reflected path

Vesper · 09-17-2012, 11:16 AM

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So much corniness in this post! +454

The meeting with the wolfy scrap of fur had brought back memories of the past, and Vesper entertained these thoughts as she trotted along the outskirts of the human city, keeping to the shade of the trees that encroached on the sidewalks. It had been a full year since she’d reached her new homeland, and almost a full year since she’d been a shifter and clan member. She wasn’t superstitious, and yet it was eerie to walk through the sprawling northern forests and recognize landmarks as how she first came across them, leaves beginning to change color and the ground cold on her paws.

“Thinking?” came a hoarse croak overhead, and the small coywolf stopped for a moment to let her dark companion alight on her steel-streaked shoulders.

She allowed him a sardonic grin. “More like reflecting.”

“Boy not being puddle,” Stark scolded her, but she caught the jesting note in his caw. He flapped up and overhead, circling and keeping an eye out for any dangers that might lurk in the city—although Ves felt oddly safe in this ghost town. The scents she stopped to identify were mostly days old, and those that were more recent belonged to prey and other lower creatures. She found one such trail and began to pursue it before she saw a dark shape diving ahead; Stark returned to her with a vole hanging from his beak, but she let him eat the morsel himself as she took a seat on the cracked asphalt and reflected some more.

This time last year, Vesper had been a wanderer—walking what her Shepard would call the Endless Path. She knew that both females had strayed from that path and found families, but she knew that she was still a wanderer at heart. Her paws had led her here, after all, and she still explored the woodlands with as much frequency as she stayed within her own territory. Did it make a difference? She guessed a simple name shouldn’t make a difference.

“Do you ever miss your old home, Stark, with your birth flock?” the coyote asked as the bird wolfed down the last scraps of meat. He bobbed his head with the motion then fixed beady eyes on her; she could tell he was deciding whether to tease her for her somber state or go along with it.

“Home with boy and Inferni,” Stark replied, and she smiled faintly before he followed it up with a cackling caw and a light jab to her shoulder with his beak. “What happen, whelp? Always having cheesy words, not needing help from old raven.” He delivered another peck, at which point she yapped and jumped to her feet, chasing the bird down the street.

Vesper

one step forward, three steps around

Image by Dennis Stauffer

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