Cut Rock River separation in the name of love and joy

All welcome! maybe some of the WR crew?
Loach, You catch a whiff of an unusual smell!

He had been tracking a herd. Idle activity really. Maybe him and the cubbin's could manage to take a weak one, but he held out his hopes. After all, it seemed his world continued to stumble and tumble with trickles of disappointment. He hardly wanted to bring more in the form of a failed hunt where danger would be present.

Yet somewhere along the way the trail smelled like it morphed. Distinctly less prey like, but he could not place his claw on what it had turned into. Earthy, most certainly, but unlike anything he had chased before.

Perhaps it would have been smarter to turn around now while he could. Instead he only forged onward towards the sound of water and hoped he might spot it there.

Whatever it was.

Asper, too, had been drawn to the strange smell. She had been trying to follow the river upstream the last few days, towards what she hoped would be a cleaner source of water than that lake by the willows had been. Everything weighed heavily on her mind—should she stay? Should she…go back?—so at first the curious smell was a welcome distraction from serious, grown up thoughts that she was not ready to dwell on. As the scent grew stronger it flowered into something rather ominous. It wasn’t other-worldly, but Asper wasn’t sure if she had encountered this sort of smell before. It wasn’t rabbit or bird, but it was definitely alive. Mushrooms and tree-sap did not smell like this.

She had to wonder what she was getting herself into. But wasn’t this what life was for? Getting yourself into “situations?” Her mother would have wanted her to be doing something with her life, stupid or not, now that she was here.

Something...moved.

He became surely convinced that whatever it was, would be the source of the scent. So he plucked along in a near stalking gait. Prepared to see a prey before he saw another...

Wolf. Huh. Well, maybe she still was the source of the smell? Hard to say when it seemed to waft in from no area in particular.

You roll in somethin'? He called out in a blunt tone. One brow arched sharply above orange eyes.

She was...small, young. Not nearly as young as Llinnea had been when he'd first found her, but he still thought about the adopted girl all the same. Claw, too. He imagined that the both of them, now settled into their teenage years, would have known how to talk to her a lot better than he just had.

She caught a glimpse of another wolf only moment before he spoke. He was on the other side of the water, which was nice: they could keep a pleasant distance while they greeted each other and eventually moved on. Her mom had told her that she had met all kinds of wolves in the Valley and she greeted them all with a smile. Everyone was always willing to strike up a conversation as long as you weren’t on the wrong side of a border. Was that what she smelled? She sniffed a few more times. No, that wasn’t it.

”Excuse me?” she said, startled by such a blunt question. It wasn’t unfriendly, but definitely less of a greeting and more of an accusation. ”I don’t smell.” She didn’t. Right? Her eyes quickly glanced down at the sorry, summer-thin leg fur. She was dirty, yeah.

”You sure it isn’t you?” Normally Asper wouldn’t have given it back to him, but in this moment she was entertaining images of her family throwing quips back and forth in the late evenings. When everything was warm and safe. It felt good. But he was older than her, at least by some amount. The lightness that peppered his face could have put him near middle age or perhaps all the way to advanced age. She was not good at telling how old the olds were. Maybe she should dial it back. ”Respectfully.”

Everyone smells, he wanted to say. Only refrained for the way she looked at herself. Maybe he had offended her, but the smell was ripe. Nor had he tracked it the whole way here. Which meant it surely could not be him or his own.

Okay. Maybe there had been kinder ways to ask, but he hardly ever focused on being intentionally nice. Just as he was hardly ever intentionally mean.

Yet he snorted warm and strong at her response. Accusing him in turn — respectfully.

I spend too much time in the water to be smelling like that. His head lifted as he examined her a bit harder. Maybe she was a part of the willows group? It had been a while since he last saw anyone from there... Clouse included.

Whatcha make of it? If it ain't you.