She was surprised at the amount of wildlife in this place. Addison perked her ears as she heard yet another song bird in the trees overhead, stopping to have a listen. She was glad that she had learned the language of the beasts as a pup; she offered the bird a ‘hello’ and thanked it for its song, and it thanked her in turn for not climbing the tree and trying to eat it. Birds had rather simple minds; to the bird she was simply a predator, nothing more and nothing less, and that would always be its first thought. As a wolf she was higher up on the food chain, and didn’t often have to worry about being eaten by anything else. Maybe a coyote and her demonic rats, if Halo ever got a hold of her again. She waved at the winged creature and continued on her way.
The female could still smell the Valley strongly on herself, though it was now mixed with the scent of the new Anathema pack. She had arrived in the packlands the night before and had met Fiachra, one of the wolves that held the medic rank. What was that rank called again? Fur something. Furcas! It was an odd name for a rank, she had thought, and the word stuck in her mind. Through talking to Fiachra she had learned that her brother and sister were indeed within the territory, safe and sound as she had hoped. She had searched for Grace for over a month after the pup had abandoned her and the Valley and was relieved to find that she was alive and well. She didn’t understand her sister’s reasons for leaving, still, but what could she do.
She had learned a little bit about the pack Anathema, and hoped to bring this information back to Jefferson so that he could be informed of the new pack as well. She didn’t know that Geneva frequented the place; though her nose caught a slightly familiar scent every once in a while, she didn’t connect it to the silver wolfess. Grace and Sirius were around, after all, two other familiar smells. Addison didn’t have the best sniffer in the world and it was hard for her to differentiate between different wolves at time. She usually just marked them as ‘familiar’ or ‘unfamiliar’.
She exited the cave system and began to walk back out into the snow. She had brought her mittens, hat, and scarf with her and wore all four of the items, bundled up for warmth. On her way to the pack she had under-estimated the amount of time that it would take to get there with the snow, and now she had a better idea of how long it would take her. Leaving in the morning meant that she would be back to the Valley in six or seven hours, hopefully before it began to get too dark outside. The cinnamon-tinged luperci hummed to herself as she walked toward the border, mimicking the tune of the bird that she had heard a few minutes before.