you do not know who is your friend or who is your enemy until the ICE breaks. The trip north to the Ghastly Woods had done him good, and it was in a disturbingly cheerful mood that he returned home. In fact, the normally quite lazy wolf was too cheerful to be lazy, for as soon as he sprawled in the good-smelling moss, his paws began to itch. Itch, itch, itch, wanting nothing but to move, to feel the spring ground under them, itch, itch, itch, until he got up. Even so, he couldn't sigh and scowl at his own feet for wanting to wander, all he could do was smile dumbly and, tail like a solemn circus banner, trot around. Yes, trot. There was no hulking walk, no casual lope, but a springy, bouncy wolf trot. Feeling decidedly useless, yet unable to be put down by that though either, he'd begun to circle the den area in steadily increasing spirals. The business with weird loners hadn't entirely gone out of his head, but he wasn't actively thinking about it, and so all was well, no? Nearly humming under his breath, the large wolf kept "guarding" or whatever it was he did. "To guard", to him, wasn't exactly to run in circles with a grin wide enough to split your skull on your face, and a "guard" - which he officially wasn't either way - wasn't a wolf that smiled like a freak and bounced. A guard was solemn, silent, tall and handsome (or plain ugly), and stared at you with ice in their eyes. Heh. Ice in their eyes. Giggling to himself, Ice skipped over a log and a rock like an elite three-day eventing horse, but when he, without thinking, jumped into an ankle-deep brook he was less graceful and less elite. Yelping indignantly, he powered up the nearest bank and halted some fifteen yards off, glaring at the offending body of water.
That was when the scent hit him.
Turning his head and nosing the air, he scanned the forest trying to find whoever it was. He was just outside Corinna's carefully marked border, and to have loners here was a tad too close for comfort. For half a heartbeat he growled and began to stalk forward, but then he forgot to be angry and instead was just curious. Prowling through his home he caught sight of the female, and tilted his head. What on earth was she doing? She was running head over heels as if the devil itself was trying to nip at her haunches, and Ice planted himself firmly in her path. She was shorter and slimmer than he was, ginger brown, so he was quite confident in his ability to prevent her from charging headlong into the main den. "Yo ho, fair lady, stop run-" Well, for all the good it did... She didn't stop. Mid-sentence she collided with his broad chest, and grunting, Ice dug his paws in and leaned forward to absorb the impact. Quite naturally, she sprawled in front of his feet, and quite confounded, Ice gazed down the length of his muzzle and at her form. She was panting, nearly trembling, and all in all she didn't seem quite sane.
Well, to call her out as insane would be to cant, so he bit the words back before they escaped. Instead, he shifted weight from his right front leg and poked her shoulder with a heavy paw. "Uhm, miss? Are you alright?" Most likely the answer was no, because wolves that were alright seldom lay on his feet and stared at him with eyes that quite plainly did not see him. Both wary and curious Ice stood his ground, hoping for an answer that wouldn't be an attack. He wasn't quite certain he could, in a sane fashion, deal with crazed, violent loners - bad enough with the loud-mouthed ones. Besides, he had more of a mind to just pick her up, dust her off, and send her on her way. No chance in hell he was going to let a maniac close to the pups that would surely come later in the season. .ice aesir |