Leaving the Winding Weald with all its twists and turns in a forest that seemed to change at every hour of the day had been easy; surviving in a wilderness that was so still that even the winter winds could not make the branches budge was hard. Everywhere he went, it was as if he was the only thing that was moving. For days it was this way and every night, when he laid down to rest, it was as if his surroundings threatened to make him one with the rest of his little campsite. It never bothered Quentin, though, he merely stood up, stretched, and shook out the frost in his coat that dared to try and freeze him in time. Then, once on the move, he never returned to that very spot, leaving behind only a scent trail and a set of tracks that told of his arrival and departure.

Quinlan's third-born child was notorious for his sense of curiosity and how quickly he took inventory of his environment. Once or twice, in his aimless wanderings, he found reasons for which way he ought to go. He had seen this stretch of snow-covered lands from atop of distant hilltop sometime ago and now he was here. It had been startling at first - when he had first stumbled down the sloping hills, he had found that the indents he had left in the snow were red. The earth beneath the frost had merely been exposed where originally he had thought that he had injured himself.

At the base of hillock, he fought to regain his breath, shakily standing back up and looking himself over, particularly at the bottoms of his forepaws where his pawpads had become cracked in places from the ice and cold.

The young man had been so preoccupied in the slit-like scabs in his digits that he had was oblivious to the world around him. In fact, to him, it had been so quiet that when a girlish voice called out to him in question, his body jolted forward like an old steam locomotive. His still lanky legs splayed out before him and his hind legs had folded as if he had meant to sit or brace himself for another slide down the hillside. His head, meanwhile, had immediately turned toward the onlooker with his orange eyes as wide as two smoke-covered suns. Even the whites showed in apparent fright. "Oh!"

He tried to recover himself with a smile, a genial one in the face of an adolescent girl - another wolf. "Hell-o," he half wanted to chuckle to himself at how skittish he had been. The stress it wreaked on his vocal chords made it crack a bit and exaggerated the faint 'twang' of an accent he had acquired from his father. "I, erm..." He looked around himself as if he had misplaced something in the snow. "Nothing," a sheepish grin morphed the expression on his face. "It's slipp'ry 'round here. Be careful." It was probably stupid to say, being at the base of a hill and having already rolled down it and all, but he stated it for her sake. Just in case. After all, he was one of the few who knew chivalry was not yet dead.

In one fluid move he straightened himself to stand at full height as he looked at her, pulling the scent of her pack from her pelt, taking notice of her eyes, and the dark fur that made up her coat. His mud-brown nose wriggled as he mirrored her curiosity. Leaning forward and shifting his weight to his wrists and elbows, however, made him remember the neglect he had wrought upon his paws, "You wouldn't know of a nearby stream would you?"

The small wince that flit across his dark face was barely even noticeable (all it had been, really, was the slight twitch of his lower eyelids), and the girl willingly offered some insight. She knew where he could find a stream if only because she was from around the area. To Quentin, it made sense and her confidence and enthusiasm easily rubbed off on him. "C'mon," she spurred him and down she went down the rest of the way, slowly but surely. His head peered over the gradual incline, his eyes trailing her footsteps to where she stood.

She mentioned that he didn't look dirty. The youth made a face, assuming for a moment that she had been aware of what he wanted the water for until she verbally hit him straight on the nose with another question. For all she knew, perhaps he had wanted to take a bath and temporarily lift the cloud of "dude musk" that had been with him since he had left home. "Well," he inched over the slope with gritted teeth, shoving bits of red earth and snow downward with him. "I think I have something in-between my toes--" A hiss sounded from him as he inhaled sharply, sliding downward a good two feet or so. If anything, and if he had been sharp enough to think of it, keeping his wagging tail still could have helped a bit with his uneasy footing. "Hoping to wash whatever it is away. It was prob'ly bleeding at one point and I didn't notice."

He took a few steps to the side as to follow in her smaller set of tracks down the hillside, "If you don't keep yer owies clean, they get infected you know."

"Hey," she was doing a pretty good job at keeping him on his toes, "are you a medic or something? What else do you know about injuries?" Quentin half-shrugged, his tail waving low at his heels now as they continued scaling down the hill. "Not really, no," he admitted. "But, I can tell you what's a good plant to eat and what berries are poisonous. I can also tell you that solidago is great for toothaches. Had lots of it where I'm from." There was a pause in his train of thought and he stole a few seconds to realize: "Well, it kind of depends what you want to know about injuries."

His breath came in pants as he constantly steeled himself after every other step he took, and when she pointed with her nose to where the nearest creek shimmered in the late afternoon sun, he smiled at her in appreciation. "Why?" he found he couldn't just tell her what he knew without knowing what ulterior motive she might've harbored beneath that dome of stark black fur. He remembered again that this girl belonged to someone; that somewhere out there, there was someone who would be expecting her to come back home when she had had enough of him.

"Do you have a need for one? I mean, I don't know too much about a lot, but I'm not, say, stupid."

He figured that she was fine but, nevertheless, he was glad that she clarified that for him. She tacked on at the end of her statement something that further proved to him that she was quite an independent and rather compassionate soul, "I'm just... worried, ya know?" Quentin's head canted to one side as the stream finally slipped out of view then reemerged closer than he had thought. He hadn't said much in that expanse of time, still much too focused on the pins-and-needles feeling that was attacking the spaces in-between his toes. He slowly left her side and sidled up to where the ice had been broken by some creature before them when her voice flit into his ear again. He had only meant to submerge his forepaws but had already figured that dunking all his paw pads would benefit from the shock of cold water.

"I'm sure you could do the job."

One of his eyebrows rose and his skull straightened as he shook out his right paw after lifting it out of the stream. He was certain now that it might have been a dirt clod that had kept a small sharp pebble stuck in his digits. Before he went to double-check the fur on the underside of his mitt, he cast her a gaze over his shoulder, finding that she seemed rather insistent on the matter of him being able to heal or mend everyday ailments. "Me?" he almost chortled to himself. "Please..." His tone was practically begging her to give up the joke. With a gangly build and happy-go-lucky sort of nature, he was almost sure no one would be willing to trust anyone with the likes of him to take care of their maladies.

Then, all too suddenly, he took on a more sincere tone, "You think so? Really?" He stopped to really consider the idea as he ducked his head down to properly preen the fur between his pads. A few good licks and he plunked it down into the water before raising the other one. "Would you like to be my assistant then?" he hadn't looked at her this time but it was clear in his voice that he was still talking to her rather than seeming all caught up in his forepaw and he worn pads he was picking at with his teeth. If she was so keen on the idea, then perhaps offering her something in return would be something of a fair trade... and kiddos liked having yearling-things to do, right?