gracious acquaintance

Alaine Winters · 01-15-2011, 09:31 AM

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table © Sie
ooc: shaw! we be doin' it! we be threading!
SoSuWriMo: 545

The morning light was weak and pale. Tendrils of it curled about the sparse foliage of the trees, whose gnarled fingers stretched desperately towards the winter sun. The baleful eye of gold hung suspended in the brittle blue sky, bobbing just above the horizon. Its wan rays shone on the figure that moved about the old pines, her step familiar to their roots.

It had been many moons since Alaine had found her home with the Cour des Miracles pack. It was no surprise to anyone that she had risen quickly to become the pack's Apothecary - the woman was devoted to her job as lead healer. Nothing but that single-minded devotion could have pulled her from her warm tangle of sheets to leave the groaning comfort of the old Chien Hotel. The air was cold, and with every exhale, her delicate figure produced a faint cloud of white steam. Delicate though she was, there was something new to be seen about the woman - She walked with a slight weight on the balls of her footpaws, something that had never before been there. And her stomach, once so flat and lean, had developed an increasingly generous swell. It was true - Alaine Winters was pregnant. Of yet, none of the pack knew who the father was.

As she walked, the cream-pelted lady rested one gloved hand on the beautiful bulge that was her womb. Walking made her ache in places she hadn't known would ache, but this was not Alaine's first child, and she was accepting of the familiar pain. It had been worse with Caillen's litter, she thought absently - He had been so big. The small lives within her had yet to cause as much trouble as he had.

Because her pelt, although silky and beautiful, was not as well adapted to such cold weather as the plush wolfen pelts of the inhabitants of Nova Scotia, Alaine wore her fingerless gloves and her red hooded cloak. It billowed about her form as she walked, vibrantly crimson in the bleached winter forest. About her shoulder was her most familiar item, that which the pack rarely saw her without - Her leather healer's satchel, unusually empty, for it was commonly bulging with all sorts of medical things. This was the reason that Alaine had dragged herself from bed at dawn, to retrieve the last scraps of medicinal plants she could find in her familiar stretch of the forest. The woman's measly gatherings barely made the effort worth it.

She was retuning from the depths of the forest now, heading back towards the rolling grasses that covered most of CdM territory. However, a strange sound caught her attention - A faint rustle that stopped and started, stopped and started. Intrigued, she changed course, trying to ignore the aching in her body. Each step produced a soft crunch as the claws on her feet broke through a thin layer of frost, but the rustling continued, and soon Alaine found herself before a bewildering sight. There was a tangle of netting on the forest floor, and in its center, a strange pile of brown and white feathers. Blinking wide emerald eyes, the healer inched closer, wary of the contraption but curious as to the creature it held.

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