After you? and so she led the way. Instead of lessening, the rain only seemed to pelt down all the harder, some small trickles finally making their way through her thick coat and soaking her down to her skin in patches where it had begun to thin with the change of seasons. She shook her own pelt out as the peal of thunder rolled across the sky, her drastic motion covering her own flinch and preventing her from seeing Mapplethorpe’s own. She looked back to him with a sheepish grin as his chuckle met her ears, convinced that her shake had not covered her own flinch as well as she may have liked.
Picking up her paws, she quickened her pace to a lope to get them both out of the rain sooner, using the cliffs that lined the Pass to provide what little shelter it could offer them. Quickly the ground began to steepen and the course of water that ran through the center of their home swelled and roared as its stony banks continued to contain the sudden influx of water. The banks held for now, but she had to wonder how they would stand the full onslaught of the spring rains...?
Finally, the cave she called her own came into sight, and with it, the tree under which her faithful advisor had made his own den. She would not begrudge him the warmth and dryness of her own stone den should he wish to escape the rain sooner, but nor would she force the confines on him. With a final smile over her shoulder through the rain, she dipped her head and entered the darkness beyond. Free from the rain at last.
[Naira Out/End?]