Spectral Woods we tied string around our fingers

@Kino backdated to some indeterminate date near the end of November

Boldly she stood at the edge of her homeland, looking outward into the seamless forest. Alastor had spoken about meeting another time, "whenever she was free," but the girl had waited several days despite her open agenda. This was mostly out of habit, for she worried often that her presence was overwhelming to her packmates. She spent time with them when she could, but did not harry them for consecutive days on end. Honestly, she really wished the burden of reaching out had not been placed on her just this once. Now instead she was left to worry what time would be the right time, what day would be the right day, and what would happen if Alastor did not come when she called.

He had walked her part of the way back to Spectral Woods, so she was not particularly worried that finding her would be so impossible. There would be scent trails leading here from any of the other Bend wolves. Sahalie had even made a point to give Alastor the rest of the directions to the borders, should he have needed some sort of guide.

Nervously she tipped her head and let her voice drift out. She was unconcerned about what her packmates would think. It wasn't like he was bad or he was a threat to their pack in any way. Honestly she hoped that Alastor might see her foggy origin and admire it. She hadn't shown anyone her home before — she did not know that, perhaps, she was not supposed to. Wolves did not really come calling here at all, as far as she knew. Just Fenru, but he was apparently family.

Instead of returning toward the center of the Red Fern Forest, Kino had opted to staying along the outskirts that he had left Sahalie at. They’d promised to meet again when she was free from her pack responsibilities, and while he wouldn’t admit to it if asked, he was waiting rather anxiously for her to return. At least once a day since their departure he ‘wandered’ past their parting spot as casually as possible, hoping that one day he’d come by and she’d be there. But, alas, a few days had come and gone by now and there was neither slim hide nor black hair he’d familiarized with his new friend.

There came a point around the second day that he began to wonder if he’d imagined it all, but the faint lingering of her scent told him that was not true. Then, he wondered if he had somehow scared her away. Maybe he’d taken everything the wrong way, and that she really was annoyed by him and thought he was a brat or something. The ghost tried really hard not to think about that option. Instead, his imagination ran wild. What if her pack mates had caught his scent on her and asked her about him, and then forbidden her from seeing him? What if they’d caught his scent on her, then punished her for seeing him? Or, even worse, what if she’d been captured by some evil villain on her way back home.

These same thoughts were going rogue in his mind when, suddenly, a timid call rang through the air. All conscious processes abandoned he was on his feet in a flash, darting toward the direction that the summons had come from. Twisting past trees and over brush, he practically tumbled over himself to meet her. She came! he thought to himself in astonishment, and pushed faster. It wasn’t until he broken through a line of trees that he realized something important.

He needed to stop, and quickly.

By the time he made this discovery, it was too late. He was sent careening into Sahalie, plowing into her in a flash of silver fur. Black and silver intertwined as he fought to untangle himself from her, a blush burning bright beneath his thick winter pelt. “I-I’m sorry, I just…heard you call. And, uh…running. Fast, too fast.” he said, his voice breaking. Kino was absolutely mortified, his dignity pooling at his paws in a puddle. Attempting to salvage some of it, he cleared his throat. “Are you okay?” Topaz eyes peered at her quietly, eyeing her frame for any bumps or contusions courtesy of his childish excitement.

 

Alastor appeared surprisingly fast. In fact, he was travelling incredibly fast. Her eyes widened a bit, her lips pulling back in a terse sort of manner as she did the calculations in her head. By the time she realized that he was not slowing down, could not change paths, and was dead set on some collision course there was no way she could have moved to avoid him. Despite being a loner, the boy was surprisingly dense. It had been awhile since she had felt the weight of another on top of her, possibly not since she and Drift used to wrestle and he would flop on top of her until she screeched that she had given up. But that had been along time ago. Alastor was more than halfway to adulthood and, truthfully, it was easy to tell he was much bigger than Drift had  ever been. Thus, Sahalie was completely unprepared for the impact and collapsed on the ground, her limbs flailing so much that they accidentally locked with Alastor's.

Seeing as he was the one on top, the grey boy began making the attempts to extricate himself from her. His nervous apologies brought a goofy smile to her face, and her chest bubbled with giggles, "I'm okay silly." Like a little black otter she wiggled herself the rest of the way out. "Drift used to do that all the time." The mention of her brother's name, for once, did not break her chipper countenance. She just wanted to appreciate her time with her friend. 

"So what have you been up to? Run over any other ladies lately?"

It seemed, much to his relief, that their collision had caused her no physical harm. A breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding puffed from his chest, creating a hanging fog in the air between them. His head tilted to the side curiously as she giggled, a slow grin spreading across his maw. He liked her laugh. "Drift used to do that all the time." she said, like it was obvious. Like it was a widely known fact that Sahalie Tainn used to be tackled frequently by her brother.

Kino had to think back on whether or not he had ever done that with Ari. Draven was completely out of the question, just the thought of the black boy left a sour taste in the ex-prince’s mouth. He had never been close with his younger littermate, the child being practically an enigma until the incident that caused him to throw himself out of the pack. His elder littermate, though, was another story. Certainly they had play fought sometimes, but even from their younger days they hadn’t had so much of a physical sibling rivalry as a knowledgeable rivalry. They had to know more than the other, had to figure something out before the other sibling. At the end of the day all was revealed about their travels, their nights spent curled up against each other’s side reliving their day with little ‘humphs’ or questions here and there. A rueful smile curled on his blackened lips as he thought absently.

He hoped his sister was doing well.

"So what have you been up to? Run over any other ladies lately?" She said playfully, and his full attention was brought back to her. The ghost’s brows rose slightly, as if the answer was obvious. “I don’t talk to other girls,” he said, his young mind not realizing how that might sound. If he had been any older, he might have remembered that those sorts of sentences hinted at other things. More important, mature things but to the 6 month old it was merely the truth. Kino didn’t really talk to other wolves period.

“What’ve you been doing?” he inquired. He was curious to see why she hadn’t come any sooner, and hoping that some of his more outlandish thoughts didn’t come to be not so outlandish after all.

There is a deer that was killed by a lynx nearby. +10 Health

@Leotie let me know if the powerplay isn't alright with you???

The bluntness of his statement made her blink. Sure, she knew he was here out with his brother, but there were also plenty of other wolves in the area. She figured that he would have run into one or two, and that if half of them were female he would have... Sahalie blinked several times, trying to recover. "Oh," she said politely, "Wh-why not?" Maybe he didn't like girls. Maybe he didn't realize she was a girl. Before she could let that thought run away with her imagination, though, she managed to remember that he said other girls. So he knew she was a girl. That was good. Still, it was such an odd thing to say. Like he was suggesting that she should not have expected him to be talking to other girls.

Should she not be talking to other boys or something? That would be kinda hard...

Thankfully he moved the conversation into more comfortable, less confusion territory. "Ah, you know. This and that...." Really nothing out of the ordinary, nothing worth commenting on. But it just seemed like such a cop out answer. Her head twisted as she stared at Kino with squinted eyes and furrowed brows, trying to think of something more exciting she could comment on. "Oh! We had this new wolf join. Her name is @Leotie. She's really pretty and nice. I've been showing her around and stuff." New wolves were pretty rare in these parts, something she knew only from the fact that Leotie and Fenru were the only new additions in the whole time she had been alive. But if Fenru had lived here before then he didn't really count. So just Leotie. And Leotie was so nice, and she had blue eyes!

"I can show you around too, if you'd like!" with an excited wiggle she tossed her head back over her shoulder, indicating the gloomy forest behind her that wore a different scent than the rest of the trees.

(This post was last modified: Feb 06, 2016, 02:22 AM by Sahalie.)

It seemed he had managed to shell shock Sahalie with his comment for reasons unknown to him. In his mind, it hadn’t been anything strange. He really didn’t talk to other girls, simply because there were no other girls he’d come across to make friends with. Anyways, Sahalie was really nice and fun to be around so why would he want to talk to anyone else? Truly, it baffled him.

In response to his question about what she’d been up to, he found he was given a rather cryptic answer to begin with. He gave her a strange look, a certain feeling of unease settling in the pit of his stomach. Why could she not answer him? Was there something so bad that had happened that she couldn’t tell him? Then, she continued with a sudden mood shift that left him reeling. She spoke of a new girl to join her ranks, named Leotie. Certainly an interesting name he decided, one he hadn’t heard of before and he couldn’t help but wonder of the origins. The dark girl expressed that she thought the girl to be fun and pretty, and that she’d been showing her around. Kino bobbed his head in approval, “That sounds nice, it’s pretty cool of you to show her around. It seems like you have a lot in common,” he commented, offering a grin.

Suddenly, she was bouncing up and down like a three month old and his grin only grew wider. "I can show you around too, if you'd like!" she pipped, and he paused. Show him around like she had the new girl…could she possibly mean in her pack land? Kino’s maw locked to keep his jaw from dropping open in surprise. Could they just…do that? Could she allow him to just waltz in with her without being a member and show her around? He chewed the inside of his cheek, worry swirling within him before he released a breath. Surely she knew what she was doing. Maybe this pack had different guidelines than the Crest had. Slowly he nodded, “Sure, that sounds like fun!” he agreed, giving firm couple of bobs of his head to assure her he meant it. What could go wrong?

Sahalie shrugged. It wasn't really that big of a deal: someone surely had to give the newbies a tour. Right? Or maybe initiates were just expected to wander around and get lost repeatedly until they figured it all out. But that seemed kind of cruel to Sahalie, who otherwise had no better way to be spending her time. It was nice to have some company and share whatever "insider secrets" she had. It made her feel important, cool even — if she was even old enough to be cool.

However, Sahalie was not quite so sure what to make of her friend's second statement. "Eh?" All she had said about Leotie was that she was pretty and nice, so these were the only two possible things she could share with her packmate. Blinking several times, the dark girl looked down at herself, considering the possibility that Alastor thought she was pretty. When her eyes got all the way down to her stumpy legs and plain black coat she concluded that he was just commenting on her personality. Her gaze flicked back up and roamed over his wealth of silvery, brindled fur. Yep. Definitely just her personality. Having black fur was just so ordinary. And her eyes were ordinary too. But Alastor's were blue.

"Okay, first things first, you gotta roll in the snow!" The powder wasn't as preferable as something like a mud puddle, but the dark girl figured if he rolled around enough his body heat would turn the snow back into water and wash away his scent. "Can't have you smellin' like no weird wolf. Otherwise my folks would surely find out about it and have a fit!" (Though, in the end, no one had found out about her giving a squirrel from the cache to a total stranger.) For the most part, all anyone did in Oak Tree Bend was go on patrols. Someone was bound to pick up a scent if he left it. Sahalie was not so sure they'd be mad, since she was not entirely sure she was doing anything wrong. But it added a certain gravitas to her statement. "They're nice though, don't worry." 

"When you're done with that I'll take you to my favourite spot!"

(This post was last modified: Feb 06, 2016, 05:44 PM by Sahalie.)

When Sahalie ordered him to roll in the snow, he looked at her with surprise. It wasn’t a bad idea to get rid of his scent, basically a kin to running through a stream, but it still worried him that he would be entering her pack’s territory without invitation from her leader. Her comment about her ‘folks’ finding out and throwing a fit did absolutely nothing to ease the knot that filled the base of his stomach. "They're nice though, don't worry." she said, and internally he scoffed. Yeah, and Gent had been nice too, he thought absently, and immediately guilt wracked his body. No, if Sahalie was the way she was because she was raised by these wolves then surely they couldn’t be all bad. They couldn’t be as bad as that.

He nodded, stepping a few paces away before dropping to the ground. Kino twisted and rolled, pausing before grinning. As he rolled he made funny faces, crinkling his nose or sticking out his tongue for some sort of amusement. Once he was thoroughly coated he moved back to his paws, giving his pelt a good shake. His attention turned back to his friend and an idea popped in his head. “Hey, when I was,” he paused for a moment, trying to decide how to phrase it. “When I was in a pack, the leader used to rub himself against the new members to make him smell like us. Maybe you could do that to me, then I won’t smell as out of place?” he offered, quirking his head to the side. The little movement was something he’d inherited from his mother at a young age, the only real part of her he had left than her fighting spirit.

 

hope the pp of them going to the place was okay??? 
@Serach
image

Laughter was cheap for the girl who paid for nothing. She was not quite sure if Alastor could not help making those weird faces, or if he was doing it for her benefit, but either way it was pretty funny. She supposed it would have been awkward to just watch him roll around for several minutes in silence. Wanting to contribute, the black otter-girl stretched her neck out, flexing her tongue into the weirdest position she could manage: a modest little roll like a twig. But it disappeared quickly, since she could not manage a straight face longer than a second or two.

With some surprise, the girl learned that Alastor had been in a pack once. On the other hand, he had to come from somewhere. Resolving to ask him more about this later, she considered the suggestion he had posed while chewing her lip. Well, she did rub herself on her own packmates a lot, though she had assumed their similar smell didn't necessarily come from that. They just smelled the same cause they were the same. But maybe Alastor was right: if she rubbed herself on him he would smell like any regular old Bend wolf. Her shoulders rolled about in a shrug, "Alright!" Without stopping to question the act of touching a boy that barely amounted to more than a stranger —a soggy one at that , she closed the distance between them. Since she was used to rubbing herself mainly on Spieden or her dad, her gestures were unfortunately of the affectionate type. Her nose slid along his cheek, down through his neck scruff, across his back. When she reached his tail she swerved to get the other side of him, assuming she would need to thoroughly coat him in order for the scent to take any affect.

She wondered what he thought she smelled like. Or what he smelled like. But she could smell nothing underneath the dampness. If Alastor hadn't seen another wolf besides his brother in two months there wouldn't be another pack scent on him, anyways. And it wasn't like she would recognize it. Sahalie only knew the pack scents from Kyna and Sven.

Her back half swung around so that she was facing the boy head on, now. "Now you're a Bend wolf! C'mon, let's go, newbie!"

Without waiting for his reaction, the girl spun around on her pack feet and trotted easily past the scent markers. The place she was going was not deep into the territory, at least. Not like the den or the river or anything like that. So if they spotted an adult it would be manageable to get beyond the border. "Now, Alastor," she announced in a preachy sort of tone. She was very proud of the place she was leading him. "The place I'm takin' you is actually cooler than Hidden Berry Hideout. And even cooler in the winter!" Her words wove a certain air of mystery akin to the freezing fog closing in around them. She hoped that Alastor did not mind the entangling mists. There were a lot more where that came from.

- - -

This was a place Sahalie came to think a lot. Or, really, talk to herself because she was not too great at being quiet. She wasn't sure who had taken her here, since she must have been young. Could have been @Triell, could have been @Spieden or @Jessie. And since then, it had changed quite a lot.

The fog was in full bloom, now, and much heavier. "Gotta stay close," Sahalie barked, waving her tail behind her for guidance. The ground was rockier, here, so it was often slick and now was quite icy. Sahalie shivered in anticipation, though she was surprised how quickly the Three Sisters came upon her and her friend. In the winter now the roar of the falls was quite dull. A sheet of ice spread across each of the three water falls, though there was clearly water that still moved beneath the diamond covering, enough to create the thick haze and vague drizzle that fell upon them. The three falls were not equally sized, going from a very modest fall to a roaring one — at least, in the summer it roared. Each of the veins seemed to have it's own personality, even though they all were fed by the same river. The pool the water itself fell into was almost entirely frozen except for an opening where the falls ended.

"The small one there, that's Rissa. And then there's Aiyanna in the middle, and Kisla is the biggest. These are the Three Sisters." The names were a necessary part of the tour, as it was part of the pack's history. Her history. "In real life they're my cousins, but in nature they're waterfalls. The old leader, Corinna, named them after her daughters." She explained this as if it were all very exciting. Because it was to Sahalie, who liked thinking she lived in a place rich with stories. "Corinna was like, the coolest. I never met her though." Eagerly she glanced back to her friend, wondering what he thought of the Three frosted Sisters.

(This post was last modified: Feb 08, 2016, 01:01 AM by Sahalie.)