Zephyr Rill ain't no salvation for a bad girl.

RE: A recent heat wave has left the forest drier than usual.
Open for one or two. Cloudy, 55F/13C.

The forest was looking more and more like a tinderbox as the season stretched on. It was on the last legs – the greens looked tired, ready to drop off the trees. The grasses were reedy and unhappy. Even the river – she assumed this was a river, at one point – was little more than a warm trickle struggling over rocks. It was hardly enough to drink.

Namir gave the rill a dismal look and licked her lips. At the very least, the clouds seemed to be tempering the heat today. It felt like autumn much more than it had recently. She bent down, forced to get on her knees as she tried to drink. God. Life was a bitch sometimes, huh?

Even a bad memory couldn't ruin the quaint beauty of this place.

It had been weeks since her skirmish with the asshole from Vigil's Keep - long enough for her to have made a favorable, easy recovery, yet not long enough for her to really get over the injustice of it, as far as she was concerned. She stood statue-still, silent in contemplation, as she looked down at the very marks the two of them had left behind. Dried in weeks old mud were the chaotic paw prints, the deep impressions where their legs had dug in to brace their battling bodies, the wide basin of the little crater where her face and body had been weighted into the ground without mercy.

Glancing over the skeleton of the scene where she'd had her closest call, Lyanna's face was like stone. Running away didn't suit her, and she didn't like the fact that she had even now - now that she had survived. The thought of his smug, youthfully defiant face still made her hot in the face and in her chest where the resentment and her grudge lived. Having come to this very place just to see it for herself - the place where she'd had her ass handed to her - Lyanna found that she needed to spend only moments taking it before what she really thought about it was reaffirmed: the fight that had served to humble her didn't even matter, and neither did Judas, for all she cared.

She didn't give it a single additional thought as her creamy paws walked all over the battleground she would now cast off into her past, right on her way upstream to find a better place to get a drink before heading back to Shallow's Edge.

It didn't take her long to find a new view of the Rill, one she liked much better. Sidling over to the bank, she dipped her dirtied paws into the cool current before craning her head down to lap up her fill - oblivious to the presence of the girl who preceded her.

Water had become so scarce in the past several weeks – or perhaps even moons, the dry spell had lasted so long, Namir was starting to lose track – that she became totally absorbed in lapping up her fill. There wasn’t much left trickling over the rocks, but it was there, and it was cool, and it was worth scrunching up with her paws digging into her chest and—

Lyanna was practically right next to her before she finally took notice. The sudden appearance startled the loner, sending her flying to her feet with tail flagged and hackles stiffened. “Th’ heck is th’ big idea!?” she demanded, ears flattening against her skull. Her yellow eyes were ringed with white. “I was here first!”

When the stranger she'd been absent-minded enough to have overlooked spoke up in an instant, Lyanna's head shot right up, her own eyes probably about as wide as the other girl's. What was it about this place that led to her running into the disgruntled ones? And everyone so territorial, gods help her if she ever went anywhere that didn't belong to someone. Her ears flattened atop her head, unappreciative of the not-so-friendly larking of her company.

"I didn't know there was one," she returned casually with an arched brow. It wasn't worth wasting her time to bicker over water seeing as there was plenty where she came from and would be heading to. If she was stepping on the girl's toes just by being here, she'd gladly leave her be and move along. Taking a step back to relay this and shifting her weight at the minor inconvenience, she went on with utter nonchalance.

"Yes, you were - I didn't mean to intrude. I'll gladly be on my way if there's...not enough to go around." She eyed the stream. Sure, it was a little low, but it wasn't like there wasn't a giant lake to the west or anything.

Sure, she didn’t own it, but she was here first, and water felt fucking scarce these days. After Vaken had turned her over to those damnable ‘yotes a few weeks past, the woman found herself more on edge than usual – and hell, this drought going on wasn’t helping, either. She always felt hungry, or thirsty, or dizzy. Or all of the above. And if anyone was a pundit on intrusion, Namir was probably your girl.

Her tail didn’t move, but her hackles never flexed up. Her ears flicked forward by a few degrees as Lyanna failed to attach as soon as she was noticed. Namir let out a breath and considered a few possibilities on how this encounter might end. As much as she liked fighting… She hardly had the energy for such shit right now. “I guess there might be enough,” she countered, not particularly liking the gray wolf’s tone. “Y’jes’ caught me off guard – ain’t found much friendly folk, lately.”

If it were the coyotes or the weather, it was hard to say.

Ace ♥ I'm sorry for the wait!

Luckily for her, the stranger didn't seem to want to be as confrontational as either of them had perhaps come off to begin with. Lyanna eyed the smoky-red furred girl as she went on to state that friendly company had been few and far - something she herself could relate to. It wasn't a mystery that the coyote plague had virtually everyone she'd encountered on edge, and the dry heat brought on by summer had certainly changed the Lore's landscape this season. Her features softened then. She didn't want to be another unfriendly face. She knew as well as anyone that, sometimes, those who needed kindness the most weren't always the ones to give it.

Not that the girl on the bank had been rude or unreasonable. A bit guarded, perhaps.

"Well," she began, her tone and manner more neutral than before, "That's understandable, I reckon. The coyotes have caused enough grief around here that it's no wonder most wolves seem to be...on edge." Herself included. "I'm Lyanna," she offered, her first attempt at an amiable gesture.

“Hmm. Yeah, I guess so.”

It was probably as close to an apology as the other woman was willing to come – as close to an apology as Namir herself was willing to come for that matter. So she shrugged it off, and decided she really didn’t want to fight today. It sounded tiring. She was thirsty, and hungry, and fuck all, but she was tired, too.

“‘m…Crow. Jes’ Crow these days, I guess.”

For the first time in a long time, she noticed she’d stopped referring to herself as ‘Little Crow’. But she didn’t feel that little, not anymore. She was a grown ass woman, had horrible heats, got chased by adults, even tried living in a pack. The thought made her snort a little. “So y’from ‘round these parts, ‘er what? Seems t’ look different every damn time I show up. Things movin’. Packs goin’, packs comin’.”

@Lyanna -- omg pls don't apologize i am tHE SLOWEST