day before the ball-ish [503]
She’d been lucky. The entire trip, it had only snowed once, and lightly at that. The going had been chilly, but the wind was no match for Lyris’s thick fur and the cloak around her shoulders. She’d managed to hunt well, even if the pickings were slim; and her stallion had even managed to scrounge up a decent amount of living grass. Riding on horseback for the past few days had caused the huntress to become sore and achy, so for long stretches she would walk astride Kenyon. It was not a comfortable or easy way to travel, but there was no other way to travel, and in Lyris’s terms, it had been a fairly quick and easy trip. She did have the vague frustration of having to remain in Optime the entire way, as she wished to run for long stretches on all fours, but she knew that until she returned home that would not be an option, so she managed to mostly ignore the urges. Still, she knew that any other soul from New Dawn would not be able to spend such a long time in Optime without losing their mind. Just another thing that makes me strange to them. She muttered inwardly.
She was taking a break from home to visit another pack. It was something very un-Lyris-like, but it was something she had decided she should try. Besides, she could stock up with anything she could kill or scavenge on the way, and maybe return with a good load of things she could use to pay Vinátta for boarding her horse, or find more alcohol or tools for her friend Asgeir. The main reason she chose to visit Casa di Cavalieri, of all places, was because she knew perhaps the most about them, due to a former member being part of New Dawn, and being a sort-of-friend (she had no friends, except maybe Asgeir) of the king’s grandson, Luca. The first time she had met Luca he had beat her at a hand-to-hand spar (just barely), and ever since she’d been practicing hard, because failure was not an option. But there was only so far she could advance without using a dummy to practice on or actually sparring with someone. Besides, she was curious about the military pack. If she could convince Luca to let her in the borders, maybe she could get a better look around.
It was midday when Kenyon and Lyris reached the borders. The Warden dismounted, adjusted her skewered cloak around her throat and loosely gripped her stallion’s reins. Then she stared across the border for a good ten seconds, unsure, exactly, of what she would say. Then she just sighed. To hell with it. Tipping back her head, she let out a short, clear howl, aiming it towards Luca, but since she was unsure if this was the custom for such a place, she mostly just prayed he would be the one that answered, and not some stranger that would gape at her.