The jaguar girl stepped through the marshes of Sindri, her tail and ears flicking. She, a wolf but with jaguar ears, whiskers, and tail, felt a bit out of place in Starfall. Her muscled legs sped up, carrying the hybrid with ease. She had heard the pack call as she practiced her talent with dodging and aim, using her teeth to pick up random twigs and rocks and throwing them in the air, trying to knock them into a tiny pool of water with her paws. The mysterious cat-wolf entered the relatively dry clearing, her eyes sweeping over her queen, the kappa, and then the two new males. Callie’s ears perked up; her legs slid her over to where Sydney was sitting. Hello, all. Queen Athena, Sydney. Callie didn’t bother asking the names of the two newcomers, as she knew Queen Athena would probably introduce them once Hecate, Kalon, and Cato had arrived.
Sydney was even more exotic than Callie, if that was possible. Her pelt displayed one of the many constellations in the sky, Draco Callie believed it was called, and Sindri’s queen had power over fire. Callie could see that one of the new wolves had ten tails.
”Don’t get distracted; focus on the here and the now.” Callie remembered her father’s words. She didn’t say them aloud; just thought of them. ”Your duties will one day be as a delta to this pack, and you must be able to sufficiently hold the position.” Callie’s mother had been beta and her father a delta, and from her very birth, Callie, the only pup to survive her parents’ first litter, was expected to be the one to fill the role of female delta when Amandra moved up to gamma. Now, she was in this strange world, changed into a wolf with similarities to a species of feline she’d never seen, and likely conceding the seat of delta to her foremost rival, a little female called Kannabe. Kannabe was tiny, as the result of being the runt of her litter, born small and not quite having caught up in growth, but she was one day younger than Callie and very fierce. She was the most capable of any of her littermates, and had disproved the superstitions that Callie’s pack had long had against runts: Shame upon the family, bad omens. Be careful; if you give birth to a runt, better to kill it right away. Runts, in the eyes of the pack, were incompetent, mentally compromised, and sickly. But then Kannabe came along, and changed all that. Callie almost looked up to her for that.
The memories swirled inside her head. Her parents would be thinking the humans had gotten her. Kannabe was probably delta now, since Amandra’s birthday and change to elder would’ve been a few days ago. Now, it was Callie’s birthday as well. She looked over to the male with wings, whose wings she was just noticing now.