Windsong Fjord Trendsetters

@Bennet

It had been a few weeks since she last snuck out. She wasn't even sure anyone knew about the last time she came this way at all but she wanted to play it safe, sucking up each encounter she was forced to endure with the brown woman. She was still curious about the boy the birds liked to pick on, but if he was her age, then who was to say there weren't morewolves out there like her? She wanted to meet them all!

Knowing that her encounters in the tundra had only resulted in her meeting older wolves (and usually getting them in trouble with her mother or Askan), instead, she headed south again, past the now depleted berry bush and on to where the ground began to slope upwards. Trees began to give way to smaller shrubs and stunted growth, the ground began to grow rocky. The foreign landscape caught her imagination in a way the trees and tundra no longer did. Dark paws were lifted to match her adventurous mood, a rock to scale here, a small crack crevasse to avoid there. She daring leapt from one side to the other, a reckless smile working its way onto her face. Nobody could stop her now!

It was a lot easier to wander far without that heavily-define pack border to encourage you to stay back, a clear sign which said you should go no further. Bennet had rarely left the confines and safety of Hearthwood due to it, though not really because she had been intimidated into staying, or overly obedient. Looking back, she couldn't explain it herself. It was just that the act of exploring, of pushing  boundaries, wasn't one of her core drivers. She had been able to satisfy all her needs well within the pack's territory, her desires of watching the birds overhead and listening to her mother and father's stories - not that she had known what he was at the time. In fact, the only times she had ever left Hearthwood had mostly been in pursuit of @Kjors. Her world had been simpler back then.

Without the implicit fence to keep her in, though, her feet took her further than ever before just because there was nothing to stop her, to remind her to turn back. That was largely down to the rumbles in her stomach which prompted her to return to her parents for feeding, still unable to sustain herself, as well as when something happened to remind her of her mother, and the words of warnings and love would come flooding back and she'd turn around and head back to the Veil so that @Karina wouldn't worry. Her mother had enough worries without adding Bennet's whereabouts to them.

The lack of any reminder to turn around had led the little black dragon to this strange place, where she had see from afar how a great tear ripped the earth in two halves, the world plunging down into a place she couldn't see, even when descending from the mountain. Onwards she had trotted, around the eastern side of the springs, of the pack they had encountered last time, recalling parts of the land from the journey herself and her mother had made when coming down this way - and taking care to avoid any of the wolves who had found them last time. Bennet had no interest in keeping company, she just wanted to walk. Before long the sides of the fjord rose up either side of her, the river to her right, and she gazed up at the sloping walls of grass and snow and tree in quiet awe and admiration.

And then movement caught her eye, so out of place in this silent, still land, and she paused.

A wolf in the distance, leaping about among the rocks. A small wolf, she realised - small like herself. It was difficult to determine the colour, exactly, but they was some kind of dark shade, like Bennet herself... nothing like @Atropos or @Kyrios, whose whiteness had always stood in as stark a contrast to Bennet as their attitudes had been. The sad cries of her siblings sprung into her mind unbidden, and she frowned, ears flicking back in discomfort, and pushed it down. But while their whining quietened, a small tightness had manifested in her chest, the thought that Ky and Atty used to play like that, and that was what encouraged her forward.

The other small wolf was black and brown, nearly like her, but with no pale marks on her back, and the sunlight seemed to reflect almost red off her pelt. Bennet never saw any colours like that in her own. She opened her mouth but nothing came out so she closed it again - but finding her own hesitation pitiful and pointless, took a few more bold steps forward until the other girl couldn't miss her. "What are you doing?"

There is a deer that was killed by a lynx nearby. +10 Health

Her sudden movements had stirred up a late season grasshopper. She bounded after it with carefree abandon, teeth snapping at the air as it hopped from stone to stone in an attempt to flee its furry pursuer. She was sure she would catch it this time! But her steps faltered as a voice cut through the relative silence and her practice prey managed to get away. For a moment she dared to think that perhaps it was the grasshopper that had questioned her, but then when she thought on it more, the sound had come from the wrong direction and had seemed far too loud to have come from such a tiny mouth.

She looked, one way, and then the other, finally spotting the other dark girl. An embarrassed smile made its way to her face as her tail waved sheepishly. "Just exploring, I was chasing a hopper but he got away. Do you live around here?" she asked casually taking a few steps closer to the stranger. "I'm Phoenix but everyone just calls me Percy," she introduced herself with a grin, wondering if this girl lived with the boy from the berry bush. Surely his pack was around here somewhere right?

(This post was last modified: Nov 18, 2016, 10:43 PM by Phoenix.)

For a moment Bennet wasn't sure if the girl had heard her, for the other had glanced about in the wrong direction as if distracted by a more important sound elsewhere - but then her eyes found the little black dragon and the sudden smile on her face made Bennet's chest constrict weirdly. @Kyrios used to look like that when she'd caught him doing something silly.

Bennet stood still as the girl stepped forward, answering the question with a barrage of her own, or at least it felt like it - and then there was a name and a nickname and Bennet's mouth hung open for a moment before she caught herself, taken off-guard by the girl's easy and friendly manner, her effortless grin. Having been asked a direct question, she was utterly distracted away from offering her own name, and there was a more pressing curiosity besides: "Just near the mountain. What's a hopper?"

It seemed as though the other girl was as surprised as she was to find someone out here, especially someone close to her own age. "It's a bug, with long legs that jumps around, but it's also got wings so sometimes it flies away. I ate one once, it wasn't terrible but they're so tiny it's hardly worth the effort..." Oh she was running her mouth again, but this was the second wolf she had met who was close to her own age! How exciting was it!? For the longest time, she had thought that there were only old wolves everywhere - Jeebie that came to try and keep her out of the rain, her parents and Askan (and those other two weirdos)... But no! It seemed the world to the south of her home was filled with wolves that were just like her!

Fiery eyes turned on the mountain before her, it's imposing height enough to make the flatland girl quake. She was getting vertigo just from looking at it, she couldn't imagine actually looking down from up there. Some of her queasiness must have showed on her face and she began to run her mouth again with abandon. "I couldn't imagine living on a mountain, where I live everything is flat," she turned her head to gesture over her shoulder, to give her companion a general idea of where she had come from, "The trees stop and you can see forever."

A bug? Just like Bennet, it seemed that the girl couldn't turn away a direction question, though she offered far more detail than the dragon would have thought to. The similarities to her milk-mates kept coming, the sense of energy that never quite reached herself. She'd thought that maybe that was just what Ky and Atty were like, because of their different parents, but what was the chance of this totally unrelated girl being the same way...? Maybe it was Bennet who was different.

The girl's eyes lifted to the mountain behind Bennet, but the little dragon didn't follow her gaze, too caught up in watching this stranger who reminded her of too many things. Unfortunately for the socially stunted child, there was no question among the observations, only new facts, so she had nothing easy to grasp onto. She felt pulled by silence, her unchattiness of no help to her right now because she wanted to know more. In the end she just followed the other girl's lead, because that seemed like the safest route... even if she still managed to make it a little weird. Not that she noticed anything wrong. "I'm Bennet. My parents call me Bennet. Where do you live?"

(This post was last modified: Jan 02, 2017, 07:27 PM by Bennet.)

Percy's tail took up another wave as the girl introduced herself too. Bennet, just Bennet. She supposed not everyone had a nickname and that was okay too. Maybe she would have make one up for her? Her low "Hmm," was cut short when she was posed a question of her own. "Umm, back that way, a long way back that way..." She admitted with a hint of concern. "If you follow the mountain all the way north until the hills dissapear then head the direction the sun sets for a bit and theres long yellow grass and I live there." She wasn't going to make it home before the sun went down, that much was certain.

Speaking of home was enough to instill a certain amount of guilt in the pup. She hadn't told anyone where she was going, she had even gone so far as to follow the waterways, crossing this way and that knowing it would obscure her tracks if someone thought to try and bring her home. Eyes turned to the sky for a moment, lips quirking down into a frown with a huff. "I should probably start heading back... I didn't tell anyone where I was going..." But she felt awful for trying to cut their encounter short. "Hey Benny, wanna be friends? I promise I'll come back and play again soon!"