He was cold as the moon. The wind pushed him through the valley like white-water current. If he was water, he was the coldest water, the kind that almost freezes from the oppression of what surrounds it. Cold enough to be coagulated blood. Hudson had lived in colder places, felt chill far beyond this kind. Somehow this felt different in his head, just lingering there like the sharp edge of a knife in his chest. His mind spinning somewhere beyond that, utterly numb. It was depression doing this to him. He could have told himself that. There was nothing like the thought of moving forward because there's nothing else to think about but what you've left behind. He just stands dully in the moment of his past, right after the climactic event of a murder, standing hollower than a witness.

He stands at the doorway of two tree trunks, halts somberly in their blue shadow and sits under the high, bony branches. Hudson passes a shiver through his mind, tucks his tail around his legs, catlike. He gazes out into the cupped land, knackered eyes pressed dreadfully in his snowy skull. There's dread in every blink, every shadow and highlight cast by the frozen full moon. He watches it drift over the sky like someone who's looking for an old friend in the pitch black, with only light from their hopeful eyes drifting over the ground.

"It is sad here," he whispers, watching the white words wrap around in the wind, utterly true.

From that doorway of dead taiga trees Hudson watches something red flicker under the blue of the moonlight. Coyote he thinks, but realizes quickly the larger shape of a wolf in the ravine. He breathes in inanimate air, feels it curl around deep in his lungs as he freezes to pure marble. The scent is female and he relaxes a little, softening the brown of his eyes around her frame. The moonlight accents her health and her excitement, she's also spotted him, perhaps before his eyes claimed her. Hudson stands, tail waving slowly in the breeze. Everything about him is empty, motionless except the delight he can't hide from his eyes. After months of living in the prison of his memories, a beam of light slips through and touches him, sings him warm again. Even for just the slightest moment of interaction, a part of him is lost in the footprints that brought him, buried shallow beneath the surface of the present. With this, he knows it is bound to return, fears the slip of the end as soon as it begins. Naturally, Hudson blinds himself from the haunting truth that's been looming over him this whole way, with the only thing he can see: the sliver of hope, the one chance to speak.

Her voice croons out to him like a promise, something warm and welcoming and bright. He clears this throat, makes way in the tear-stained alley for a genuine holler of ecstasy. Huck gathers himself, keeping his gaze pointed at Vaeta while he picks his way down the ravine. His heart rattles like a tin can in his chest, kicked up by the wind and tossed into motion for the first time in a while. There is nothing more astonishing than the soul and how it never ceases to bloom at the right moment, just before it can completely dwindle away in the turmoil of hope, opening up to the brightest morning of opportunity. Hudson blooms right here at midnight, pale as the flower of death, pleading for a healing rain. Just as the younger woman comes close range, he stops and yields to her, wary of what she might bring.

The crossroad yields to him instead, waits like cautious prey does with stunned eyes and heavy instinct in shallow moments of calculation. Hudson doesn't want to make the wrong move, so he doesn't move at all and watches the fearless girl gambol forth, untamed. She unravels like a dust storm, bold as the connection of the wind. He lifts his head cautiously, more out of sheer surprise than anything else. Mildly concerned about her... forwardness. Maybe he was just stuck in the coagulation of being frozen, in mind and soul, but something about the brightness in her... It makes him uneasy. He melts a little under the suspense of her movement, keeping a tentative eye on her expression. Hudson is not willingly fooled into these kinds of tricks and malicious elements of tease. But something about her, and the sugary expression in her honeyed eyes is beyond the coldness of the landscape, the coldness of him. He feels warm to see her. Something within his heart thaws at just the color of her. He doesn't have the slightest clue why.

Someone else stirs in the hands of the moonlight, flickers before his eyes like a glinting flare. Hudson narrows his gaze down on the fallen star, watches her burn into view, hesitant and vigilant, unlike any flame he'd ever seen. He glances to Vaeta, listening to her words in one ear and the rustle of the second fiery approach in the other.

'I'm so happy to see you,' she says at once,  catching his full attention again.

"What," he blurts, bringing his eyes back to her face with polite caution, his mind relocating to the second female. Is this an ambush, he muses, his face growing more pallid and tense by the second. Rose eyes refocus, shifting back out into the sea of blackness to that one beacon of red on down the slight incline. He'd be an easy target out here, carelessly roaming the moors like this, not even halting to check the boundary scents of a territory. Hell, he'd been so damn delirious he could have easily wandered into unwelcoming borders, now tested for his lunacy by the sweethearts complacent enough to rip his throat out. He swallows, quickly regretting the urge to speak, to even breathe one visible breath in the space between them. He draws a step backward, gradually moving his vision back to where he came for one last glimpse of an exit he thought surely to be safe. He returns his nervous gaze to the two meddlers twice as fast, letting out one cool, uncontrolled huff of breath.

"I mean, it's nice to meet you too..." he mentions nervously (a false attempt at holding his tension at bay) keeping his eyes back and forth on the two females, heart sinking through the bottom of his chest.