She had hesitated to put herself out there.

The past, no matter how she did her best to forget, was haunting. For the most part she was able to remember the good and to dwell on memories that made her happy - it was at night that her demons were roused and given power. When she slept she could not control her mind, and more often than not she was awoken from such slumber with a jolt.

This particular morning had been no different, but it had been just the jolt she needed to get moving. Hush had not gone far from their densite, but this day dawned differently. Whether it was boredom or a sheer desperation to escape her thoughts Hush found her paws carrying her south. Jericho had mentioned a nearby pack and she half-hoped she might run in to somebody new. For many months it had been only herself and her dark coated friend, and while she was afraid of new company she also craved it.

At the creek she stopped, bright eyes riveted on the flowing water. She could see the silver flashes of fish beneath the surface and could not help herself. With a smile she slunk forward and hovered over the water, biding her time until the perfect moment. In a sudden flurry of movement and loud splash of water the moon coated girl emerged with a flapping fish. Quick steps were taken back before she dropped the creature and tore in to it, effectively ending its life and satiating her hunger at the same time.

With a contented sigh she flopped down and continued to chew on the fish, unaware that the company she sought lingered so nearby.

Hush was happily chomping away on her fish when a sound reached her ears, and not merely the babbling of the nearby brook. No, it was decidedly lupine this sound, and caused the pale female to lift her head and peer about most curiously. She was not frightened - there was very little that any rogue could do that she hadn't already lived through (bad shanon!) - and instead quite interested to see who might have come to join her. Despite all the bad she had faced in the world there was still quite the positivity living in her heart, no matter how hard the past months had tried to hammer it out of her.

The stranger who met her eyes was as black as Jericho, and immediately she was reminded of her dear friend. They had a unique relationship, one that stretched back many years, and she was quite happy that they had managed to stick together for as long as they had. Jericho was likely off exploring some other nook of this new world, and no doubt they would reuinite in the later hours of the evening.

The similarities ended at coat color, though, for this strange bore eyes of a fiery hue, not anything like the peaceful blue of her long time friends. Nonetheless she greeted him with a small and a small wag of her tail, pulling her petite body up to a sitting position. This movement would reveal the more ghastly of her scars, the knotted thing that ran across her neck, but she seemed not to think of it nor truly care. Hush had long, long ago accepted it as a part of her, just as she had accepted the whisper voice she used to greet him with. "Be my guest," she offered, with a surprisingly happy smile, "the fish are a plenty today!" Truly they were, for she could still see the silver flashes of scaley bodies, despite them losing one of their own mere moments ago.

It seemed to dawn on her quite abruptly, the fact that she was actually speaking with somebody other than Jericho. Her gaze dropped rather nervously, and she felt her heart skip around in her breast. She imagined he would not know what to think if he could hear it, and she tried to convince herself that she was being mighty foolish. What did it matter that it had been months since she had spoken to anybody other than her friend? What difference did it make? He was being kind and friendly, so why did she feel so suddenly afraid? It was a struggle to swallow this back, to maintain the grip she had been building up. The nightmares were tucked safe away in the dark, and there was no reason for her to be shy.

The pale female turned her gaze to the water as she fought with her thoughts and wrestled to keep the past where it belonged. There was no need for her to ruin a perfectly good meeting, and so when she finally looked back to Inkheart it was with a calm determination.

"Hush," she answered finally, her whisper voice so perfectly matched to her name that her lips turned up in a wry smile. Her gaze dropped as she struggled with her feelings of nervousness, her tail coiled tightly around her paws as if it might protect her all the more. "Do you live near here?" Her question, too, was a whisper, and it would truly be a miracle if he was able to hear her over the babble of the creek.

Her head turned instinctively in the direction he gestured, her curiosity piqued as he named his pack. It had been near a half year since she had left Sterrenvuur and since then she had been a pack of two alongside Jericho. To an outsider they might seem a mated pair that preferred the isolation, rather than the ragtag pair that they truly were. It was sheer coincidence that had brought her and Jer together again, and while she was thankful that she had him for as long as she did she sensed that they would soon join a pack of their own. Her company would not likely be enough to satiate him for long, and one day if she was so fortunate she wanted to have a family. It was something she would not be able to find with Jericho alone, though once upon a time her heart might have ached to do so. Time changed things, and in this case it was for the better.

"Pretty name," she mused, finding great beauty in the pack named after the flower. She wondered what it was like there, if it was as close knit as Sterrenvuur had been, and then shook her head to clear the questions that clouded her mind. "My friend and I have a den not far from here," she offered finally, though she was sure it was likely to spur more questions. She had no pack name to give him in return, though, and so this was what she settled on for now. The words were accompanied with the ghost of her smile, an indication that she was, in fact, becoming more comfortable in his company.

Hush, though of the same goal as Inkheart, shared a terribly different past. She craved family if only because it was robbed from her when she was so tiny, no more than a babe. The slaughter of her family and her subsequent struggles as a lone wolf had isolated her far more than she had wanted. The nights alone had struck fear deep in to her heart, stealing away her bravery along with her voice. In Silver Creek she had found herself again, and yet for all the travels she had made and the packs she had contributed to, Hush had not found love.

There had been only one - Weldering. He had come and gone so quickly from her life, yet he had left his mark. He had given her hope, a promise of things she had so long ached for, and a feelign of love and acceptance that she had not even known she craved. She missed him more than most, and feared that with him went her last chance at true family. She was not as young as she used to be, and she was scarred and beaten. What wolf would truly find beauty in her?

Ah but she had hope, still. For all her doubts and worries. Hope burned deep in her heart, beyond all the layers of scar tissue. "As strange as it sounds, I am not sure." Hush rolled her shoulders in a helpless shrug as she offered a whispered explanation. "Jericho has not decided yet, I don't believe, and I imagine I'll go where he goes." He had kept her safe thus far, and it would not feel right parting ways just yet. That was not to say she could not be persuaded, or perhaps led astray, were the right wolf to cross her path.