Quiet. He had to be quiet…the large pup tread across the grass past the assortment of dens on unusually silent, swift paws with a flower grasped in between his teeth. Quiet was not something came to him easily. Indeed, it was close to impossible. He rarely practiced silence and with his size, he made noise. But this one time, under the cover of the night he would make it so. He carried one scar on his face from his fight with that Helidos wolf. The foreleg which had been torn had healed surprisingly well though there was still a faint scar, barely noticeable but still there. His first real fight…had been with a healer. Icarus snorted but he had grudging respect for the other wolf, even if he was part of Helidos. A fighter was a fighter. He had not fought with any of the other pups though. Icarus was a big wolf. Muscular for his age. He had confidence in his abilities but he was not a show-off. A boastful wolf for he found that pointless. A waste of his time. What did he prove by showing off? By spouting bravado? Actions proved more than words. If a wolf could fight, then everyone could see it when they actually did fight. Until then, a boast was simply that. A boast. He would never back down from a fight though, even if it meant he could die. That was part of the fun. Perhaps he was too violent in that regard but he had no other choice. He hadn’t bothered to look at the sizes of the other pups. He didn’t care. He was big enough and that was good enough for him. He had been concentrating too much on the hunt. When he thought of what he had said to his father, had meant every word. All he wanted was for his father to say something. Say anything to show that he was proud of him in some way and he had finally gotten it. But how could he have forced Icarus to apologize to that other pup, Willow, after he had humiliated him in front of her? Icarus growled at the thought. But he had taken his anger out on her when she hadn’t done anything wrong and he could’ve hurt her badly.  

He lowered his head so that it was close to the ground, ears flattened and nose sniffing the grass for the scent of the other pup. There were two or three families here and he remembered passing them by but before the hunt, he hadn’t interacted with them. The first time he had met his father’s brother (he thought he was or something like that) was at the hunt. And that was the same time he had met the other pups. It was now the dead of the night where others were sleeping. He had been rummaging around the den for some herbs or flowers. Some stuff he’d seen his mother using when his wounds had been healing and snatched one flower when everyone had been asleep. Icarus stopped in front of a den, covered with leaves and from what he could smell, animal pelts. He approached the den, peering inside the darkness to see if he could see the white pup. He could see something. Wolf-shaped figures. He directed his nose towards the den entrance, sniffing. Yeah it was her. He opened his maw and dropped the flower onto the grass at the mouth of the den. Some of the petals had dropped off but most of the petals were still there. Some the petals were folded inwards and drooping. The stem was broken in half by his teeth though as he had been too rough with it. The flower’s colour, which had been white, was faded badly. Icarus couldn’t remember the names of the flowers and all their healing properties but he remembered what they looked like. This one would help take away some of her pain. He started to turn and pad away, a massive moving shadow in the dark of the night.