Sex: Female♦♦♦♦♦
Her companion described his experience in Pitch Pine Trail as they walked, and Naia was a little taken aback at how differently they had interpreted their former home. Where Naia had seen chaos and a crumbling hierarchy, Aeolus had seen a family… not a happy one exactly, but it was home for him none the less. Perhaps this was the male experience, Naia reasoned. Most of the turbulence had occurred within the female ranks, and it was possble the males had experienced the events completely differently. To them, maybe the females just looked like a pile of bickering women; distressing, but not worth the effort to interfere. Her mouth was busy hauling the carcass so she could not reply, but the look in her honey eyes was profoundly sad. She vowed that Aeolus would never again have to comfort himself with delusions of a paradise that never existed. He was her family—twice over now-- and she would do everything in her power to make sure he found what made him happy in Cut Rock River.
As they drew up to CRR’s hidden store, Naia dropped the much-too-light deer carcass into the snow in order to dig up and expose the cache. Aeolus answered her question about his origin with a single sentence, and Naia got the impression that it was a subject he didn’t like to dwell on. For good reason too—it woud seem that every pack he had been a part of had tragically collapsed. Naia herself could hardly withstand the heartbreak of losing one pack that way.. she couldn’t imagine what it would feel like if it had happened twice. No wonder Aeolus had clung so fiercely to the scraps that remained of Pitch Pine Trail.
Finally exposing the cache, before Naia was a sight even more disappointing than the ravaged deer carcass. The cache that she had tirelessly added to since her arrival at Cut Rock River was nothing but a pile of bones and scraps of fur. Her face set in a grim expression, she hauled the carcass into the ground and began covering the cache once more. She packed the snow carefully and deliberately, trying not to panic about the state of Cut Rock River’s stores. She replied to Aeolus, hoping that continuing their conversation would provide a needed distraction from the her worries. ”I have no idea what became of my birth pack after my departure,” she confided, ”but I doubt they missed me much.” She met Aeolus’s gaze with a wry grin. ”Perhaps I’ll go back someday, just to see. For closure.. you know.” After patting down the last of the snow onto the cache, she turned toward her companion, wondering what he thought of the idea.
