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My longest post ever. O_O Sorry. You can skip to the last paragraph if in a hurry!!
She had viewed the festival coming to the lands with a mixture of interest, as the event was something she might have conceivably imagined to deal with the problem of gathering all the disparate luperci of the pack together for a common purpose and a sense of unity, but then, it seemed it wasn't really about that. The fair was for all the packs, of the entire land, and there were outsiders there too. It was not merely entertainment and collective activity, but traders - probably - hoping to skin a profit out of the local wolves, dogs and everything in between. Judging by the rumours of how many were present, it would be easier to lose the entire Court among the throng than to try to bring it together in one place. And while so many of them were abroad, their own borders could become more weak and insecure by the day, which resentfully the white hound realised meant she could not so easily spend her days combing the country for her assailant, the formidable Amy. Still, although her sense of duty nagged at her, it was not such a hardship to be constrained to within a day's journey of her home. Her old routine was beginning to come back now that much of her strength was too, and in some ways it felt like life had come full circle.
So as the tales of the riches and amusements coming back from the festival became more and more enthused and suffused with excitement, she revelled in the peace of her simple journeying around the immediate borderlands, keeping a watchful eye on the court's actual borders at the same time as checking every piece of ground she could for tracks from that fateful wagon. Sleep came easy after such exertions, which was a blessing on the cold and bruise-aching nights on her hard floor. She saw very little of anybody else, and caught herself talking to her chickens a few times, which she told herself firmly to put a stop to: no good anybody thinking she was beginning to lose her mind. There was little chance of that: Caspa was one of the staidest characters she knew. She was utterly honest, although sometimes she would omit information in order to preserve either safety or peace. She was reliable and kept her word at all costs. She did not let emotions rule her heart or her mind. Although she followed a strict and almost religious way of life, she was by no means fanatical. She did not even seek to evangelise. If anybody was going to go crazy it would probably be Terra - it seemed that Caspa's magical partner in crime had been sent giddy by the presence of the festival, and the multitude of new sights and faces she promised it held, which Caspa had no interest in whatsoever. She already owned everything she needed and she only cared to give up her time to the ones she owed allegiance to. She was not a gregarious dog, or not more than her nature intended. She could never have lived alone, but apart from her nearest and dearest, Caspa was happiest that the outside world did not intrude - even more so lately considering recent events.
It wasn't as if every stranger she ran into was a sociopath, or as if she held any kind of contempt for the rest of sentient creation - quite the opposite. A few times while travelling, she had encountered a kind soul - or, in the case of that dark rider, possibly a manipulative and devious one - but still one that had been willing to offer her assistance or alms, which she accepted fully in the charitable spirit they were given, understanding that such things came around and time came often enough for her to do the same. And she had, more than once, been of assistance herself. In alignment with the ancient shepherding blood in her veins, Caspa often thought to herself that if her calling to this earth was simply to help the needy and to redirect the lost, she could feel enough of worth had been accomplished. Well, no matter what, she was sure she would feel that eventually. All she was was an instrument, and all she could ever do was the will of the divine.
That notwithstanding, it did pretty often feel like she had a free choice in the matter, and those were the moments that gave her the most trouble - where there was no clear and simple right or wrong, just a problem to be solved, with multiple factors, multiple possible outcomes, and none of it perfect. This was the sort of conundrum that the Winter Festival posed, and she had a feeling that given a few more sessions of persuasion, she would end up going.
This in mind, she'd spent the immediate past few days turning her investigations further towards the location of the great grey city of Halifax, taking an old push-cart she'd found in the gardens of the Chien Hotel one day while scraping dead leaves away from the surface of the earth where her poppies were planted. This year, she would like to plant daffodils and other bulbs too, and then later, some sunflowers. The first year had been more of an experiment to see whether anyone noticed or cared about her small input into the grounds, but as the intervention had not even received a single comment, she felt confident enough to continue to work the land. Plants were important; they were like people, they needed the odd gentle push in the right direction, to stop the entire face of the earth becoming encrusted with weeds. It was only due to animals and their smaller brethren the insects that plants could exist at all, and the two worlds were constantly rubbing shoulders and having significant effect on one another: something Caspa had found quite interesting to ponder over during her many hours of sitting and thinking about whatever happened to drift into her mind. Truly, it made for some really fascinating conclusions, although she doubted she would ever find anybody with a patient enough mind to discuss such in-depth philosophies with.
The push-cart was slow, but so was Caspa with her still-tender ribs and a general all-over weakness which was perhaps due to expending a lot of energy on rebuilding bones, and perhaps due to lack of a really satisfactory diet - yet again - this time not due to the thrill of emptiness and ethereal lightness, but the difficulty her broken jaw had posed with chewing. Her sharp shoulders had squared a little sulkily at the thought, wondering if she was forever doomed to her slight and inferior build, or if she could work up to a modicum of strength. Noss although he had been nothing but critical had seemed to think she was not entirely a lost cause, having given her the advice to bulk up more - which must surely mean he thought it possible? This not being Caspa's field of expertise, nor really her interest - in the end, the body was nothing more than a vessel to be transcended - she had returned to less personal and more important considerations, such as how to get the damn cart to stop snagging on every rock. Whenever she found herself actually pushing it through the city, she'd enjoyed the smooth sidewalks and paths, apart from the cracks that littered the concreted areas and were hungry for wheel-rims to catch in their grasp. She'd eventually had to redesign the cart, fitting the old bicycle wheels she'd scavenged far to the north and making a sort of leather tyre to fit over them. This worked much better, and she could trundle it forwards quite peacefully, although it began to seem a little redundant as she travelled - what she was really looking for was alcohol for Strelein, but all these shops and houses had been ransacked to the bone long ago. Mostly all she found to bring back were dead animals who had succumbed to the harshness of winter, and Caspa was too young to the world and too far removed from the human times to recognise the significance and silliness of the sight of herself pushing along the cart neatly packed with fresh corpses, strangely akin to a weary once-a-month shopper in a supermarket parking lot.
She had eventually had a little luck, meeting a wolf who traded a bottle of wine for a dead pheasant while Caspa was in the very northmost reaches of the city. She had been resentful at first of the enacting of her dire prediction that this far towards the forest side of the town would leave her bound to run into some of the inevitable overflow from the ubiquitous festival. But then, the wolf had been pleasant and the trade easy and satisfactory for both parties. Caspa made her journey home rather more jauntily than usual this day, and left the bottle outside Strelein's door for him to find. She could surely track down some stronger brew soon in time to fill the bag she was working on in return for his services on the magician's robe, but the wine would serve for now to tide the tailor over. This had been the same day that Terra had come to her with starry eyes and become quite insistent on Caspa's accompanying her. The hound had eventually agreed to come, although for just a day or two, at least partly because she knew the trade fair would make finding liquor a much simpler task. She took her time over packing, as well as assuring herself that there would still be wolves within the borders - it was of course not her responsibility, but for her own peace of mind she always had to make sure and double check most things - and ran through the show in her mind several times to ensure she had remembered all of the equipment. The coat went at the very bottom of the wooden cart, folded and bound in waterproof leather. She would keep it as a surprise for Terra, right until the morning of the show. With its myriads of pockets and stunning design, Caspa knew the expression on her friend's face would probably be nothing short of priceless, if she could manage to stand still long enough to look at the garment.
At her slower pace, she had taken a much longer time returning to the festival than Terra, and when she arrived she was glad she had dressed in her head-shadowing hood, shoulder-shrugging cape as well as wide belt with myriad hanging down pouches, concealing most of her from the world. It was not as if she was shy, but in such a new situation as this, Caspa preferred to see rather than be seen. She kept a close eye on everybody as she followed Terra, although she was not really expecting to see the both dreaded and longed for yellow dog features. A place like this, with so many honourable and well-reputed luperci would never stand for trade in living canine flesh, and so Amy would find no welcome here, or at least that was what Caspa assumed.
She really didn't have any idea what she was doing or where they were going. She didn't want to trade anything until she'd got her bearings, and she hardly knew what had gotten into Terra, flying around like a butterfly on fast-forward. She felt more like a carthorse than a luperci, trudging after the fiery-coloured coywolf, pushing the wooden bicycle-wheeled cart containing all of their strange apparatus they would be using for the magic show. She found somewhere to park it, in a shady out-of-the-way spot next to a smaller tent on the banks of the lake. Her scent was all over everything inside, so there was doubtless no risk of theft - besides, who would steal from a magician? She hoped their occult reputation was spreading, as it might offer extra protection here in these neutral lands, surrounded by unknown faces. Then there was also the fact she knew one of the most skilful finger-smiths for miles around in the form of Terra herself. That canine was looking back at her now, her interest obviously piqued by the small and mysterious tent: she fired a short and simple question before heading immediately away. Caspa's eyes lifted to the heavens: some question, it was more of a request - no - a command. Not wanting to lose sight of her partner though, she followed, but not without some hesitancy. What was this tent they were entering, so near to the setting of the sun at the end of the day? If it was somebody's private quarters they might have been in trouble. Ducking inside after Terra, the first thing she scented was the sweet smell of tea brewing, a sensation that took her instantly back to her childhood amongst the sophisticated and highly humanised tea-drinkers of her family - that was, almost all of them. The interior seemed a little hazy, and Caspa blinked as her eyes adjusted. An elderly, bright-eyed male was looking inquisitively from her to Terra, one hand resting idly on the end of a long staff - or perhaps not so idly: she noticed one end of it was tapping against the floor. "Oh... good evening," she greeted him rather awkwardly, unsure why Terra had brought her in here, then shot the woman a meaningful stare: she needed to let Caspa in on the secret of what this tent was for, and fast, or the Afghan-bred wolfdog risked making a terrible fool of herself.
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