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SIRIUSSSSSS <333333333 :]] Also, your writing is beautiful! My apologies for the long post; I wanted Naniko to discover the hot spring on this side of the mountain. wc: 1,162
She hadn’t been sure about leaving the den at this time of night, but was now glad that she had. The female had been meaning to scout the northern pieces of the mountain so that she might decide how much territory she would claim next, once the pack reached the 20-member mark, but hadn’t found the time or energy to do so yet. She had found herself wide awake in her den after only a few hours of sleep, her insomnia returning and preventing her from falling back into her dreamlike state. Naniko’s mind was often full of thoughts when she tried to go to bed, making her unable to sleep at all normally, so even the few hours of sleep had greatly helped.
The leader padded swiftly through the dusting of snow that covered the majority of the peaks. It had taken her a few hours to find a safe and reliable path over the hills. The pack’s dens, meeting places, and main living areas were underground and they had not yet found a way through to the other side of the mountain, leaving her to cross completely over the top of it to reach the northern side. The two main entrances were on the southern side. She had been hoping to find a wooded area to the North of the mountain, an area that she could claim that wasn’t dead from the fires that had claimed her last home.
She still remembered the fear that those fires had instilled in her; for a good time after that the female had been afraid of the flame, jumping at any spark or bright flash. During that fire she had come across her heavily pregnant sibling Dierdre and had helped her through the birth of her two sons, Apollo and Sirius. Her adopted sister had told her to go ahead of her and find a way through the flames and then return, but when Nani had come back to the area that the cinnamon wolf had been, she had disappeared. The pups had still been there, though, and she had taken them with her to safety. She had never figured out exactly where Dierdre had gone to, though she had been told that the wolf’s daughter Addison was running around the lands. She had met one more of Dierdre’s children as well, more recently, a little copper pup named Grac.e.
The scents began to change as she came back down the northern face of the mountain. She took in the scents of charcoal from the burned territories to the north, but something else was bothering her nose on this night. An odd smell had caught her attention and her eyes searched over the ivory landscape. Smoke? She traveled a little farther down the valley that she was walking through, ears perked and nose twitching. Not smoke…but…steam? She hadn’t experienced steam that came out of the ground in her lifetime, just the kind that came out of her mouth on a cold day, and was surprised by it. Naniko put her nose directly into the stream of it, sniffing at it. The air was warm as it drifted around her face, warming her. Where was it coming from?
The large, unshifted luperci had to search a little harder to find the source of the steam. She could see more of it in the distance, nearly hidden by a large collection of boulders, but she managed to find an area to squeeze her body through. If she could get through then it was likely that every other pack member would be able to as well. What she found behind the rocks made her eyes widen even further. Water? She stared at it, unsure of what she was seeing. Most lakes and ponds were frozen at this time of year, but this stuff wasn’t. It was bubbling slightly in places too, which confused her as well. She leaned down over the medium-sized pool, staring into it. Warm air was rising from this as well.
She only vaguely remembered hearing the word that described a place like this. She must have heard it long ago. Hot-spring. Naniko didn’t dare slip a paw into the water - without materials to dry her fur off with, she would freeze before she managed to get back home again. And she still had more scouting to do. The Angela added this place to the map that she was working on inside of her head, charting where it was at on the side of the mountain so that she could return to it at a later date. She squeezed back through the hole in the boulders, then, starting back down the mountain side.
It wasn’t long until her nose caught another scent. She was nearing the borders of their pack, she knew, but had only come across another canine on this side of the stretch on a very rare occasion. The lands beyond the mountain were burned black beyond recognition, and she didn’t expect that any canine, wolf, coyote, or both would wish to cross them. Perhaps whoever it was had come from the north and had moved down along the bottom of the mountain until they had reached this portion of it, though. That would have them bypassing much of the burned lands. She was lucky to have noticed them; how long would they have waited on this side until a pack member had smelled him?
She stopped when she spotted the figure. It was a bit foggy out and she couldn’t see him too clearly. The winds of the mountain were unpredictable and she caught little bits of his scent every few moments. There was a place in the back of her mind that tugged at her thoughts, telling her that this smell was important to her in some way, but she wasn’t sure what way that was. She began to walk once more and approached him slowly, warily. They’d had an intruder from Inferni recently and one could never be too careful. She was in her four-legged form for the mountain trip and didn’t have her weapons on her, making her feel slightly more vulnerable.
Now that she was nearer she could make out more details of the outsider. Her eyes narrowed, nose twitching and working to identify the scent. ”Si—Sirius?” He had looked very different when he had left, his coat boasting the colors of youth. It looked as if it had matured since then. But his eyes were the same. His last name sprung into her mind immediately, the name of her father’s mate, the wolf who had cared for her and Dierdre as pups. ”Sirius Revlis.” She hid her excitement, unsure if she was seeing things or if she really had identified the hybrid. She hadn’t seen him since his youth, since the day that he had disappeared from Twilight Vale. Much had changed since then. The female watched him quietly, waiting for denial or affirmation.