Hah, in Soviet Russia, feesh eat youuuuu! Also, the very last paragraph is an intimate look into Finn’s crazy mind.
"Well, that’s good. If I hadn’t known that I might never have gotten out of this cave." Said Finn. It was true, she could barely swim as it was, and the idea that there were wolf eaters loose in the water with her would have kept Finn on trapped in the grotto till judgment day. She settled again, glad that the Russian appeared to be so easygoing. She’d been enjoying herself in these lands lately. All the wolves she had come across were, at the very least, polite. Some were quite enjoyable to talk to, and Finn counted Rurik in the latter of these categories.
Traveling with a deer brought about less social interaction than Finn would have liked. Too often she found herself avoiding the company of others to protect the deer, or found that wolves tend to shy away from scarred wolves who are accompanied by live prey. Finn enjoyed Alastair’s comfort, but eventually the longing to converse with other canines became much too strong. Here, she was quite relieved that he couldn’t follow her down the steep cliffs, as she might not have swum into the cave if he had been on the beach, and thus never met Rurik.
”I have to be a fan of hot weather, the only other option in this country is it’s cold winters. Despite the fact that I’m a northern wolf, I seem to have unnaturally thin fur. The only reason I survived my first years was because I nearly clung to my brother’s side.” Brom had protected her when the blizzards raged, and when her father ran out into the whiteness to howl along with the winds. He had comforted her with his slow, steady voice as Aegnus paced and snarled with impatience and nerves until Cuhlain finally deigned to return.
Once Finn had put the mountains behind her the cold had lessened considerably, though it had still been difficult out on the plains. Her fur was curly, and thin and the scars didn’t help much as they exposed yet more skin to the elements. Brom and Aegnus had been damned near fluffy with fur, and though her father was similar to Finn pelt-wise, he was probably too crazy to care. That had been the usual way of life for Finn, till the day she left home. She didn’t miss the insanity, but she did miss someone warm to curl up next too when the tempests came.
”I’ve heard tell of that.” Finn said, ”Blood can usually pass the trait over. And sex.” Finn added with a shrug and a blush. She shifted, suddenly and painfully aware of her embarrassment. She stared at the wall over Rurik’s shoulder, trying not to meet his piercing, pale eyes. Though Finn wasn’t a very good judge of attractiveness in Luperci, she had to admit that Rurik was pretty high on the scale. His scars helped, she always liked scars, and the tattoos gave him a sort of devil-may-care look, and his fur was a nice colour.
But she and Rurik were quite different in many respects. Finn never thought of herself as beautiful, or even vaguely pretty. At night she’d fretted over this problem, knowing that it would be hard to find a mate who didn’t mind at all what his woman looked like. She’d have to hope for someone who liked her for her personality, and how many of those were there in the world? Though she’d carried a torch for a couple wolves over the meager three years of her life, Finn had never said anything, never told them.
She shuffled again, trying to think of another subject change. Her eyes roamed along the belt till they reached a glass bottle full of liquid, and Finn all but blurted out, ”So, what is that stuff?” She held her breath, knowing how blatantly she had mishandled that whole situation. Her mind was still stuck on the topic, and it whirled around like a train on a single, circular track. The doubts from the many night before rose like ghosts, shaking their clanking manacles in the theater of her mind. She wouldn’t find a mate, in all likeliness. Or have cubs.
She’d be alone, and it was all because she’d wasted her looks brawling and fighting and getting all scratched up. Not that it was likely she’d inherited any good looks to begin with. Neither her father nor her brothers had been lookers. She probably had failed the genetics test too. It was just her lot in life to be “the friend”, an amorphous entity inhabiting the purgatory between the circles of “woman” and “fighting buddy”. She’d screwed it all up, thank you very much, and all that she could hope for was to die and be reincarnated as someone more beautiful, interesting or both.