A half cocked ear twitched, catching the sound of Enya departing the area she shared with her children. Well, sometimes. Sekhmet seemed to frequent the area less and less as time went on. But Ripper could not be bothered to explore the way his sister often did. He was comfortable where he was. Enya kept them well fed during their first year, and she had long since begun to teach them hunting methods. Still, Ripper did not mind allowing his mother to feed him. It did not hurt his pride or make him feel inadequate. He just wasn't really made for running fast over long distances, like one needed to do to chase large prey. Small animals were easy enough - he could pack a punch over a short distance. Even so, if he didn't get what he was trying for on the first try he was just as likely to give up and let Enya bring him dinner than try again.

In any case, Ripper managed to lift his head from where it lay to watch her go, tracking her movement as she made her way up and out of the valley. That was...odd. She did not tend to leave the valley often. Laying his head back down, he considered dozing off and enjoying an afternoon nap. But something itched at the back of his mind and he lifted his head again, black ears pricking forward as he looked to the place where she had disappeared. Huffing out a groan of sorts, he rolled onto his sternum and then rose to his feet. Shaking out his tricolored pelt, he set off at a jog, following the path his mother had, but in no real hurry to catch up to her.

More than once, Ripper considered abandoning the idea of trailing her in favor of...well pretty much anything that didn't involve trekking across Moladion for who knew what reason. However, he kept at it and eventually found himself on the banks of an unfamiliar lake. The boy had not done much traveling in his first year of life. Everything he needed could be found in the valley. So why was he doing this again? The trail of his mother's scent brought him to a large tree near the lakeshore, but when he approached he found that she was not alone. Brows furrowed, finding this an odd thing indeed, and he kept his distance. But as he circled out in front of the pair of wolves, it became immediately apparent to the boy who this wolf was. If it hadn't been the sheer mass of the wolf laying near to Enya that give it away, the black markings Ripper had so obviously inherited from this male were the clincher. "Hmph." The sound was emitted as the young male folded his hindquarters beneath him, sitting directly in front of his parents with approximately two wolf lengths separating them.

Though their small family of three was not one of many words, Ripper was more likely to form a full sentence than his littermate. His lackadaisical attitude about life had meant that when he was lazing near the water hole or under a tree, he didn't raise any suspicions in other passerby's. And so he had the luxury of listening in on their conversations - if he chose to pay enough attention. Aloof the boy might be, but he was intelligent. "So, I'm your son. Ripper, that is," he said, lazily rolling onto a hip as he sat, watching the unknown entity that was his father, a single black ear cocked towards his mother. Was this really what they'd come all this way for?