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Description
So excited for the DoTW opening! I hope she's at least interesting to read about!

Name: Senja, Indonesian for “dusk”

Age: Young Adult (2 years)

Gender: Female

Height: 33’’

Weight: 93 lbs

Sigil: The Storm

Build: Of relatively average height, Senja is an ideal mix of leg and bulk. Her legs are long enough to make her quite swift, yet not so long as to create instability when scaling cliffs and mountains. She is leanly muscled from her father’s training sessions and has developed a strong frame. While she is able to reach high speeds in a chase, she is unable to maintain these speeds for long and tires quickly. Senja bears a dense, plush coat that makes summers miserable while her long, fluffy tail heightens her sense of balance when climbing.

Territory: Hintertomb

Family:

Father: Kiran, “ray, beam of light”
Sigil: The Pebble
Attunement: Vox

Mother: Achlys, Greek for “mist, darkness”
Sigil: The Dark
Attunement: Spire

Sister: Vanya, Russian for “butterfly”
Sigil: The Storm (same litter as her sister)
Aspiring attunement: Core

Rank: Ember

Attunement: None (aspiring Vox)

Personality:

Positive traits: Brave, loyal, ambitious, protective
Ambitious: Senja was extremely close to her father, Kiran, and she has an unstoppable desire to be everything he was and more. With Kiran gone, Senja is determined to provide for the pack and fill the gap her father left behind. She aims to surpass his rank of Spark and become a wolf of importance in the pack that is so vital to her. There is precious little that will stop Senja from achieving the goals that she has set her mind upon.
Brave: For her Hinterkin and anyone else she cares for, Senja is fearless. She exhibits no hesitation when it comes to leaping into the fray to defend a friend or packmate, even if that means replacing the life in danger with her own. It is typically after Senja jumps into action that her mind catches up with what she has done, often leaving her reeling for ideas of what to do next.
Loyal: Senja is the only wolf left alive that is aware of her mother’s betrayal or her sister’s abandonment of the pack and, while she holds these secrets close out of fear of judgment for her family’s sins, she has resolved never to allow her loyalty for the Omen and the Hinterkin to waver. Of all of the wolves in her family, she aspires only to be like her dear father.
Protective: With her mother’s betrayal, her sister’s abandonment, and her father’s death, Senja has a deep fear of loss that she refuses to acknowledge. Her fear of loss combined with her desire for greatness causes her to be extremely protective of those she cares for, as well as of the prey species that reside within the pack’s territory. Senja is immensely respectful of the lives of prey animals, as she was taught to be by her father. She is not afraid to protect prey species from those that allow them to suffer before making the kill.

Neutral traits: Honest, aloof (in appearance), competitive, determined
Aloof: The emotional wounds Senja acquired from her puphood have caused her to build walls around her heart. She fears being viewed as vulnerable and therefore attempts to portray herself as invincible. While she may appear aloof and uncaring, she has a big heart underneath the pretenses and subconsciously craves a deep, trusting friendship in which she can let the walls around her heart down.
Competitive: Senja’s undying need to make her father proud has caused her to have a competitive streak. She craves to be as important to the pack as the pack is to her and feels that she has to compete with others to be seen as such. While she can get heated in a competition, she refuses to vocalize her bitterness as she is aware of this fault. If a competition causes her to become emotional, she will seek out an area to be alone in order to cool down and return to rationality.
Determined: Once she has made up her mind, Senja will work tirelessly to achieve a goal or complete a task. She is painstakingly determined to be nothing like her treacherous mother and sister, though she misses them deep down. She is resolute in her ambitions and is difficult to deter from a path that she has decided to walk.
Honest: For better or worse, Senja is an honest wolf. The damage her mother inflicted on their family with her lies always sits in the back of the dark wolf’s mind, compelling her to choose honesty in order to avoid inflicting similar damage on others. However, she does not always realize that honesty can also be damaging depending on the situation. In the end, she is a wolf of her word and does not take giving her word lightly.

Negative traits: Perfectionist, jealous, paranoid
Jealous: While Senja admires those that out-rank her, she is also jealous of their positions and how they have made themselves indispensable to the pack due to her fear of being replaceable. It is not uncommon for her to also find herself feeling envious of those with the love of a family or partner. This stems from the painful loss of her father, the only wolf that she felt truly loved her, which often leaves her struggling with a sense of loneliness. Her immense love for her father has also made her jealous of her sister as Vanya was the primary recipient of their father’s traits and characteristics.
Paranoid: Senja was raised to be paranoid and fearful of the Great Ones and is no different from her Hinterkin in this attribute. However, her paranoia also stems from other thoughts. When her mother died, any secrets she had discovered died with her, leaving Senja to wonder at times if there were (or are) Spires or Choir members that have knowledge that they will not share with the pack…
Perfectionist: Senja’s desire for greatness has caused her to become a perfectionist. She is often very hard on herself and tends to compare herself to others. This can, at times, cause her to neglect her health or wellbeing in favor of completing a task or achieving a goal. In order to be as close to perfect as she can, she will work herself far beyond exhaustion.

Pre-Group History:

Senja and her sister Vanya were born under a full moon, in a den filled with warm spring air. It was a quiet night when Kiran and Achlys greeted their first children, a small litter of two. As Achlys rested from her long labor, Kiran enveloped his daughters in the warm gray tones of his coat. It was clear from the beginning that Achlys was not thrilled to be a mother, yet Kiran attributed his mate’s lack of parental joy to exhaustion and assumed that her attachment to their daughters would grow with time and well-deserved rest. It did not.
Due to faults in her own upbringing, Achlys did not know how to be a mother to her pups. She did, however, know how to create loyal followers. In their young pup-hood, Senja and Vanya were full of life and enthusiasm. The two played almost endlessly, often accompanied by their loving father. Achlys was a distant presence in their young lives, and their mother’s apparent distance caused the pups to nurture a desire to please her, to draw her closer. Although dissatisfied with his mate’s aloof behavior, Kiran did not express his displeasure to Achlys. He desired a unified, loving family for his pups, so he kept his sentiments buried beneath the surface where his daughters could not detect them.
As the girls grew into older pups and then juveniles, their mother became a more regular presence in their lives. However, Achlys was often strict and harsh with her pups, and she demanded obedience from them without question. While both pups desired their mother’s approval and affection, it was Vanya’s will that slowly began to bend to their mother’s commands, Vanya’s spirit that silently withered under Achlys’ cold gaze. Vanya had always been the more timid of the two sisters, but, as her body grew with age, so did her submissiveness. Senja, in stark contrast, had her father’s determination and her mother’s fire, and refused to bend to the will of a mother that she had learned she could not please. Senja’s resistance often sparked verbal fights between mother and daughter, and forged a divide in the relationship between the two sisters. Vanya could not understand why Senja stubbornly persisted in her rebelliousness and disobedience when giving in would allow her to avoid conflict, and Senja could not understand why Vanya had become so meek for the sake of a mother whose love was so rare. Achlys’ loveless and demanding behavior incited her mate’s anger, as he had already been dissatisfied with her distant and dismissive attitude towards their children. Though Kiran did his best to keep his arguments with Achlys out of earshot of their daughters, both Senja and Vanya were aware of the unrest brewing in their troubled family. Despite the dysfunction in their family, Senja and Vanya continued to grow and began to show interest in the pack’s Attunements. Vanya, interested in becoming a Core, was often taken on lessons by her mother, a Spire, where she was instructed in the arts of knowledge and how to obtain it. Senja, ever her father’s little shadow, displayed interest in becoming a Vox like him and therefore attended daily lessons with Kiran. Kiran’s training was rigorous, yet still filled with kindness, patience, and affection. Senja grew strong, swift, and sure-footed under her father’s steady tutelage, and the two thrived in the time they spent together as father and daughter, teacher and student. Despite Kiran’s attempts to also bond with his other daughter, Vanya grew cold and distant towards him as it was the simplest way to please her mother and thus avoid conflict within her family. Though Senja missed the close relationship she once had with Vanya, she prioritized time with her father. She was not blind to the pain that Kiran was experiencing as half his family grew distant, nor was she blind to the growing unrest in the pack.
Kiran’s lessons on stalking prey provided Senja with the skills she needed to silently keep tabs on the growing rumors and whispers. It was no secret that snowstorms and landslides were occurring increasingly often in what had once been their perfect valley. Kiran had made sure to continue Senja’s huntress training as far from the mountain bases as was possible. It was not these whisperings that caught the dark wolf’s attention, however. On occasion Senja caught the near-silent voices of packmates discussing the Old Omen’s sudden interest in the lands outside of their once-lush mountain valley. The whisperings increased as the biting cold of winter chewed through the pack’s supplies and prey became scarce. Despite Kiran’s best efforts to provide for the pack and his family, there was not enough food to go around. While Kiran worked tirelessly to help the Hinterkin, Achlys began to slink off on her own for hours, and sometimes days, at a time. What she got up to during her time alone, only Achlys knew, but her absences did not go unnoticed.
It was a calm, moonlit night when frayed nerves finally came to a head. Senja had been instructed by her father to practice her tracking on a rabbit trail they had found together. Kiran, however, had left his daughter to train on her own while he attended to something else. Senja thought nothing of it as she knew Kiran was a very busy wolf, especially with food in short supply and tensions in the pack rising. She did not realize how far she had strayed as she followed the rabbit’s trail until her attention was diverted to the sounds of growling and angry voices. Intrigued, the dark youngster crept closer to the source of the voices. She took shelter in a nearby thicket to watch the scene unfold, but she was shocked to see two intimately familiar pelts.
“They know something, Kiran! They’ve found something, and they’re keeping it from us!” Achlys hissed.
“What the Omen and the Choir discuss is not for the Hinterkin to know until they are ready to reveal it! Spying on them is treachery, Achlys! You are putting our family in danger with your carelessness,” Kiran growled back.
“They know something about the Great Ones, and not knowing will be our doom. I will find out what it is, and you can not stop me.”
“If you’re so sure, then explain it to me! Tell me what you’ve learned so far, help me to understand!”
“No.”
“Achlys, please,” Kiran whimpered, hurt and frustration shining in his soft olive eyes.
“No.”
“So you would betray your pack and your family?” Kiran whispered.
“Of course you would see it that way,” Achlys spoke with ice in her voice as she walked away and disappeared into the shadows of the moonlit trees surrounding them.
Senja, filled with rage that her treacherous mother had been spying on the Omen and Choir and that her father knew and did nothing, crept out of her hiding place and ran off into the night. She wandered the territory in avoidance of her family for days as she tried to sort through her thoughts and emotions. In the days that she sought solace, Senja had no idea that the pack had been left reeling after it was revealed that their Omen was missing. She did not know that her parents had joined a search party that had been sent into the mountain passes to look for their missing leader.
The dark wolf awoke from a nap to the violent shaking of the ground beneath her. Panicked and unsteady, she was barely able to avoid a falling tree whose roots had been ripped loose. She leapt to the side and rolled out of the way as the tree came crashing down exactly where she had just been lying. Her fear overwhelmed her and she ran with all her might towards the pack’s tunnel system, their source of shelter. The shaking of the earth knocked her off her feet time and time again, and Senja was covered in dirt and snow when she finally arrived at her destination. As the shaking began to subside, the dark wolf frantically located a packmate who was able to point her in the direction her parents had gone. Before she could take off in pursuit of her parents, the silver pelt of her sister caught her eye. No sooner did Senja lay her golden eyes on her sister’s fear-stricken face did the two sisters hear a deafening crack. Their heads whipped around in time to see the mountains that had always guarded their valley crunch before finally crumbling toward the valley floor with alarming speed. The booming and rumbling of the landslide echoed throughout the valley like thunder, almost as though the mountains mourned their own demise. Senja had no time to contemplate what this might mean as she quickly realized that she and her sister were directly in the path of the rocks, snow, and ice that were hurtling toward the pack’s tunneled homes. The dark wolf, realizing that her silver sister was in shock, grabbed Vanya’s scruff and tore away from the landslide as fast as her legs could carry her, dragging her sister with her. Vanya quickly regained her footing and dashed with her sister towards the shelter of the nearest trees. The two darted behind a cluster of large boulders that were mercifully able to withstand the crushing force of the landslide. The disaster was over just as quickly as it had begun, and all was silent for a moment. Then began the horrified screams, the sorrowful wails, the cries of the Hinterkin as they scrambled to rescue their brethren. Without a second thought, Senja shot off towards the place where her parents were last seen, Vanya hot on her heels. The sisters dug through the ruins for hours before finally clearing away enough debris to discover the bodies of their parents. It was clear from the way they were lying and the damage to their bodies that Kiran had tried in vain to take the brunt of the damage to save his mate, yet it was obvious that both had been crushed by falling rocks. Senja collapsed over the body of their father, her despair nearly palpable. The dark wolf could not bring herself to leave his side. So lost in her sorrow, she didn’t realize that Vanya had fled, unable to bear seeing the broken bodies of their parents. Nearly a whole day passed as Senja grieved, her muzzle buried in her father’s fur in an attempt to memorize her father’s scent and the soft texture of his pelt. When she finally rose, she wandered aimlessly until she reached a quiet stream where she could soothe her dry, aching throat. As she drank, she caught sight of something green under the surface of the water. As she peered closer, she saw two swirled green stones, each a near perfect reflection of the other. Realizing what she had to do, Senja scooped the stones into her jaws and returned to her father’s side.
When the deed was done, Senja sat down to admire her work. She had successfully laid her father to rest with one of the green stones from the stream as his obol. She whispered her last goodbyes before picking up the second, matching stone and padding off in the same direction that her sister’s pawprints led. Vanya’s extensive head-start and rigorous speed kept Senja desperately tracking for several days. At long last, the dark wolf caught sight of her sister’s silver pelt among the ice-painted trees far ahead. As if she knew she’d been seen, Vanya turned her head to meet her sister’s golden gaze with her own olive one. What the dark wolf saw in her silver sister was a reflection of herself: wet eyes, a tear-stained face, and an achingly broken, lost expression. As the silver wolf turned and continued padding away, Senja sank to her haunches in the snow. She did not have the heart to stop her sister, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to bring her back now that Vanya had chosen to leave all of the pain behind. However, her anguish quickly turned to indignation just as her sense of loneliness slowly morphed into a feeling of abandonment. With nothing left but her anger and resolve to fuel her, Senja turned back towards what had been her home. At long last she discovered a trail of colorful stones and began to increase her pace. She was certain that the path led to the Hinterkin, to a new home. Without warning, a spark of hope for the future began to grow in her heart.

Group History: None (yet!)

Other: Senja’s green stone (and her father’s obol) are malachite (symbolism!).
Senja’s dense coat makes summers unbearable, so it’s not uncommon to find her soaking in the nearest water source during the hottest months of the year.
Senja enjoys climbing mountains and scaling cliffsides. While it terrifies her to be closer to the sky and thus the Great Ones, it also invigorates her. She often wonders if the high altitudes bring her closer to her father’s spirit. Maybe there he can hear her…

Description
So excited for the DoTW opening! I hope she's at least interesting to read about!

Name: Senja, Indonesian for “dusk”

Age: Young Adult (2 years)

Gender: Female

Height: 33’’

Weight: 93 lbs

Sigil: The Storm

Build: Of relatively average height, Senja is an ideal mix of leg and bulk. Her legs are long enough to make her quite swift, yet not so long as to create instability when scaling cliffs and mountains. She is leanly muscled from her father’s training sessions and has developed a strong frame. While she is able to reach high speeds in a chase, she is unable to maintain these speeds for long and tires quickly. Senja bears a dense, plush coat that makes summers miserable while her long, fluffy tail heightens her sense of balance when climbing.

Territory: Hintertomb

Family:

Father: Kiran, “ray, beam of light”
Sigil: The Pebble
Attunement: Vox

Mother: Achlys, Greek for “mist, darkness”
Sigil: The Dark
Attunement: Spire

Sister: Vanya, Russian for “butterfly”
Sigil: The Storm (same litter as her sister)
Aspiring attunement: Core

Rank: Ember

Attunement: None (aspiring Vox)

Personality:

Positive traits: Brave, loyal, ambitious, protective
Ambitious: Senja was extremely close to her father, Kiran, and she has an unstoppable desire to be everything he was and more. With Kiran gone, Senja is determined to provide for the pack and fill the gap her father left behind. She aims to surpass his rank of Spark and become a wolf of importance in the pack that is so vital to her. There is precious little that will stop Senja from achieving the goals that she has set her mind upon.
Brave: For her Hinterkin and anyone else she cares for, Senja is fearless. She exhibits no hesitation when it comes to leaping into the fray to defend a friend or packmate, even if that means replacing the life in danger with her own. It is typically after Senja jumps into action that her mind catches up with what she has done, often leaving her reeling for ideas of what to do next.
Loyal: Senja is the only wolf left alive that is aware of her mother’s betrayal or her sister’s abandonment of the pack and, while she holds these secrets close out of fear of judgment for her family’s sins, she has resolved never to allow her loyalty for the Omen and the Hinterkin to waver. Of all of the wolves in her family, she aspires only to be like her dear father.
Protective: With her mother’s betrayal, her sister’s abandonment, and her father’s death, Senja has a deep fear of loss that she refuses to acknowledge. Her fear of loss combined with her desire for greatness causes her to be extremely protective of those she cares for, as well as of the prey species that reside within the pack’s territory. Senja is immensely respectful of the lives of prey animals, as she was taught to be by her father. She is not afraid to protect prey species from those that allow them to suffer before making the kill.

Neutral traits: Honest, aloof (in appearance), competitive, determined
Aloof: The emotional wounds Senja acquired from her puphood have caused her to build walls around her heart. She fears being viewed as vulnerable and therefore attempts to portray herself as invincible. While she may appear aloof and uncaring, she has a big heart underneath the pretenses and subconsciously craves a deep, trusting friendship in which she can let the walls around her heart down.
Competitive: Senja’s undying need to make her father proud has caused her to have a competitive streak. She craves to be as important to the pack as the pack is to her and feels that she has to compete with others to be seen as such. While she can get heated in a competition, she refuses to vocalize her bitterness as she is aware of this fault. If a competition causes her to become emotional, she will seek out an area to be alone in order to cool down and return to rationality.
Determined: Once she has made up her mind, Senja will work tirelessly to achieve a goal or complete a task. She is painstakingly determined to be nothing like her treacherous mother and sister, though she misses them deep down. She is resolute in her ambitions and is difficult to deter from a path that she has decided to walk.
Honest: For better or worse, Senja is an honest wolf. The damage her mother inflicted on their family with her lies always sits in the back of the dark wolf’s mind, compelling her to choose honesty in order to avoid inflicting similar damage on others. However, she does not always realize that honesty can also be damaging depending on the situation. In the end, she is a wolf of her word and does not take giving her word lightly.

Negative traits: Perfectionist, jealous, paranoid
Jealous: While Senja admires those that out-rank her, she is also jealous of their positions and how they have made themselves indispensable to the pack due to her fear of being replaceable. It is not uncommon for her to also find herself feeling envious of those with the love of a family or partner. This stems from the painful loss of her father, the only wolf that she felt truly loved her, which often leaves her struggling with a sense of loneliness. Her immense love for her father has also made her jealous of her sister as Vanya was the primary recipient of their father’s traits and characteristics.
Paranoid: Senja was raised to be paranoid and fearful of the Great Ones and is no different from her Hinterkin in this attribute. However, her paranoia also stems from other thoughts. When her mother died, any secrets she had discovered died with her, leaving Senja to wonder at times if there were (or are) Spires or Choir members that have knowledge that they will not share with the pack…
Perfectionist: Senja’s desire for greatness has caused her to become a perfectionist. She is often very hard on herself and tends to compare herself to others. This can, at times, cause her to neglect her health or wellbeing in favor of completing a task or achieving a goal. In order to be as close to perfect as she can, she will work herself far beyond exhaustion.

Pre-Group History:

Senja and her sister Vanya were born under a full moon, in a den filled with warm spring air. It was a quiet night when Kiran and Achlys greeted their first children, a small litter of two. As Achlys rested from her long labor, Kiran enveloped his daughters in the warm gray tones of his coat. It was clear from the beginning that Achlys was not thrilled to be a mother, yet Kiran attributed his mate’s lack of parental joy to exhaustion and assumed that her attachment to their daughters would grow with time and well-deserved rest. It did not.
Due to faults in her own upbringing, Achlys did not know how to be a mother to her pups. She did, however, know how to create loyal followers. In their young pup-hood, Senja and Vanya were full of life and enthusiasm. The two played almost endlessly, often accompanied by their loving father. Achlys was a distant presence in their young lives, and their mother’s apparent distance caused the pups to nurture a desire to please her, to draw her closer. Although dissatisfied with his mate’s aloof behavior, Kiran did not express his displeasure to Achlys. He desired a unified, loving family for his pups, so he kept his sentiments buried beneath the surface where his daughters could not detect them.
As the girls grew into older pups and then juveniles, their mother became a more regular presence in their lives. However, Achlys was often strict and harsh with her pups, and she demanded obedience from them without question. While both pups desired their mother’s approval and affection, it was Vanya’s will that slowly began to bend to their mother’s commands, Vanya’s spirit that silently withered under Achlys’ cold gaze. Vanya had always been the more timid of the two sisters, but, as her body grew with age, so did her submissiveness. Senja, in stark contrast, had her father’s determination and her mother’s fire, and refused to bend to the will of a mother that she had learned she could not please. Senja’s resistance often sparked verbal fights between mother and daughter, and forged a divide in the relationship between the two sisters. Vanya could not understand why Senja stubbornly persisted in her rebelliousness and disobedience when giving in would allow her to avoid conflict, and Senja could not understand why Vanya had become so meek for the sake of a mother whose love was so rare. Achlys’ loveless and demanding behavior incited her mate’s anger, as he had already been dissatisfied with her distant and dismissive attitude towards their children. Though Kiran did his best to keep his arguments with Achlys out of earshot of their daughters, both Senja and Vanya were aware of the unrest brewing in their troubled family. Despite the dysfunction in their family, Senja and Vanya continued to grow and began to show interest in the pack’s Attunements. Vanya, interested in becoming a Core, was often taken on lessons by her mother, a Spire, where she was instructed in the arts of knowledge and how to obtain it. Senja, ever her father’s little shadow, displayed interest in becoming a Vox like him and therefore attended daily lessons with Kiran. Kiran’s training was rigorous, yet still filled with kindness, patience, and affection. Senja grew strong, swift, and sure-footed under her father’s steady tutelage, and the two thrived in the time they spent together as father and daughter, teacher and student. Despite Kiran’s attempts to also bond with his other daughter, Vanya grew cold and distant towards him as it was the simplest way to please her mother and thus avoid conflict within her family. Though Senja missed the close relationship she once had with Vanya, she prioritized time with her father. She was not blind to the pain that Kiran was experiencing as half his family grew distant, nor was she blind to the growing unrest in the pack.
Kiran’s lessons on stalking prey provided Senja with the skills she needed to silently keep tabs on the growing rumors and whispers. It was no secret that snowstorms and landslides were occurring increasingly often in what had once been their perfect valley. Kiran had made sure to continue Senja’s huntress training as far from the mountain bases as was possible. It was not these whisperings that caught the dark wolf’s attention, however. On occasion Senja caught the near-silent voices of packmates discussing the Old Omen’s sudden interest in the lands outside of their once-lush mountain valley. The whisperings increased as the biting cold of winter chewed through the pack’s supplies and prey became scarce. Despite Kiran’s best efforts to provide for the pack and his family, there was not enough food to go around. While Kiran worked tirelessly to help the Hinterkin, Achlys began to slink off on her own for hours, and sometimes days, at a time. What she got up to during her time alone, only Achlys knew, but her absences did not go unnoticed.
It was a calm, moonlit night when frayed nerves finally came to a head. Senja had been instructed by her father to practice her tracking on a rabbit trail they had found together. Kiran, however, had left his daughter to train on her own while he attended to something else. Senja thought nothing of it as she knew Kiran was a very busy wolf, especially with food in short supply and tensions in the pack rising. She did not realize how far she had strayed as she followed the rabbit’s trail until her attention was diverted to the sounds of growling and angry voices. Intrigued, the dark youngster crept closer to the source of the voices. She took shelter in a nearby thicket to watch the scene unfold, but she was shocked to see two intimately familiar pelts.
“They know something, Kiran! They’ve found something, and they’re keeping it from us!” Achlys hissed.
“What the Omen and the Choir discuss is not for the Hinterkin to know until they are ready to reveal it! Spying on them is treachery, Achlys! You are putting our family in danger with your carelessness,” Kiran growled back.
“They know something about the Great Ones, and not knowing will be our doom. I will find out what it is, and you can not stop me.”
“If you’re so sure, then explain it to me! Tell me what you’ve learned so far, help me to understand!”
“No.”
“Achlys, please,” Kiran whimpered, hurt and frustration shining in his soft olive eyes.
“No.”
“So you would betray your pack and your family?” Kiran whispered.
“Of course you would see it that way,” Achlys spoke with ice in her voice as she walked away and disappeared into the shadows of the moonlit trees surrounding them.
Senja, filled with rage that her treacherous mother had been spying on the Omen and Choir and that her father knew and did nothing, crept out of her hiding place and ran off into the night. She wandered the territory in avoidance of her family for days as she tried to sort through her thoughts and emotions. In the days that she sought solace, Senja had no idea that the pack had been left reeling after it was revealed that their Omen was missing. She did not know that her parents had joined a search party that had been sent into the mountain passes to look for their missing leader.
The dark wolf awoke from a nap to the violent shaking of the ground beneath her. Panicked and unsteady, she was barely able to avoid a falling tree whose roots had been ripped loose. She leapt to the side and rolled out of the way as the tree came crashing down exactly where she had just been lying. Her fear overwhelmed her and she ran with all her might towards the pack’s tunnel system, their source of shelter. The shaking of the earth knocked her off her feet time and time again, and Senja was covered in dirt and snow when she finally arrived at her destination. As the shaking began to subside, the dark wolf frantically located a packmate who was able to point her in the direction her parents had gone. Before she could take off in pursuit of her parents, the silver pelt of her sister caught her eye. No sooner did Senja lay her golden eyes on her sister’s fear-stricken face did the two sisters hear a deafening crack. Their heads whipped around in time to see the mountains that had always guarded their valley crunch before finally crumbling toward the valley floor with alarming speed. The booming and rumbling of the landslide echoed throughout the valley like thunder, almost as though the mountains mourned their own demise. Senja had no time to contemplate what this might mean as she quickly realized that she and her sister were directly in the path of the rocks, snow, and ice that were hurtling toward the pack’s tunneled homes. The dark wolf, realizing that her silver sister was in shock, grabbed Vanya’s scruff and tore away from the landslide as fast as her legs could carry her, dragging her sister with her. Vanya quickly regained her footing and dashed with her sister towards the shelter of the nearest trees. The two darted behind a cluster of large boulders that were mercifully able to withstand the crushing force of the landslide. The disaster was over just as quickly as it had begun, and all was silent for a moment. Then began the horrified screams, the sorrowful wails, the cries of the Hinterkin as they scrambled to rescue their brethren. Without a second thought, Senja shot off towards the place where her parents were last seen, Vanya hot on her heels. The sisters dug through the ruins for hours before finally clearing away enough debris to discover the bodies of their parents. It was clear from the way they were lying and the damage to their bodies that Kiran had tried in vain to take the brunt of the damage to save his mate, yet it was obvious that both had been crushed by falling rocks. Senja collapsed over the body of their father, her despair nearly palpable. The dark wolf could not bring herself to leave his side. So lost in her sorrow, she didn’t realize that Vanya had fled, unable to bear seeing the broken bodies of their parents. Nearly a whole day passed as Senja grieved, her muzzle buried in her father’s fur in an attempt to memorize her father’s scent and the soft texture of his pelt. When she finally rose, she wandered aimlessly until she reached a quiet stream where she could soothe her dry, aching throat. As she drank, she caught sight of something green under the surface of the water. As she peered closer, she saw two swirled green stones, each a near perfect reflection of the other. Realizing what she had to do, Senja scooped the stones into her jaws and returned to her father’s side.
When the deed was done, Senja sat down to admire her work. She had successfully laid her father to rest with one of the green stones from the stream as his obol. She whispered her last goodbyes before picking up the second, matching stone and padding off in the same direction that her sister’s pawprints led. Vanya’s extensive head-start and rigorous speed kept Senja desperately tracking for several days. At long last, the dark wolf caught sight of her sister’s silver pelt among the ice-painted trees far ahead. As if she knew she’d been seen, Vanya turned her head to meet her sister’s golden gaze with her own olive one. What the dark wolf saw in her silver sister was a reflection of herself: wet eyes, a tear-stained face, and an achingly broken, lost expression. As the silver wolf turned and continued padding away, Senja sank to her haunches in the snow. She did not have the heart to stop her sister, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to bring her back now that Vanya had chosen to leave all of the pain behind. However, her anguish quickly turned to indignation just as her sense of loneliness slowly morphed into a feeling of abandonment. With nothing left but her anger and resolve to fuel her, Senja turned back towards what had been her home. At long last she discovered a trail of colorful stones and began to increase her pace. She was certain that the path led to the Hinterkin, to a new home. Without warning, a spark of hope for the future began to grow in her heart.

Group History: None (yet!)

Other: Senja’s green stone (and her father’s obol) are malachite (symbolism!).
Senja’s dense coat makes summers unbearable, so it’s not uncommon to find her soaking in the nearest water source during the hottest months of the year.
Senja enjoys climbing mountains and scaling cliffsides. While it terrifies her to be closer to the sky and thus the Great Ones, it also invigorates her. She often wonders if the high altitudes bring her closer to her father’s spirit. Maybe there he can hear her…