Sierra Hills that James Dean daydream

i'm not sure what you're looking for

Quentin Connor

really, i'm just the boy next door

Leaving the Winding Weald with all its twists and turns in a forest that seemed to change at every hour of the day had been easy; surviving in a wilderness that was so still that even the winter winds could not make the branches budge was hard. Everywhere he went, it was as if he was the only thing that was moving. For days it was this way and every night, when he laid down to rest, it was as if his surroundings threatened to make him one with the rest of his little campsite. It never bothered Quentin, though, he merely stood up, stretched, and shook out the frost in his coat that dared to try and freeze him in time. Then, once on the move, he never returned to that very spot, leaving behind only a scent trail and a set of tracks that told of his arrival and departure.

Quinlan's third-born child was notorious for his sense of curiosity and how quickly he took inventory of his environment. Once or twice, in his aimless wanderings, he found reasons for which way he ought to go. He had seen this stretch of snow-covered lands from atop of distant hilltop sometime ago and now he was here. It had been startling at first - when he had first stumbled down the sloping hills, he had found that the indents he had left in the snow were red. The earth beneath the frost had merely been exposed where originally he had thought that he had injured himself.

At the base of hillock, he fought to regain his breath, shakily standing back up and looking himself over, particularly at the bottoms of his forepaws where his pawpads had become cracked in places from the ice and cold.

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alloooo!~ felt obligated to listen to "style" while writing this.

This was Sahalie's first time in the hills, too. For one reason or another, she had found herself orbiting the ferns without much deviation from her path. She assumed, from her brief forays to the south of Spectral Woods, that solid ground was fairly hard to come by, and thus further trips down under were set on the back burner. She had no such excuses for avoiding the west, however. None that she could verbalize, anyway. It could have been the emptiness that she saw on the hills, the lack of the cover. Her one trip across the mountain had been filled with all sorts of anxiety: how far away the ground, how strong the wind, how loud the eagles. Yet the hills were not nearly so tall or sharp, so for once she let them welcome her. With the snow covering them, they looked positively harmless, anyway. 

The elevation was not so steep, but climbing the hills still made her sides heave. Tongue lolling out, she bent down to lap at the snow beneath her. Instantly, she jerked her head away. Even knowing the color of the earth here was not enough to prepare her for the rouge underneath the white. It was quite overwhelming, even if she was used to the color in the forest north of her home. There, at least, the foliage was red only up to her hips. Not the whole landscape.

When she lifted her head up, she noticed a wolf standing upwind of her. Wet snow sloughed out of her open jaws, falling to the ground with an unnoticed Sploosh! It seemed to be looking at its paw or something. Smoothly, she drifted towards the figure, picking out the details as they came into focus. He had the same sort of dark markings about his face as Leotie did, but was much redder than Leotie. But not so red as Kyna. He had so many more colors — vibrant colors in him than she had yet seen on a wolf.

"Whatcha lookin at your paws for?" she quipped, bending over and twisting her head as if to get a better look, though she stood a comfortable distance away. Her tone was familiar, as if she were speaking to Alastor or some pack mate.

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

i'm not sure what you're looking for

Quentin Connor

really, i'm just the boy next door

The young man had been so preoccupied in the slit-like scabs in his digits that he had was oblivious to the world around him. In fact, to him, it had been so quiet that when a girlish voice called out to him in question, his body jolted forward like an old steam locomotive. His still lanky legs splayed out before him and his hind legs had folded as if he had meant to sit or brace himself for another slide down the hillside. His head, meanwhile, had immediately turned toward the onlooker with his orange eyes as wide as two smoke-covered suns. Even the whites showed in apparent fright. "Oh!"

He tried to recover himself with a smile, a genial one in the face of an adolescent girl - another wolf. "Hell-o," he half wanted to chuckle to himself at how skittish he had been. The stress it wreaked on his vocal chords made it crack a bit and exaggerated the faint 'twang' of an accent he had acquired from his father. "I, erm..." He looked around himself as if he had misplaced something in the snow. "Nothing," a sheepish grin morphed the expression on his face. "It's slipp'ry 'round here. Be careful." It was probably stupid to say, being at the base of a hill and having already rolled down it and all, but he stated it for her sake. Just in case. After all, he was one of the few who knew chivalry was not yet dead.

In one fluid move he straightened himself to stand at full height as he looked at her, pulling the scent of her pack from her pelt, taking notice of her eyes, and the dark fur that made up her coat. His mud-brown nose wriggled as he mirrored her curiosity. Leaning forward and shifting his weight to his wrists and elbows, however, made him remember the neglect he had wrought upon his paws, "You wouldn't know of a nearby stream would you?"

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She sure gave this man — boy? —   a fright. From his reaction she was quite surprised that he had not just flipped over and called it a day. The position her found himself was very awkward looking, and Sahalie was reminded of her brief glimpses of baby deer when she had been young. His legs were not as spindly, but they buckled just the same as he fought to keep himself up or failed to get himself against the ground. She could not be sure of which it was. The man-boy managed to greet her, at least, with a smile and a hello. This reassured her that the guy at least had some of his wits about him, if they were not going to be the physical ones.

Blinking, she looked down at her paws. She supposed that the ground was kind of slippery. Not icy like the rivers, but the rock and slow did not play nicely together. Was it this quality that he was blaming for his little accident? She could have sworn it had been —   

When, all of a sudden, the man-boy morphed into an exact replica of her own posture she jumped back slightly, giggling at the surprise. He seemed strange, but not unpleasant. "'Course I know where a stream is," she snorted, awfully casual. It felt right though. "I'm from here. Wouldn't be worth anything if I couldn't find the streams. C'mon." With a wave of her tail she cautiously began to skitter back down the slopes. 

"You don't look that dirty to me. What you need a stream for?"

i'm not sure what you're looking for

Quentin Connor

really, i'm just the boy next door

The small wince that flit across his dark face was barely even noticeable (all it had been, really, was the slight twitch of his lower eyelids), and the girl willingly offered some insight. She knew where he could find a stream if only because she was from around the area. To Quentin, it made sense and her confidence and enthusiasm easily rubbed off on him. "C'mon," she spurred him and down she went down the rest of the way, slowly but surely. His head peered over the gradual incline, his eyes trailing her footsteps to where she stood.

She mentioned that he didn't look dirty. The youth made a face, assuming for a moment that she had been aware of what he wanted the water for until she verbally hit him straight on the nose with another question. For all she knew, perhaps he had wanted to take a bath and temporarily lift the cloud of "dude musk" that had been with him since he had left home. "Well," he inched over the slope with gritted teeth, shoving bits of red earth and snow downward with him. "I think I have something in-between my toes--" A hiss sounded from him as he inhaled sharply, sliding downward a good two feet or so. If anything, and if he had been sharp enough to think of it, keeping his wagging tail still could have helped a bit with his uneasy footing. "Hoping to wash whatever it is away. It was prob'ly bleeding at one point and I didn't notice."

He took a few steps to the side as to follow in her smaller set of tracks down the hillside, "If you don't keep yer owies clean, they get infected you know."

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Being ahead of him she missed all of his theatrical expressions. She wouldn't have known what to make of them anyway, being a fairly simple girl amongst an emotionally constipated family. It was for the best.

Sahalie was not sure how dire a malady like "something in-between my toes" was. Her medical knowledge was limited to "some plants are dangerous" and "ask an adult before going online touching a plant you don't know." No one else in her pack was particularly gifted either, so she sure as hell hoped that this boy wasn't expecting any magical water or intensive care. The thought of walking around with something jammed in her pads though, she shuddered. His tone lacked explicit urgency, though the hiss of pain made her wonder where it fell on a scale of one to ten.

The healing lesson was taken with a series of vigorous, no-nonsense head bobs. Sahalie didn't know much about infection, but she knew that they were bad and she wasn't exactly missing out on them. Anna had treated her bee-sting right away. It probably could have gotten infected. Luckily Sahalie had not had that many subcutaneous mishaps since then. This knowledge, taken in conjunction with his caution about the slippery ground gave the girl an idea. "Hey, are you a medic or something? What else do you know about injuries?"

Though they were still a short distance from the water, from atop their particular foothill the thin strand of white sparkled and snaked off around another little hill. She indicated it to him with her muzzle.

i'm not sure what you're looking for

Quentin Connor

really, i'm just the boy next door

"Hey," she was doing a pretty good job at keeping him on his toes, "are you a medic or something? What else do you know about injuries?" Quentin half-shrugged, his tail waving low at his heels now as they continued scaling down the hill. "Not really, no," he admitted. "But, I can tell you what's a good plant to eat and what berries are poisonous. I can also tell you that solidago is great for toothaches. Had lots of it where I'm from." There was a pause in his train of thought and he stole a few seconds to realize: "Well, it kind of depends what you want to know about injuries."

His breath came in pants as he constantly steeled himself after every other step he took, and when she pointed with her nose to where the nearest creek shimmered in the late afternoon sun, he smiled at her in appreciation. "Why?" he found he couldn't just tell her what he knew without knowing what ulterior motive she might've harbored beneath that dome of stark black fur. He remembered again that this girl belonged to someone; that somewhere out there, there was someone who would be expecting her to come back home when she had had enough of him.

"Do you have a need for one? I mean, I don't know too much about a lot, but I'm not, say, stupid."

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She had to admit she was a little disappointed to learn that the man was not, in fact, a medic. Oak Tree Bend was a collection of hunters and scouts, as far as she knew, and she would have liked to see the other side of things. At least, she would have liked someone to round out the lopsided knowledge. Despite asserting his lack of profession, though, the dark-faced man-boy sounded like he was more familiar with fauna than she. She couldn't even be sore a "solidago" was a plant or if it was some sort of ... verb or other object. Honestly he sounded like he was a healer after all.

The man-boy asked after her reasoning, yet before she could speak he offered his own guess. She blinked, as he was not far off the mark. He seemed remarkably smart, smarter than a lot of wolves she knew back home. Definitely more than stupid, as he said. "I mean, I don't have a need for one. I'm just fine." Her tone drove in an 'I can take care of myself' attitude. "But my pack doesn't have anyone to heal the sick or wounded. Not that any of us get hurt a lot. Rarely ever. I'm just... worried, ya know?" Her head twisted back over her shoulder as her glistening eyes dared to meet his for a moment. Sahalie cared deeply for her family. She didn't want anyone dying on account of lack of preparation.

And like that, the stream was at their feet.

"I'm sure you could do the job." Her gaze was intent.

i'm not sure what you're looking for

Quentin Connor

really, i'm just the boy next door

He figured that she was fine but, nevertheless, he was glad that she clarified that for him. She tacked on at the end of her statement something that further proved to him that she was quite an independent and rather compassionate soul, "I'm just... worried, ya know?" Quentin's head canted to one side as the stream finally slipped out of view then reemerged closer than he had thought. He hadn't said much in that expanse of time, still much too focused on the pins-and-needles feeling that was attacking the spaces in-between his toes. He slowly left her side and sidled up to where the ice had been broken by some creature before them when her voice flit into his ear again. He had only meant to submerge his forepaws but had already figured that dunking all his paw pads would benefit from the shock of cold water.

"I'm sure you could do the job."

One of his eyebrows rose and his skull straightened as he shook out his right paw after lifting it out of the stream. He was certain now that it might have been a dirt clod that had kept a small sharp pebble stuck in his digits. Before he went to double-check the fur on the underside of his mitt, he cast her a gaze over his shoulder, finding that she seemed rather insistent on the matter of him being able to heal or mend everyday ailments. "Me?" he almost chortled to himself. "Please..." His tone was practically begging her to give up the joke. With a gangly build and happy-go-lucky sort of nature, he was almost sure no one would be willing to trust anyone with the likes of him to take care of their maladies.

Then, all too suddenly, he took on a more sincere tone, "You think so? Really?" He stopped to really consider the idea as he ducked his head down to properly preen the fur between his pads. A few good licks and he plunked it down into the water before raising the other one. "Would you like to be my assistant then?" he hadn't looked at her this time but it was clear in his voice that he was still talking to her rather than seeming all caught up in his forepaw and he worn pads he was picking at with his teeth. If she was so keen on the idea, then perhaps offering her something in return would be something of a fair trade... and kiddos liked having yearling-things to do, right?

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