Spectral Woods have heart

January 26th; Morning; Cloudy; 22 ° F, -5 ° C.

Ever since the frost had begun to coat the leaves in white, Fenru had remained scarce. Sure, he had vowed to rekindle that closeness he had missed in the years he had been absent from Relic Lore, but something still felt amiss; and, he couldn't place his paw on what it was. With that being confirmed in the way he often tried to move in opposite circles of his pack mates, he kept the borders well-marked and kept both eye and ear out for any threat that might come to Oak Tree Bend. Like a hero along the city's rooftops, he watched and waited, only acting upon his whims when he felt like it. Only on a couple of occasions had he needed to even bare his teeth - the first being a warning towards a pair of wandering coyotes and the other being when he had thought he had seen a stranger in the fog. For good measure, in regards to the latter situation, he had even abandoned his post to make sure that whatever it was he had seen remained scarce.

Times he found he could sleep were few and far between, but when he did, he dozed for only a few hours at most, just in case he might miss something or in fear that he might've allowed someone to trespass. He longed to make a good impression, being something of a prodigal son returned.

As he meandered about, somewhat chasing the muted sunbeams as they filtered through the dense treetops above, he kept his ears open, anticipating anything to cross his path as he ducked under low branches and slipped through hedges as he marked them. After so many weeks of solitude he supposed that a little interaction could do him good if only he thought to actively search for company...

Triell's daughter was out in the woods playing a game with herself. Though, one really could not play tag by themselves. But she wanted to be good at it, in case @Sven ever asked her to play with him. A little deluded, she assumed that there was some way to really win tag, to reach some plateau of success and declare themselves The Champion of Tag. Her limited exposure had taught her little, but she assumed she could do it nonetheless. At any rate, she preferred this silly idea to doing something useful like looking for the herds, squatting over the border, or looking out for the boars that had been scented recently. 

Her training regime was beautifully simple: the girl vaulted over gnarled tree roots to land some sort of ninja kick onto a tree. With all her willpower she shouted the ominous, ritual word. She channeled the force of her kick into her kick-off, spinning around wildly with the hopes of landing on her feet with an the advantage of extra momentum.

"TAG!" she cried, leaping towards the tree.

Hitting it head on.

With her face.

"TAG!" the youthful voice that rang through the woods easily caught him off-guard. If anything, he might have expected an easy-going bark or an eager whine to acknowledge his presence. Instead, his curiosity was piqued by that of a younger pack member who seemed rather busy with a game of tag. Except... once she had cried out, there seemed to be no other sounds of scampering, no peals of laughter or growls of protest from her play mate. The brute's head tilted to one side and he made a face that wrinkled the right side of his muzzle.

Shaking his head and shoulders, he turned around and peered around the old trunks, squinting here an there through the shadows until he found what thought he had been looking for. What laid before him was a dark-pelted girl, surrounded by an array of scuff marks in the dirt. He smiled as he thought of his own children... namely, how Finn Alexandre used to play on his own for hours at a time and how little Indi used to let her litter mates do as they pleased while she had her imaginary friend "Bird" to play with. Their favorite game in particular was chase-and-run, but he wondered now if this youngling, Sahalie (obviously, since her brother Drift had his Great-Aunt Borlla's pale coat), was doing just that.

"Hello," he smiled at her, examining her by scent and sight from a mere wolf's length away. "Are you playing a game?"

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"Hnnnnn" she grumbled, kneading her poor dome clumsily with her foreleg. The impact, while not removing her from consciousness, had caused her to miss the approach of — she had to squint through the persistent throbbing of her brain — Fenru. She didn't remove her paw from her forehead, but she made an effort to sit up and look vaguely more presentable as he wandered closer. The vague sense of guilt from eavesdropping on his homecoming still lingered in the back of her mind, and she wanted no cause for him to suspect her at all. Or think she was a hoodlum or a regular spy or something if he happened to already know about the eavesdropping. 

She wasn't really sure how to answer him. "Uhh..." Playing tag by oneself wasn't really a game. Especially when she was such a novice tag player. "Not really." She chewed on her lip, then decided to add, "I'm practicing so that I can play with my friend. He's like, really good at tag. Probably an expert. And last time we played I was kinda bad." She wondered if he had any idea what she was talking about. Her river of words trickled into a brook.

"You're Fenru," she stated.

(This post was last modified: Feb 01, 2016, 04:06 AM by Sahalie.)

"Uhh," she began. Her older cousin merely grinned, tail wagging as she told him that she wasn't really playing and that she was practicing so that she could play with her friend (who was obviously very good at playing tag). "Huh," he mused, listening as she named him before he could even introduce himself properly. She was obviously a Tainn. It made his heart smile in his chest.

"And, you're Sahalie," he grinned, slowly sitting, offhandedly telling her that he was in the mood to be humored and entertained in a little chat with her. In his mind, he was doing just as Ice had done for him, just by being there for her. A quick scan of their surroundings and he decided to ask a question in order to keep their conversation afloat. "Is your... friend here now?" he asked, pretending to look around and in the spaces of air on either side of her. Indi typically giggled at this, correcting her father as to where Bird's whereabouts really were. "What's his name?"

His tail wagged behind him as he observed her, taking in those golden irises and being reminded of Ruiko and, most especially, Aiyana. "Does he live nearby?" He probably would have considered his questions as too 'out of the blue' if he had given them a second thought; but, at the very least, he assumed he could rest assured that Sahalie had a few months yet to start crushing on boys.

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She nodded eagerly, thinking Of course I'm Sahalie. How many other black cubs were there on this side of the mountain, or in the pack in general. She wasn't sure how much adults had spoken of her, but she had at least heard @Serach tell Fenru about her. At any rate, she was pretty sure she was Kind of a Big Deal. No one else had found the Hidden Berry Hideout or the Archainn Tunnels. No one else was Triell's daughter —save Zera, but she was mean and she was gone now— and there weren't so many Tainns around as their used to be. That meant she was special and, rightfully, others would know about her. That Fenru was now sitting down and taking some of the time from his day to talk with her confirmed this, more or less.

When asked if her friend was here now she shook her head, emphatically, no, and giggled quietly. Fenru was looking around as if he expected to see Sven somewhere, like he was invisible or something. But that was silly. Did he think she had made Sven up? Drift made up a lot of things. Perhaps this was a normal thing for children to do. Sahalie preferred the real world, though.

"His name is Sven and he lives in Willow Ridge," she explained in a tone that was more pedagogical than was right for an eight month old cub. She was certainly stepping into her Bossy Pants. Not wary of her cousin-uncle in the slightest, Sahalie scooted up to the older man and, placing a paw on his chest so that she could reach up and conspiratorially whisper, "He's an Archer." She wondered if Fenru knew about Archers. He had been around for Swift River, and apparently the willows were close by. Maybe he even knew Sven! "I met him in the mountain tunnels."

(This post was last modified: Feb 07, 2016, 08:44 PM by Sahalie.)

With her identity confirmed, she watched as he sat before her; and, upon answering his question with a shake of her head, she inched closer to him. Fenru braced himself, a brow quirking upward in rekindled curiosity. "He's an Archer," she divulged and he couldn't help but grin. He had known about Elettra when he was young (due to a rather unpleasant circumstance regarding his playmate) but, already, some five years later, he had forgotten her namesake.

"Oh, really?" he mused as she went on to tell him she had met this Sven in the mountain tunnels. The ear closest to her twitched and he dipped his chin just enough so that he could glance at her from the corner of his orange eyes. "Is that so?"

Two things were apparent at this point: first, Sahalie was undoubtedly a Tainn with her penchant for adventure; and, secondly, he saw now just how much fatherhood (and adulthood) had definitely changed him. Where he had once been the pup to 'tattle' or the yearling to scold her for possibly straying so far from home, he merely raised his brows at her in amazement that she had gone off on an expedition and met someone new. When he had been her age, he had nearly drowned in a den flood and had been much too concerned with his father's disappearance to be enticed by what the rest of his youth held for him in terms of play, imagination, and learning.

Judging by how she had eagerly approached him, Fenru could not help but assume that perhaps the girl had wanted something from him, a piece of information or something useful (that maybe involved the antics of a game of tag). He actually chuckled now, "Willow Ridge, huh? Interesting."

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/glosses over sahalie's trip to WR since that's still ongoing. awk.

Normally the girl did not stare directly into anyone's eyes — she was a Good Girl— but it was hard to avoid the mirthful auburn gaze. It amazed her how similar the color was to her father and darrah's golden oranges. Time had ripped away most of her more distant family members, and she would never truly realize the depth and breadth of this pervasive family trait —or the fact that most Tainns were actually brown, and that she just happened to be hanging from the inkier portion of the tree. So absorbed in his eyes was the girl that she barely remembered to nod several times at his question. 100% so!

Fenru seemed impressed, and she considered amazing the arguably well traveled man further with her tale of actual travel to Willow Ridge, but bit her tongue. She didn't want to bore him: he probably knew all about it anyway. He would be a better companion if she could keep him laughing. Her cousin-uncle had a baritone that could have pulled the smile right off her face. She giggled too. "You know about it, right? Bein' from Swift River and all?" She withdrew her paw from his shoulder and reclined back to her rump in an ungraceful hmpf! Her tail moved in a vague serpentine pattern behind her. "Did you like it there?"