Nightingale Palisade showed up just in time

@Samhain
February 19th, 9:40am, 25F/-4C

It was official. Aponi was sick of this place, she was sick of winter, the cold, the snow and she was sick of not knowing where she was. She hadn't explored enough to get more lost but she also hadn't explored enough to find her way out. All the yearling wanted was to get back to searching for the bastard who had killed her father and show them exactly what it meant to mess with an Aquila. Whatever they had done to Mapplethorpe she would turn around and dish out something ten times worse, torture them physically and psychologically until they were begging for her to kill them.  She would do all of this, and she would relish every second of the revenge her fathered deserved.

Her sister might have been the one who was there for his death, but she would be the one to avenge it and really what was worth more? First though she had to find her way out of this god forsaken place that she had been trapped in for the past month.  She had abandoned her prized den days ago and had been following the river ever since not even knowing if she was going in the right direction. She had enough sense to follow the way it flowed, typically all the water in the Lore flowed south so the farther south she went the more likely she was to find a place she recognized. In her new attempt at escape she had abandoned her previous rule of only coming out at night, in fact she hardly slept at all. This was consuming her whole and Aponi was letting it.

Her time in her new pack had probably saved her life. Regular meals and bodies to share warmth with (although there were few) had improved the girls condition to a state where she could easily be mistaken as ‘wiry’ or ‘the usual loss of condition from a hard winter’. Her security in her position as a pack wolf also boosted her confidence to the point she could walk with her head at a usual height (as long as she didn’t have company). Though what had possessed her to come this far from home…

She had started scaling the heights of the mountain, looking to see what lay at the peak. A few strong winds and a slip of the paw and she found herself tumbling down, down, down, snow raining down behind her. Thankfully the recent snowfall went a long way to cushioning her speedy descent, heading out of the creepy gnarled trees, beyond the snow covered copper rocks and out into… What was this place?

While she supposed the easiest way home was back the way she had come, her aching limbs did not relish the climb ahead. Turning her attention southwards instead she supposed she could take the long way home, down to the heights and then back up.

She was oblivious to the silvery wolf at her rear.

It was a strange sound, the sound of a wolf sliding down in a small avalanche before thudding to the ground unharmed. Despite her determination to stop as little as possible until she recognized her surroundings it caused Aponi to pause. Silver ears flicked in annoyance as she tried to place where she had heard it before, the memory tugging at the edges of her mind. Suddenly her eyes flicked upwards just as the stranger tumbled down into eyesight and then a few yards ahead of her hit the earth.

Icy blue eyes narrowed as she observed the woman ahead of her, she didn't sport any obvious injuries and other than being rather slim she looked no worse for wear. Obviously a pack wolf to the sight but her scent was confusing, it spoke of other males but not any females, was this the alpha then? She didn't carry herself as such, all of the alpha's Aponi had met previously held themselves with a certain confidence and this woman.... maybe it was the fall but she seemed skittish somehow.

Still all of this made her intriguing, plus the fact that she smelled so strongly of others meant that her pack was nearby, or she knew the way to them at the very least. During the yearling's deliberation the stranger had began to walk away from her but before she got out of ear shot the silver teen stepped forward. Lifting her muzzle she barked out, "Hey... you there, where did you come from and how did you get here?" While her silver fur had become matted in parts and her body shrivelled down from lack of food it did nothing to diminish Aponi's confidence. It was how she had been raised, pride before pity would more than likely carry her to her death.

Having shaken much of the snow from her fur she was about to step off when a voice behind her caught her off guard. As quickly as she had managed to find her feet, she lost them again as though some invisible patch of ice had decided to deposit her on her flank with a frantic yelp and flailing limbs. Being lost was bad enough, being found by someone who could very well want to kill her for her ignorance was downright bad luck on her part.

But that was the way things went wasn’t it? She would just get her feet beneath her, begin to feel a bit at home, gain a bit of confidence then BAM, someone had to come along and remind her just how pitiful she was. She raised a paw to drape it across her eyes effectively trying to pretend the other wolf didn’t exist. It was all a bad dream, a figment of her imagination. In her head she heard a little voice chant You can’t see me because I can’t see you! but deeper down she knew that voice was horribly wrong and it would only be a matter of time before teeth clamped about her throat and put her out of her misery once and for all.

The sight of this stranger wolf laying on her side with a paw draped over her eyes was so pathetic that it caused a chuckle to escape Aponi's maw. Really how does one go through life when the voice of someone you didn't know was enough to reduce you to this? Raising one eyebrow she moved forward until she stood above the other woman, wondering if this was even going to be worth her time after all. In the end though she wanted to find her way out more than she wanted to see how much she could torment this pathetic scrap of meat before it broke.

Giving her a swift nudge in the ribs with one of her front paws Aponi grunted to her, "Get up, I'm not going to hurt you unless you don't do what I say." Maybe she could torment her a little and still get out of here, the yearling was a big fan of having her cake and eating it too. Stepping over the tawny fae Aponi began in the direction that the stranger had been walking in before she toppled over in fear. Silver ears flicked backwards to see if she was coming but her head did not turn, if this woman was so afraid of her voice her quasi-threat would surely be enough to get her moving.

Aponi had found herself a puppet and she loved to play the puppet-master.  In her twisted mind this woman was of use to her for now but would eventually be disposable, she didn't make friend easily or at all these days. Bonds and trust were practically voodoo magic to her, fun to play with for a while but overall rather useless.

There are several fresh rabbit tracks in the mud. Hunt Opportunity