[Memory] What: Memory Will characters be viewing the memory or experiencing it?: Viewing. Warning, this memory contains: National Geographic
It's a circle in the woods, lit by moonlight and starlight, shaded by the reaching branches of thickly boughed conifers. Such a setting is absolutely timeless, but it is not a natural gathering of wildlife, and there is something deeply disconcerting about so many glowing eyes, all still in the curtained dark, all pointed inward. The watcher's vision lowers until the eyes are close, flickering yellow and gold discs in the dark, and there is something church-like about the enclosed scene. The pack are all figures, watching sets of eyes and the rough canine outline of each the very best one can make out.
Those familiar with wolves might see distress in their low, hunched figures. Some are even leaning against one another in a decidedly human way, noses down, fur bristling against the cold and the situation. It is winter, with a spray of muddy ice on the visible ground. The memory somehow provides an absolutely pure experience, and one can even smell the varied identities of these pack members, nothing that one could put into words, but distinct as human faces.
In the center of the forest nave, there are two wolves fighting. It is easy to tell them apart: one is small and one is large. A good thing, as their color is very difficult to make out, barely differentiating the two, though perhaps another wolf might be able to tell the varicolored brown one (the small) from the paler gray one (the large). The larger is also older, though only an experienced wolf of a similar nature might be able to tell as they circle and tussle in the near total blackness. The larger wolf is a thing bred by evolution to endure snow and years--more than that, he is not well-liked. His shoulders are wide, and as he lunges the entirety of the pack seems to shrink from him, making the circle a flexing, living thing of moving fur-covered bodies.
The fight is far along. Blood stains the mud throughout the area. The smaller wolf, with a long, vulpine snout and large ears, seems destined for loss. He's limping and his snatches of teeth, when they connect, seem to do little damage. At one point the larger wolf manages to grab the smaller's heel and drag him several feet before the latter gets away, and there's a dark change in the pack's behavior, a palpable despair, as a conclusion seems inevitable.
The turn comes fast. Somehow, the larger's tactic has taken it up a slight incline, where a dead tree lies, and here the ground is not so hard. The mud is slick and all the snow melted. As the small wolf rises from a strange, coyote-like obeisance, the pack's circle again shies back, and the larger wolf finds his back legs on low ground, sliding and unable to find purchase. Fast, almost too fast to see, the small wolf goes low and comes high into the big wolf's throat. The powerful jaws apply almost a thousand pounds of pressure per square inch, and once he gets hold the brown wolf knows better than to let go.
His victory is not pretty. The large wolf attempts to get free, and he tears great bleeding strips into his opponent's back during the long minute's struggle. At one point he even seems to grow, his shoulders growing pink and bald as he starts a hideous change before realizing in his foolish panic that he only grows weaker in the pointless attempt. Eventually the smaller wolf manages to force his bleeding back legs to work, and obtains a stronger grip on the large one's throat. Somehow, impossibly, the resulting crunch is audible. The struggles grow slower, and then finally still.
The hushed parishioners gather closer as the small wolf hunches over his dead opponent's body, and there's respectful a silence that magnifies the new alpha's pants of pain and growls of sated vengeance.