Sierra Hills el condor pasa

for @Felix!

She should have turned back. There was much work to do for the fledgling Aurora Heights, and many of her duties waited on her to return. By now Kyna might have even made it home after she descended the Heights to run whatever leadership errand she was running, and it made the inky yearling feel guilty to imagine her red-coated Leader finding Iyes missing when she got back to the plateau. Despite of that feeling, Iyes simply could not stop her legs from propelling her forward through the Vale, moving ceaselessly to soothe an ache which wouldn't release from her bones.

And now she found herself here: at the base of a very different mountain from the one she should have been facing. Canting her muzzle to one side Iyes sized the red rock up with a curious glimmer in her bright eyes. Even the healthy dusting of winter snow had turned a shade of orange as the red dust seeped into the precipitate. Steep and unfriendly crags looked back upon her in every direction, causing the she-wolf to knit her brows in deep thought. The inhospitable slope might have suggested to another wolf that they ought to turn around - but not Iyes, oh no, she took its challenge as an invitation. Besides, it felt good to have a tangible problem to fixate on for a few hours and ignore the turmoil she felt brewing in her heart.

Rising on to her hind legs Iyes placed one front paw against the steep surface ahead of her, roving the rock with her dark nose to see if she could find a scent trail of any kind, wolf or prey, that might lead her to a path already built into the rock. But she found a great lot of nothing, which seemed to be a common theme through the entire area. This place was positively abandoned. Solitude rested on her black-furred shoulders comfortably, reminded that before she had been an Aurora wolf she had been on her own for a long while. She could find a way up this mountain with just her own brain - of that, Iyes was certain.

She continued to search.

Well, it certainly wasn’t a forest, not was it anything like the weird cave system he’d explored with Mathuin, but there was still something alluring about the red sands. Perhaps the color was enough to delight the senses after months and months of nothing but white snow reflecting the sun back into his eyes. Or perhaps it was the strange cracks and complete lack of vegetation, dormant or otherwise. In any event, Felix found a great deal of his melancholy lifted as he bounced from ledge to ledge like wily little goat, enjoying his lack of responsibilities for the freedom that it was.

That was the point of leaving the pack, wasn’t it? See the world, enjoy the world – understand things that he might make a better choice when he reached adulthood. And with all the chaos going on back at Grizzle Hollow—

The wolf shook his head, determined not to spoil his own fun with dark thoughts. Eyes settled on a dark shape further across the hills and he started his descent, eager to meet the stranger. Talking to someone else was (usually) better than letting his thoughts run wild, and he offered the dark wolf a small wolf as he approached. “Hello! Hi! Are you from around here?”

Shallow water has trapped several fish in a small pond. Hunt Opportunity

Hello, hi! Someone called at her, drawing her attention instantly from the red rock she roved to the direction of the sound. With a curious shine glimmering in her firey stare she watched the male approach, descending down a path through the hills that she hadn't yet seen. Her dark tail gave a friendly wag as she dropped back down to four legs and stepped closer. Her eyes trailed upward from his silver stilt-like legs and ending up on his odd-eyed gaze. Immediately she wanted to ask him to take her up there, but the polite thing to do would be to answer his question first (probably).

"No, I'm from the other mountain. You know - the cold one," she suggested with a shrug of her shoulders, not bothering to look back in the direction from which she'd came. Guilt was still resting on top of her skull like a crooked crown but she found that by looking upon her conversational counterpart she was able to ignore it a bit better. Lifting her chin up slightly, she fixed him with a wide and friendly grin. "I'm Iyes. What's your name?"

As she spoke she worked her way around his side, balancing her fixation with the trail he'd coe from with a couple of glances spared in his direction to make sure he knew she was still paying attention. She just couldn't help the way that the mountain paths called to her - even if this mountain was significantly different from the one she'd taken up residence on. Questions rattled on the inside of her teeth and eventually she couldn't contain them anymore. Iyes was usually not so chatty with complete strangers, but he seemed to know things that she wanted to know. "Are you from here? How'd you get up the mountain?" She asked.

adopt thea?

Well, no. He didn’t quite know. In his travels, Felix had (more or less) managed to skirt the most of the slopes. Sure, there was no true way around the mountainsides completely, but he certainly hadn’t submitted Mount Dire in full. At least the girl was friendly – and if he was gauging it correctly, she seemed to be about the same age. His tail gave a little wag. “My name is Felix. Felix Macieo,” he introduced himself. Fear of strangers was nothing something instilled into him, especially strangers who seemed so open and friendly themselves.

After all, Mathuin had been nice!

Thankfully, she wasn’t going to leave all the talking to him. He could carry a conservation, but two very opinionated sisters had made him a better listener than anything else. “Oh, no – I’m from Grizzly Hollow. It’s on the other side of the mountain. It belongs to my dad? But, uhm… Things got really weird there and my dad said I was old enough to go look around the world, so I did.” That summed it up pretty well, right? Without going into the nitty gritty. Iyes probably didn’t want to hear about all the weird, dirty laundry anyways. “Oh…up there?”

It wasn’t really a big deal. He shrugged, uncertain why the swarthy female seemed so impressed. “I met another wolf on my way. We were racing up hills and stuff. So…practice? I guess? Do you wanna go up?”

"Oh," Iyes responded with a furrowed brow, trying to digest his experience. How weird could things have been that he got permission to take off and do whatever he wanted? She certainly wasn't allowed far from her mother's sight when she had been-- the inky she-wolf's trail of thought came to an abrupt halt when she realized she - and subsequently her age mate companion - were no longer kids anymore. But she had been on her own for quite some time now. Maybe getting permission to wander the world from your parents was the regular thing to do. She recalled her conversation with Vesper, and the casual remark about brothers' behavior, like an inside joke for all the pups of the world except Little Orphan Iyes. Not wanting to feel like she'd missed out on some amazing thing again, she didn't ask Felix any questions about Grizzly Hollow.

The subject was left be for the silver-coated youth to give a casual toss of his shoulders like it was no big deal to get up the red rock mountain. Iyes pursed her lips into a tight line at his nonchalance and even tighter when he said they were practicing... running? Was that another thing she was supposed to know about but clearly didn't? Apprehension shielded her bright eyes as she looked away, ashamed to be so naive - and was quickly squandered when the odd-eyed wolf offered to take her up.

"Yeah!" She quipped, nearly hopping with excitement as she lifted her amber eyes from the ground. Other transgressions forgotten, she attempted to reel herself in as she paced toward the slope. "I mean, if you could, that would be really cool. We could even um, practice, or whatever." The grin that had blossomed across her face turned slightly apologetic, casting a glance over her shoulder. "But I gotta be honest, Felix, I don't really know what that means."

adopt thea?

It was to Felix’s great relief that Iyes did not question him any further – he had no idea she didn’t grow up in a pack. For all she didn’t want to miss out, the gangly silver male didn’t want to explain to wolves with a normal family what his was like. It became increasingly clear to him that most other yearlings did not have the same childhood experiences, nor did anyone else’s pack have three incoming litters. But his new friend wasn’t dwelling on it, and if he didn’t stop, surely she’d leave him behind.

“Practice?” He tipped his head to one side. Did the swarthy female not know what the word meant, or what practicing climbing meant? Felix had no idea how to define the word. He hummed quietly. “Well, it’s like, when you do something for the sake of getting better at it. Like, um, I’m not a very good hunter. And so I’d go out with the older wolves and they’d show me how and I’d sorta…try. I guess. To do chasing and stuff. It wasn’t great but at least I learned something?”

Realizing he was rambling on, he cut himself off with a small shrug. He didn’t cover the second half of that, though. “Uhm – so for the hills, I guess, I lived somewhere really flat, you know? So the hills we were racing up were really small. And these are a little bigger. It’s like not just climbing the mountain right away. And since these are all sandy and weird, do the little ones first. Then the big ones. Make sense?”

He really hoped it made sense.

Iyes knew what the word practice meant in practice (lol) but weren't there some things that no one had to teach you - that it was just wolf to do? His attempted explanation touched on her own ideation. "Yeah, but how do you try to climb better? Or run better? Don't you just kinda... know how?" Sure, Heigen was teaching her how to be a Guardian, but wolves weren't just born Guardians. Iyes pretty much knew how to climb all over her mother the moment she emerged from her backside, and was running circles around Thea the instant she could. "And we don't even have any older wolves to show us how to..." She trailed off again, realizing that he hadn't just meant wolves who were older but wolves who were part of his pack. The adults who were supposed to take care of the young. Like Iyes was going to do for Kyna's cubs. Like no one had done for her.

One dark ear twitched uncomfortably, looking upon the silvery boy like the needle that he was to her extremely limited bubble of experiences. There were some really freakin' huge gaps in her knowledge and she did not like the frequency with which they were being exposed to her. But there was nothing she could do besides soothe her own ego internally, and hope Felix didn't think she was an absolute idiot. Iyes cleared her throat and tried to produce something knowledgable to add to the conversation. "The mountain where I live gets kind of steep really fast, but it's not hard to get up because you have lots of rocks and trees and dirt." Getting a grip climbing the foothills to Aurora Heights was way easier than getting a grip on this life Felix had lived so far.

"Makes sense." Iyes slowed as they approached a sandy slope, much like the one Felix had just described. Confidently she strode forward, reaching with one forepaw to place all her weight into the sandy bank and nearly collapsed forward when it gave way beneath her weight. Stumbling to catch herself the inky she-wolf looked helplessly back toward her companion. "Uuuuhhhh," she went, her expression contorted into one of confusion. Did he have an explanation for this weird ground?

adopt thea?

If Felix could read thoughts, he might have corrected her. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so bad. It was another loner he’d been practicing with, after all, and besides Tyne (and his father, a bit), no one had taught the youth much of anything. Largely, anything he knew was learned through trial and error – or something he’d attempted with Mathuin. But he couldn’t read minds – and given the state of his home when he left it, probably didn’t want to – so instead he was left to listen to Iyes as she explained her home. Which, quite frankly, sounded utterly fascinating.

“You live on the mountain?” he murmured, brows lifting a bit. “It’s so tall! I kinda…decided to go around it, instead. But, uhm. This is a little different, yeah.” He moved towards the swarthy female’s side, glancing down at the red sands when she stumbled and started to sink. Maybe she should have mentioned that? Felix gave a sheepish shrug. “Uhm, yeah. It does that. I dunno why, but it does. So far, I’ve just been going as fast as I can? Does that make sense? Like, the slower you go, the easier it is for it to slide away from you. I’m not sure if that’s the best method, but it works.”

Until he got tired, anyways.

Iyes grinned and wagged her tail like it was her own person receiving Felix's reverence, and not the expansive precipice which she called her home. Her roots had crashed right through the rock, clutching the Heights with all her homeless might, and so she could not help but internalize the plateau, become one with the plateau, and appreciate the other's appreciation of her the plateau. "It is so tall," she agreed, lifting her chin in exasperation. "Getting down the mountain took forever but going up - I mean - let's just say you can spend way more time 'taking a break' than actually trekking up it if you let yourself." Iyes didn't do that anymore. She wanted to become a beefy beefcake like Heigen and so she needed to train her Guardian-to-be muscles. The mountain was great for that.

She nearly thought to ask Felix if he was able to tell she had baby muscles yet, maybe invite him to the gun show and flex those shoulders a little bit, if it weren't for the mischievous ground they had to traverse. Her amber eyes continued to seek an answer the Maceio youth could not provide, but he offered instead a method to compete with the slippery slopes. Furrowing her brow in thought she let her gaze slip back toward her offended paw, lifting it from where it lay buried beneath the red sand. "Go... fast," she parroted after him, totally not understanding the physics of it but willing to give it a go anyway. With a soft grunt she propelled herself up the sandy slope, keeping a fleet foot and a strict trajectory. Weirdly enough, it worked. Like the less time she took between steps, the less time she had to sink in. After a few meters of it she paused to grin at her companion.

"You're a genius," she conceded with a bright laugh. Appreciation for his intellectual generosity overshadowed her earlier jealousy of his own experiences, prompting the inky girl to divulge a tidbit of truth deeper than she usually would. "Thanks for telling me things," she said. "Cause uh, I wasn't born into a pack - in fact, it was just me and my mom and my sister. So I didn't have a lot of others to teach me things, and I'm just now realizing how... dumb I am." Her ears slicked back against her head, hateful to admit how often she was naive. Though it didn't feel so bad at Felix's side.

adopt thea?