though she be but little she is fierce about longstocking.
though she be but little she is fierce about longstocking.
who is though she be but little she is fierce about?
longstocking
Na
Na
"the exile's journey" is the eleventh book in the series and the fifth book of the second arc, "the gathering darkness", and was released on june 26, 2018. the book starts out with a flashback to when storm, called lick, and her brothers were forced to rejoin blade's pack; after walking for a while, blade kills wiggle and spares grunt and lick, asking them if they can be "true" fierce dogs, to which grunt agrees, but lick escapes, running back to the big wild pack, knowing she will be safer there with those who still care about her. in present time, it has been several days since storm sent herself into exile and became a lone dog, and she is heading further away from her former wild pack's territory, bitter but sad. after a while, she begins to get weaker and weaker, unable to catch a glaucous-winged gull by the endless lake and unable to catch a western gray squirrel in the forest. she eventually stops at a small riverbank in the forest to stalk a male great-tailed grackle and suddenly nearly gets killed in a flash flood. later on, she attempts to catch a mountain cottontail, but a male wild gray wolf catches it. the wolf, to storm's surprise, is friendly and shares the rabbit with her. he tells her his name is thoughtful and says that the reason why he is hunting alone instead of with his pack, is because he individually likes to focus by himself for part of the time. he warns her to not pass the dead tree, a lightning-scorched tree near the edge of the territory of his pack, the still-water pack, since they are a bit wary of outsiders. however, a few days after, she ignores the advice (hoping at least not to be seen) and spies on the still-water pack's camp, located in an abandoned longpaw quarry with a small quarry lake in it, to see what they are like and observes the 13 members feasting on a freshly-killed large bull elk (which storm at first mistakes for a golden deer until she realizes that the sunlight was playing tricks on her right then). she sees that, instead of individuals taking turns to eat depending on their ranking, everyone, including this pack's female alpha, feeds on the carcass all at once. she observes them for a while until, late one night, she sees the still-water pack escorting a mostly blind, dying old male wolf from among them to a large stone on an open plain; once he clambers on top of it and lies down, they grieve him even though he has not died yet, praying to the great wolf for safe passage into the afterlife on the moon (they apparently believe that the moon is the great wolf, similar to how dogs call the moon the moon-dog, so storm wonders if the moon-dog and the great wolf are the same deity); he is then left to die on the rock as part of this ritual. she approaches the dying wolf, intending on burying him safe from potential scavengers, but he tells her that that is not the way of wild wolves. when storm asks him what his name is, he tells her he gifted his true name back to his pack and that his new name is now fading since he is about to die. instead of moving on, she keeps watch over him for the rest of the night. the next morning, when fading finally dies, three other still-water wolves see storm studying him and mistake her for a dog who intends to scavenge, so they chase her off their territory, back into the forest, giving storm her first warning and claim they have scented and/or seen other fierce dogs in the vicinity. shortly afterward, days later, she discovers the scent of those other said fierce dogs whilst following the trail of a western red-backed vole and tracks it down, leading her to two fully-grown fierce dogs from blade's old pack, dagger and a grown female named pistol, who confront her and attack her together, still believing in blade's false prophecy, though she manages to escape. she does learn that the whole pack of vile fierce dogs has been scattered since the storm of dogs. she flees the territory and heads farther inland, eastward, quite away from the endless lake, and eventually finds a longpaw log cabin at the edge of a meadow during a rainy hour. there, while attempting to raid food from the cabin's spoil-box, she runs into two young gray-and-white mongrel leashed dogs who are a male named rex and a female named coco, who are here on a vacation with their golfer longpaw owners named tom and danny, who are housemates; they are accompanied by none other than whine, who has been taken in by these longpaws and leashed dogs and renamed buddy by tom and danny. whine encourages her to stay the night after tom shows storm kindness by giving her affectionate scratches and dog food, something she is not used to experiencing from a longpaw. after spending the night in a cage, she wakes up and talks to whine, forming an escape plan after hearing that the longpaws plan to take her to the vet just like they did with whine. when rex and coco come back from their leashed walk, whine has them open her cage and help her escape through the window. she then realizes that she misses being part of a wild pack and goes off to find bella and arrow. after a few days of traveling, she gets back to the beach of the endless lake and picks up arrow's scent. after a while of tracking it, she finds out that he was following her own scent. they happily greet each other and he welcomes her to his own little pack (consisting of just him, bella and their unborn litter, and now storm), which lives not too far from the still-water pack's territory. while heading back to camp, which is located in a small forest clearing, they hear bella howl in agony. rushing back, they realize she is in labor. after a day of being in labor, nothing happens, so storm goes back onto the territory of the still-water pack late one night, and calls out for help, hoping to find thoughtful. the still-water pack's alpha and four of her subjects find storm and surround her, demanding what she wants from them after they gave storm her first warning, and when storm explains that she has a friend in need, the alpha says that they do not get involved in dog affairs, so the alpha scratches her, giving storm her second warning. after they leave, thoughtful approaches storm and offers to find his healer sister, peaceful, and see if she could help with bella's birthing. peaceful eagerly agrees to help bella deliver the pups, even though it would be against the still-water pack's wishes, because she takes helping others in physical need very seriously, regardless of what creature they are. the next day, thanks to the help of peaceful, bella finally gives birth to three pups: tufty, nip, and scramble. tufty, the only female in the litter, dies as a stillborn and is thus given a grave. soon, by the end of long light and the approach of red leaf, storm now acts as the part-time babysitter for nip and scramble, who are very energetic and reckless, and also play with what they claim is their deceased sister tufty, which seems to be just a figment of their imagination at first (but later storm finds signs that tufty's spirit might actually be there). after saving the pups from a northern pacific rattlesnake late one night, storm and arrow talk about sweet's pack. arrow describes his reasons for leaving that are exactly the same as storm's reasons, being judged for being a fierce dog. they also agree that lucky and sweet are not exactly the best pack leaders, especially since nibble, tumble, tiny and fluff were born - yet arrow never tells the parts of him secretly judging lucky in front of bella since she and lucky are siblings. arrow then tells storm that, around the time he and bella left sweet's pack's range of territory, he saw breeze carrying a brush rabbit in her jaws that was still alive, suffering and in pain. storm is shocked breeze would do such a thing. over the next few weeks, storm leads a happy life with her new packmates. one day, after catching a big brush rabbit, she decides to see how peaceful and thoughtful are doing, so she spies on the still-water pack's quarry camp and sees peaceful being branded as a traitor for helping the dogs of bella and arrow's pack and is exiled for two days. the next day, to show peaceful gratitude, storm approaches peaceful with two freshly-killed small brush rabbits and offers one of them to her (the other for her own pack), but peaceful declines, saying she has to remain loyal to her pack; she tells storm that wolf packs like hers believe that they are the first creatures ever created by the great wolf, and because of this belief, her pack thinks that all primal gray wolves are superior to all other creatures and that if they help anything that is not a primal gray wolf, especially if it's a dog since they are too much like wild wolves, they will lose favor with great wolf – though peaceful and thoughtful apparently do not believe that superstition, though they still believe in the great wolf. storm takes the rabbits and accidentally heads deeper into still-water territory (not paying attention because she was deep in thought about how the still-water pack's ways are similarly strict and rigid ways to sweet's pack), causing her to be attacked and given her third and final warning, and the fourth warning will be death - they also take the killed rabbits. storm runs back to arrow and bella's pack, telling bella what happened. she then discusses her suspicions about breeze with bella, and bella tells her that, before anyone in sweet's pack truly ever knew about her and arrow's romantic relationship, she overheard breeze talking to someone (whom bella assumes was rake), calling one of the fierce dogs, who bella thought at first was arrow but storm thinks meant herself, a dirty longpaw fang and a murderer (even though she only ever killed evil tyrannical dogs: terror and blade). the next day, storm wakes up on a cloudy morning and sees that the eastern sky has turned red from the cloud-blocked rising sun. seeing this as a sign from the sky-dogs that sweet's pack is still in danger from breeze, she later, as the clouds clear, says goodbye to bella, arrow, nip and scramble and sets off, promising that if she does not return to their little pack in 10 days, they can come searching for her, and they will pray to the noble spirit-dogs for hope. as storm travels back to sweet's pack's camp, she thinks about all the evidence and realizes that it makes sense that breeze, since she seemed to be absent during the crimes and due to the fact that she used to be one of terror's underlings, is the traitor. at one point on the way back to sweet's pack, storm enters the territory of rake's pack (dart is none too happy to see her), tells them that she is basically a loner now and asks rake, ruff and woody specifically more about breeze, and she is told that back in terror's pack, breeze was one member who always followed terror's orders without question, and she strangely enjoyed doing it. after storm departs, she registers that breeze, as the unknown crime-committing dog, has mostly been targeting dogs who were involved with terror's death (storm herself, as well as moon, twitch, bella and lucky). when she arrives back near sweet's pack's territory, she hides in a bush and tries to figure out a way to ambush breeze. the next day, after a nightmare, storm spots lucky, snap and mickey heading off on a hunting trip with breeze as their scout-dog; breeze heads off to patrol further along alone, giving storm a chance. when breeze runs off to scout good hunting spots, storm chases her down. breeze stops in a meadow and turns towards storm, expecting her. storm accuses her of being the traitor, and breeze confirms her suspicions. breeze tells storm that the reason why she did all these crimes was because she wanted revenge against every dog who was involved with terror's death, saying that she has always been the only other dog who understood the fear-dog, as well as ignite general chaos by also murdering cub fire. she tells storm that she killed whisper because he wouldn't stop praising storm and that she killed bruno because he realized storm was innocent. she even purposefully wanted lucky and sweet's pups to drown in the endless lake by telling them that endless lake/wind-dog fable she made up, as a way of targeting lucky but with trauma. as for when she said that she was attacked by a dog she was too scared to identify, breeze had actually beat herself up purposefully to make it look like she was innocent. she then bites her own shoulder and cries for help, making it look like storm harmed her, leading to storm being captured and accused. she is brought back to sweet's pack's camp by breeze, lucky, mickey and snap, where she states that breeze is the traitor and states some evidence. breeze suggests that storm must be mad, hallucinating while possibly committing the recent crimes, and suggests that they blind storm, but sweet decides to keep storm hostage for a night until it is decided what they do with her. she is escorted into the alpha den. shortly after, sunshine comes in with a brush rabbit leg for storm, and tells her that she believes her and that she is not the only one who believes her, giving storm some hope.
survivors (novel series)