Scavenger

Orchid

Delicate flower, she ain't. So when Mickey, the oldest and thus leader of her kid pack, kicked her out she wasn't a whole lot of upset. But enough sunrises on your own in the desert can addle a person. She knew the stories about the crackpot hermits who forget about people and talk to cactus, name them Nelson, and are just generally creepy, and she didn't want to end up like that. Close upon that realization is when she saw the first kid she'd seen since her banishing: Lena. This powerhouse little girl-kid, bristling with weapons, was sittin tall up on a horse, and the four adults she was travelling with weren't talking down at her or ordering her about or anything. Obviously, she was worth checking out. That was how it started. Together, Orchid and Lena got into stuff, and explored caves, and solved a mystery, and saved some peoples' things from stealin. Being helpful was okay and all, but being around a pack again reminded Orchid how much she missed her huge, dirty, rowdy family. And the mystery led right back to them too. While she'd been out on her own, some bad adult types with big guns had showed up and run her pack away from their hunting grounds. They holed up in some caves for shelter, but exhausted the game supply pretty fast and then turned to stealing on a big scale to survive. The new leader, Jacob, was all for slowly starving in their hidey-hole while filching what they could and getting the Law all worked up, but the Lawman who rode with Lena declared that what the bad men had done wasn't right and doing unto them what they had done sounded good to him. Well, that sounded darn good to Orchid too. The thought of taking back her home territory, and earning her way back, lit a fire under her that even a terrifying ride on a motorcycle couldn't damp. When it all went down, with bullets, bolts, and Lena's shiny stars whizzing about, Orchid was plenty scared, but kept her head and wisely directed what kids of the pack had turned out for the fight. And Jacob was right when he said himself he wasn't a leader, because even having twice her age he couldn't have done what she did cause he's forever thinking only of defense. What her pack was missing was someone like Mickey, except smarter and a damn sight more caring, to defend and protect them while Jacob gets on with the raising of them. Now that Orchid had seen death, been a part of dealin it, she knew she could be what they needed. So although she had really wanted to go on playing and travelling with Lena, her loyalty called her to stay. (And Lena had been talking about leaving the desert anyway, and no how would Orchid follow them out there.)