"Red meat is for the rider, Wolf snack, your dinner is the fish like always" "Wolf snack, clean our the wolf den and try not to ruin my wolf's appetite for dinner by getting eaten." "No one likes a pipsqueak, wolf snack, you'll never be in a hunting pack."
She would try to console herself by thinking about was how badly wolves smell because they hated baths and how smelly that must get over long distances. Thought little helped console her often forced pescatarian diet.
"Fuck 'em if they say you can't ride a wolf, just fuckin find a fuckin better fuckin animal to ride. Don't alet a bunch of assholes tell you what you can't do. Show those assholes you're better than than the shit they're throwing," her mother Agalina would often say.
"Your mother's right, but...uh...lacks a little grace in her delivery. I know you can do it. You and your friends will figure something out," Darro would add, "You're too determined and too smart not to succeed."
"We shouldn't have to be the ones to do the boring "pipsqueak" work if we are capable of more. We're tired of having the boringest guard duties and the dullest tasks for the village," They would gather and say among each other.
Shortly after the first news of The Blood Mist came to the village, more news of the blood mist worsening and taking animals of the forest came to the village as well. The Last Pack worried about their cats, but feared they would never be accepted into the village. Shayla worried every night when the Blood Mist fell and rushed out at first like to check on Grey Cat. Her parents told her that Greycat would be fine and she shouldn't worry if the stories were true of the Blood Mist leaving, then she could feel safe.
After a week or two the Blood Mist began to stop showing up at Baystead's walls. Not always there, but not always gone either. They begin putting pipsqueak's on guard duty. It was on one of these night's when Shayla was watching the gate, that her curiosity got the better of her and she went to visit Grey Cat.
Grey Cat and the others were safe and sound in their Den as her parents had said. She was nuzzling Grey Cat in greeting when she heard the first scream. All of the cat alerted and charged towards the village. Shayla charged ahead on Grey Cat, her heart dropping when she saw the gate open and the dark red cloud of Blood Mist pouring through.
When she woke up her mind flashed to the screams of her parents...or were they her own...of so much she didn't want to remember and of her fainting on top of Grey Cat after entering her home. She shot up in a panic looking around her. Beside her Grey Cat openned her eyes from her slumber, stretched out her big paws and pulled Shayla inot her big fuzzy mane and went back to sleep.
Shayla lay there letting herself be calmed by Grey Cat's purr and thought only of the destruction she caused for her dream of being a rider. She owed it to those that were lost to fulfil that dream of seaing the corners of the Ravenlands. She couldn't bring them back, but she could at least not given up after all that had already been lost. She wondered as she drifted back to sleep if any of the other members of the Last Pack had made it out with their direcats as well.