at the cold. She glared at the waters and, in her thoughts, cursed every kind of fish that ever had existed (or would exist).