Title-- The Paths We Take
Rating and Warnings-- PG-13 for violence and gore.
Species and Characters-- Species = Korat. Characters, all whites, are pack leader Figi, her mate Reri, Figi's brother Foru, Figi's and Foru's mother Ejigi (who is not in the little pack, but a nearby loner), and Ashiki, a random male in the pack.
Summary and Notes-- I just... wanted to get closer to whites, and I'd never written anything in detail about their arctic cultures, although that's why whites are temperamentally how they are as a stereotype. So, this is the result, and I really like it. Warning--it's long and will be continued.


"I've never seen one that big," a gravelly voice hissed in an awed tone. "We'll need mri'mai to help us." A rustle of fur sounded just like the shifting of soft snow--and then the predator was backtracking in a mile-eating lope, blending seamlessly with the purity of the arctic landscape.

"Mri'lei! Mri'fre! Ashiki!" The summons echoed against icy slopes and towering fifty-foot drifts as the white Korat stopped in a spray of loose snow. The first to respond to the pack leader's call was Ashiki, the oldest of the group but still in the early prime of his life--the blued male levered himself upright from where he'd been dozing and trotted over, long and tapering ears erect and sienna eyes twinkling. "We hunt, mri'nohs?" the big male rumbled, eyeing the four-inch-shorter femme speculatively. "There hasn't been prey on the ice for days."

"It's a snowalker. Huge. We'll need Ejigi to help us bring it down." Figi paused and drew a breath, shifting her weight, pawpads immune to the biting cold of the ice. "RERI! FORU!" she roared, ears flattening briefly as her voice bellowed through sparkling white valleys. "Where the fires are they?" she muttered under her breath, flicking her ears upright to listen for a response. The shift of snow as Ashiki moved for no reason earned him a sidelong glower, but he ignored her impatience with a good-natured grin and half-lidded eyes that artfully concealed a sparkle of amusement.

Then, a fast-moving silver body collided with the pack leader in a flurry of teeth and claws, and she went crashing into the side of a drift, half of the twenty-foot pile cascading down on her as her attacker leapt backwards to avoid the deluge.

Ashiki smacked Reri on the head with the flat of his tailblade, though the older male was laughing. "She'll kill you for that, mri'fao," the blue-tinged male grinned. "I know," the young adult acknowledged, prancing side to side in anticipation of his mate's counterattack--it would come as soon as she dug herself out of the small avalanche he'd knocked her into. Indignant roars were muffled by the thick, soft snow.

Both males suddenly swung their muzzles about, twin pairs of ears pricked and still as the sound of movement approached the little valley. A dull ivory face appeared past the icy walls and Reri grinned at his mate's brother, trotting forward to greet li'fao with the simple confidence that Figi wouldn't yet be able to escape her snowy trap. Towering Foru's suddenly round eyes and frozen half-step should have warned him, but Reri had barely cocked his head in question by the time the pack leader smashed into his shoulder and sent him crashing into the wall of ice. He slipped and crumpled at its base, the wind knocked out of him and a new tender spot on the shoulder that hit the ice. One more bruise with the rest, and he was laughing as he scrabbled upright. Foru and Ashiki exchanged the-things-we-have-to-put-up-with glances and shook their heads, Figi grinning vengefully between the two males.

Reri approached his mate and nuzzled her lightly and she nipped him, still aggressively playful after being ambushed, before turning to the other two and addressing her small pack as a whole. "There's a snowalker out there. Enough food to last two silver-moons, if we're good about it." The surprised look in her mate's and brother's gazes was pleasing, and she drew herself up an extra inch in pride--then glanced to Ashiki. "Run and tell mri'mai that we need her for a hunt. Even if she continues to feed off it after we bury it, it'll still last us a silver-moon and a half."

"Snowalkers," Foru suddenly interrupted, his voice owning the tones of revelation, "travel in loose herds. This is the only one you saw, right?" He continued as Figi nodded, "Then it's a scout for the herd. And it must be a new herd, because the last left three silver-moons ago." The brief expressions of grumpy acknowledgement around the pack almost made him grin--there was no meat as rich and nourishing as snowalker flesh, and no other arctic beasts grew as large and could sustain the pack for as long from one lone kill. "A new herd... means..." Wood-brown eyes pointedly looked from his sister to her mate--the white femme was suddenly grinning madly, but Reri was half a step behind in his thoughts.

"Cubs, you dolt!" Ashiki announced with a laugh, thumping the silvery male on his non-bruised shoulder with the flat of his pale grey tailblade. "It means the pack can support cubs."

Reri's jaw dropped and he fixed a half-delighted, half-alarmed stare on his mate. "You mean...?" he started, before realizing that there was no possible way he could have mistaken Ashiki's typically to-the-point words. "Oh, Ghrayu," Reri whispered and sat down very hard, very suddenly. Figi couldn't contain her laughter anymore and roared with mirth, pretty gold eyes crinkled shut. Again, Foru and Ashiki exchanged glances, but this time they were joyful ones--if a little amused, on Ashiki's part, at Reri's reaction.

"Relax, mri'fre," Foru said companionably to his sister's mate. "You have to hold this kind of reaction to when she tells you she's pregnant for sure."

If Reri could have paled, he would have.

This time, Ashiki joined Figi in her laughter, and Foru face-pawed, embarrassed for Reri's sake. They were all still young adults, and though Figi and Reri had been mates for about four years, they hadn't had a chance to have cubs--moving out of their birthpack and establishing their own tiny pack had been of paramount importance, and since then, there had been no certainty of a food supply until now--and Ghrayu scorch those who would gamble the lives of cubs on chance. "Ejigi will have to stay with the pack for a little while, when Figi is cub-heavy and when she is nursing," Ashiki mused, swift and sure paws already carrying him towards the lone female's faintly-marked territory, far on the ice. "I'll return with her," he added over his shoulder in a slightly louder voice before leaning easily into a fast, hard run.

Foru looked over the heads of his sister and her mate, being the biggest white at a towering six and a half feet at the shoulder, to watch Ashiki run. The blued male was beautiful, silky fur and powerful muscles flowing in unison to power his strong body up the sloping drifts and over them, cresting the hills only to disappear on the other side. He tried to ignore the hushed, excited whispers that pass between li'sou and the male he had come to call his brother--instead, he focused on the more immediate demands of his mind. When Ashiki returned with li'mai, they would hunt the snowalker. It would be a gamble, even so--if the herd was too far behind, they wouldn't follow all the way into the pack's hunting grounds, and all the talk of cubs would be for naught. But the smaller beasts of the tundra weren't sufficient for a pack of Korats to be truly healthy--they could do little more than barely survive on such lean meat and wasting fat.

"Mri'fre?" Figi reached up and nuzzled her brother's strong muzzle, gold eyes soft. "The snowalker had circled the area many times. Its tracks and scent were everywhere. The herd won't be far behind it--a day or two at most. It's huge and healthy, but it's old--the herd knows it's a lost cause. When we take it down, the herd will still come, even more secure because we'll have a food supply for a few moons."

"You're trying to convince me that it's not as much as a gamble as I think it is." Foru grinned and bent to rustle his sister's neckruff. "Did I say even one word of caution, mri'sou?"

Figi laughed. "No, but your thoughts are loud to one who listens, brother mine. Ashiki won't be back with Ejigi for another while. We should rest up." Reri was next to her, shoulder to shoulder, both of them good healthy Korats at six feet tall, well-muscled with a layer of insulating blubber just under their black skin and dense pelts--and Foru grinned down at them. He had sometimes wondered if his sister's mismatched pack would survive, but it seemed that their first break had come in with the snowalker.

"Aye, mri'sou. Sleep isn't an unwelcome idea." The ivory-furred male followed the smaller whites, Figi slightly in the lead as she always was, to where Ashiki had dozed pelash earlier. The other male's scent was rich and calm, and Foru felt his sense of apprehension ease. Ashiki had no link, either in matehood or in blood, to anyone else in the pack--he hadn't been in their birthpack, either. He was fresh from the wilds, born in a different pack perhaps entire glaciers away and cast out as the rest of his litter. It made sense, sometimes, the whites' way of choosing who stayed and who left to spread genes--the pick of the litter, the one strongest and smartest and healthiest, stayed to further the birthpack. It had been Figi's and Foru's sister, Fumi, to stay--the other two had left upon reaching adulthood, following their nomadic mother into the white wilderness. Figi had met Reri during one of their brief stays in other packs, and the two had courted with a haste that older whites had frowned upon, and when the siblings left to wander on, Reri had joined them. Then Ashiki... Ashiki had shown up one morning and said--blizzards, Foru would never forget--he had said, botsa ze cha, mri'fa. Looks like you have a fine little pack starting here. Mind if I hunt with you? And he had proven himself to be a far better hunter than any of the younger Korats.

"Foru? Your eyes are going to freeze in their sockets if you don't blink." Reri was grinning up at the big male, curled in a niche in the snow with Figi reclining against him, and Foru blinked, the surface of his eyes cold against the insides of his eyelids. Without another word, he lay down, settling next to Reri and curling into a ball so tight that he could rest his long muzzle on his haunch. His train of memory-thought was broken, all that was left of his flashback an image of Ashiki in that first hunt, so-white snow flying around him in a graceful leap, grey tailblade all that was stained brilliant scarlet.

Foru closed his eyes and urged his mind to slow and sleep.

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Ashiki's steps had turned quiet and cautious. A new scent was in the air, not one he recognized from all his years of living on the ice, and his nostrils were as wide as his eyes were watchful--a new scent might mean new prey. Or, it might mean one of the northern Lavanians from more temperate climes had wandered too far south and gotten lost among the mind-freezing glaciers and drifts. It could be a starving beast or fresh meat--either way, the blued male was wary.

Huge, storm-grey claws digging pits in the snow-dusted ice with each silent stride, the Korat proceeded, crossing the unmarked border onto Ejigi's hunting grounds. The scent was aimless and unformed, no track to give him a clue to the creature's size or disposition, and no direction or obvious source of the smell that floated just above the ice. Ashiki's broad black nose was inches above the ground, his eyes flicking about him and ears twitching with each shift of snow in a nearby drift--nervous he was not, although he knew that any of the younger whites in his pack would have been bristling and wide-eyed by now. He had no indication of whether or not the source of the scent was even within miles of here--but the fur along his spine was beginning to rise, and he hadn't survived for years as a loner by ignoring his instincts and intuition. The powerful male edged along the bottom of the sheer glacier face, slipping into icy shadows that were just blue enough to hide his tinted fur perfectly, and watched the scope of the tundra in still silence.

There it was, a dark splot against the white, moving with an awkward but seemingly efficient gait. Even his keen vision couldn't make out the details, other than the fact that the beast was probably a foot shorter than him at the shoulder and moving as a quadruped, and moving swiftly. It was headed towards his pack, but he ignored that as coincidence--the thing might have run into Ejigi and been chased away, if the older femme was feeling particularly aggressive. She had her days, just like her daughter.

Despite the strong, clean-cut sweep of the wind, the strange scent was just as vague and blurred as it had been when Ashiki first found it, and the white stared upwind to the dark beast with some confusion and more wariness. The wind was right--he should have caught an exceedingly strong, mostly undiluted whiff by now. His long muzzle tensed, tightened, pale lips pulling back to reveal unusually long fangs in a silent grimace, though the rest of him stayed immobile. He didn't like this at all.

There was the tiniest scrape of claws on ice, and the white had shot forward in a fast lunge--whirled and faced his previous spot with a cold snarl ringing out--ducked a slice from dark talons and backpedaled on the raw ice. His attacker pressed forward, joined by two others of the strange species, so intent on laying open his pale hide that it didn't notice that Ashiki was baiting them where no snow gave traction. The first beast slipped and then the other two froze, no longer moving forward, and the white grinned with no humor in the expression.

They were dark-furred, mostly black with some smears of charcoal grey or soil-brown, and stocky quadrupeds with a mostly-feline body. Their forelimbs were thickly-muscled with huge paws and wickedly curving talons, but their hind legs were built more normally, slender and long with small paws and long, almost delicate-looking toes and sharp, small claws. They had plumed tails that curved up over their sloping back and broad cattish faces with long fangs--and Ashiki had never even imagined anything like them before. But, though they didn't seem to like the idea of walking on raw ice, the cold didn't seem to bother them, despite the apparent shortness of their fur.

Now that he had taken the visual measure of his opponents and regained control of the situation, Ashiki felt calm, sure-footed on the ice as he raised his powerful tail and drew himself to his full height of six feet and three inches, towering over the five-foot beasts. "Who are you to attack a hunter on his own grounds?" he thundered, voice pitched just between a snarl and a roar, loud enough to echo impressively without bringing any snow down on his skull. (It hadn't taken long for him to learn not to bellow when near a drift--that lesson had been learned in adolescence and never forgotten.)

The dark creatures snarled resentfully, gold eyes glittering as the hind two began to slowly move backwards, the first one--all four paws on snowless ice--motionless and seeming to carefully balance itself. Ashiki flattened his ears, then lifted them again and angled them backwards--there had been a fourth creature, after all, and though he doubted it would cross the expanse of raw ice to reach him, he would not be taken unawares again. And the three beasts that faced him would prove to be a challenge, should they decide to charge him--should they prove as sure-footed as he on this ice, in any case.

The first creature suddenly lunged, massive foreclaws and razor-sharp hindclaws providing plenty of traction, and Ashiki snarled as its comrades sprang forward as well, all pretense of nervousness gone. Muzzle parting and lips curling high in a full-fledged snarl of defensive rage, the white Korat reared onto his hind legs briefly--towering over twelve feet--before bringing his weight and his claws crashing down on the first beast's upturned face and chest as it reared to meet him. His jaws sought its neck, but before they could close and snap its spine, the other two beasts were ripping through his dense fur and tearing furrows in his flanks and shoulders with those huge foreclaws and their powerful forelimbs. Fresh scarlet blood spattered the ice and made it slick, and Ashiki slipped as he scrambled backwards, away from the three-pronged attack--and then there was a sudden pain in his haunch. The fourth creature hooked both talons into his leg and clung, preventing him from any retreat at all, and the other three advanced swiftly.

The blood-spattered Korat threw his muzzle to the sky and bellowed as loudly as he could, the realization of just how badly he was outmatched hitting him as hard as his enemies.

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The faint, rumbling echoes of a Koratian cry drew Foru to his paws in a hair-triggered instant, his eyes wide and ears erect and quivering. "That was Ashiki!" he snarled, awakening the sleeping mates at his side. He barely glanced down, meeting his sister's groggy eyes for a bare instant before lunging forward, sturdy paws pummeling the frozen ground in a fast gallop. He heard Reri call his name, and he heard his sister order him to wait for them, saying something about not splitting up the pack in a dangerous situation--but all he could think about was the pain he had heard in Ashiki's proud voice. Never before had he heard the blued male cry for help.

Ashiki's scent was full in his nostrils, so thick he could almost taste the older male, and Ashiki's voice was still ringing in his ears as Foru followed the trail his packmate had left. For all his hunting skill, Ashiki was not one of the faster whites--either in running or in battle--and Foru's long legs and urgency lent him plenty of headway to catch up to the other Korat. From the sound of it, Ashiki had just reached li'mai's hunting grounds--Foru could reach the area in ten pelash of running at top speed, though it had taken the other white about an hour of easy loping to traverse. Ejigi might be nearby, and if she was, she would come to Ashiki's aid as well, perhaps more quickly than even Foru--but for the life of him, the ivory male couldn't imagine what could present such a threat to Ashiki that he would need help. Intelligent and cunning, Ashiki knew how to avoid or outwit anything that might do him damage.

Then, there was an alien scent in the chill breeze, and Foru's features solidified into a black scowl. Along the same wind rode the smell of Koratian blood, and so help the beast that had drawn that blood when Foru found it. His paws were still pounding the snow-covered path, spraying snow and obscuring Ashiki's own pawprints, when he passed through the slight valley that led to his mother's hunting grounds--a massive, ice-wall-rimmed glacier. He saw Ashiki, a mass of blued white and scarlet, and three dark beasts surrounding him, a fourth creature slumped in a pool of purplish blood a leap away. They were on raw ice, and Foru dug black claws into the glassy surface as he powered towards the battle.

One of the black creatures turned towards him, seemingly slowly, a snarl on its feline face and blood soaking its jaws and massive talons--Foru crashed into it, still moving easily at over a hundred miles per hour, and sent the much-smaller beast sliding and spinning helplessly for leaps across the ice. Plunging his heavy tailblade as well as all his claws into the ice, the big Korat dropped one shoulder and kicked the opposite hind leg and had spun in a spray of ice chips and was galloping back towards Ashiki before the other two creatures realized they had a problem. A very large problem, wrapped in ivory fur and wielding claws, teeth, and blade with an expertise born of anger.

Ashiki lifted his less-wounded hind leg, leaning hard to his other side, and kicked out to shove the closer of the two attackers away from him. He slumped into a half-crouch before forcing himself up, sidestepping away from the battle, feeling the chill of the air crystalize his blood in his thick fur, steam engulfing him and pouring from the deep gashes that were bleeding his body dry. He stumbled, slipping on the blood-slick ice, and raised his muzzle in time to see on of the creatures attempt a lunge towards him--only, Foru unlocked his neck, gaping jaws shooting forward four feet with the speed and power of a striking serpent to close on the black beast's skull, crushing it as he jerked his neck back to its typical furled position. The massive white snarled and shook the corpse, gore spraying from his muzzle as its head splattered and came loose, the body falling to the stained ice with half its skull still in the Korat's jaws--then, spitting out the rest of the bone shards, Foru's normally equable brown eyes locked onto the last creature with deadly intensity.

It hissed and reared up, awkward on its slender hind legs, to fully wield its powerful forearms and wicked talons--and then Ashiki caught sight of the other beast, the one Foru had first knocked sliding, charging from behind. The blued male snarled, his own blood tainting his tongue with the noise, and sprang well enough to reach out a forehand and trip up the charging beast. Foru whirled as both creatures charged him, a slow and delayed charge but still an effective maneuver, and Ashiki pulled himself up in a last-ditch attempt to help--

Only to watch, wide-eyed, as gentle Foru tore one beast's throat to bloody ribbons while plunging his triangular tailblade into the other's skull with a sickening, wet crunch. The big male shook the carcass from his tail and dropped the other from his jaws, turning to glance back at the way he'd come as Figi and Reri finally reached the edge of the ice, tails high and lips curled as they galloped towards their comrades.

"Ashiki." Foru's voice was rough as he approached the crouched male; the tall white lowered himself next to his packmate, pressing his flank against Ashiki's in an attempt to warm and suppress the blood loss. "How badly are you hurt?" He waited, but the blued male didn't answer, breathing shallowly and quickly, eyes closed and muzzle angled between his forehands. Foru growled, deep and soft in his throat, and used his tail and muzzle to gather the smaller white closer, shielding Ashiki from the harshness of the cold air that would suck his life away with no regret.

"Ashiki! Foru!" Figi's voice was sharp and worried--Reri was investigating the corpses, slicing through a few in dissatisfying revenge, as the pack leader approached the two fighters. "Foru, you aren't hurt, are you?" she asked first, glancing at her brother--but the so-red blood staining his ivory pelt was not his, her nose told her, and his slight nod only confirmed what she already knew. "Ashiki," she murmured, kneeling to place her muzzle alongside the wounded male's own. "Ashiki, talk to us. Ashiki, lights bless, talk to us." Reri stifled a surprised growl behind them.

"Get him off the ice," a new voice ordered, and Figi glanced up to see her mother in all her mist-furred beauty, standing tall and proud and wild before them all with the grace and danger of a true huntress. Ejigi, for all her years as a loner, still spoke with the force of a tried-and-true pack leader. "I have a den nearby, a few miles across the ice. If he can make it there, h--"

"He can make it," Foru snapped, seemingly oblivious to his mother's dominance and control of the situation. Ashiki, however, didn't respond, though he had to have been conscious yet, so the bigger male slowly slid one foreleg, and then one hind leg, under the wounded Korat's torso. Figi stepped up without a word, helping slide Ashiki onto Foru's broad back, the gurgle of seeping blood and the tiny rips of pulled fur loud in the sudden silence. Once his packmate was secure and balanced, Foru slowly straightened his legs, straining against the weight of a full-grown white Korat--only once he had stood fully did he looked askance to his mother.

Pride, fierce and strong, was in her jade green eyes as she met her son's gaze. "This way," she intoned, turning and setting off at a brisk trot across the ice, small shards scattering under her claws with each footfall. His sister on one side and her mate on the other, Foru followed.

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Ashiki opened his eyes, wondering when he let them close. There were the scents of his pack all around him, warm and comforting, and the scent of food--food he'd be glad to devour, meat from his attackers' carcasses. His entire body throbbed, but as he began to take stock of himself--still motionless and silent--he realized that his wounds and his pelt had been thoroughly cleaned, and the gashes had already begun to knit seamlessly. Someone had tended him with single-minded devotion to boost his healing system so much, so soon, and as his gaze focused and he glanced next to him, his caretaker dropped an ivory muzzle to nuzzle him lightly. "Feeling better, mri'fao?" Foru asked quietly, all the gentleness and softness that was typical to his demeanor back in his face and voice.

"Aye," Ashiki affirmed, lifting his head from his weary paws--snows, his toes ached from cleaving through hardened flesh. He never felt this sore after a hunt, even a hard or unsuccessful one. "Stiff, sore, but alive." The blue-tinged male awarded Foru with a grateful smile. "Thanks, mri'fao." Two pairs of brown eyes met in understanding, then broke off as Figi poked her muzzle over her brother's hulking shoulders.

"Glad to know you're alive," she grumped, worry making her sound a bit more caustic than she intended. "You'd better heal quickly, 'cause we still have a hunt to plan," she added in a slightly lighter tone, a half-grin quirking her muzzle. Ashiki chuckled quietly, far from his usual loud laughter, and the young pack leader tightened her lips in a frown. "Reri and mri'mai are out scouting around, making sure there aren't any more of those things." Her voice lightened and she grinned wickedly. "Hungry? We brought some with us."

"Food would do me good, I think," Ashiki agreed, his voice soft; he saw Foru's concerned look out of the corner of his eyes as he watched Figi drag a hunk of dark meat towards him. "They're chewy but edible," she commented, almost cheerful as she dropped the chunk of flesh on his forehands with a thump. "Still warm," he commented, lowering his muzzle to gnaw cautiously at the fresh meat.

"You were only out an hour or so," Foru murmured, dark eyes intent on his packmate. Ashiki nodded, eyes half-lidded and body forcedly relaxed as his attention was directed towards masticating. After he had chewed his meal into several warm, pulpy mouthfuls and managed to swallow without gagging on the dry taste, the blued male glanced back up. Figi was laying regally in the entrance to the den, a few leaps away, and neither Reri nor Ejigi had returned yet. Foru was still comfortably close, providing the necessary body-warmth to protect Ashiki's wounds from frostbite and gangrene, and the smaller white shifted to lean against his packmate.

Figi glanced over her shoulder when she heard purring, then grinned and faced front again. If Foru and Ashiki became 'lai, it would draw their little pack even closer--a necessary web of relationships to support the lives of her future cubs.