She hadn’t thought that it would take her so long to reach this stupid pack. If she’d known, she probably wouldn’t have wasted the effort. Addison had forgotten that snow would hinder her and the longer she had walked, the more tired she had become of walking through it. She had thought of trying to knit some kind of a shoe or snow boot to keep her feet warmer (she almost always had cold hands and feet, even in the summer,) but she hadn’t been able to figure it out yet. She had made her mittens, hat, and scarf, though, which she wore on this day. They weren’t flashy or anything, a dull gray in coloration. She’d taken and carded wool from both a black sheep and a white sheep and had mixed them together and had come up with a somewhat black, somewhat white scarf. The color didn’t matter much to her; she was a simple girl when it came to material possessions, preferring to live rustically in the farming Valley pack.
It had gotten colder as the day wore on, the sun beginning to sink a little in the sky. Addison hoped that the canines of the Anathema pack would be welcoming to her, at least somewhat...that they would listen to her questions and give her the answers that she sought. She would be willing to travel back to the Valley during the night if she knew for sure that Grace was safe and that nothing horrible had happened to her. She had visions of the girl being brainwashed by Halo, the same coyote that she had discovered with Pripyat when her little brother had wandered too close to Inferni. Halo was also the coyote that had given her the scars across her muzzle and the pock-marks on her hands; complete pieces of her skin had been ripped out, leaving small holes in the skin that felt different from the area around them. Hopefully Grace was safe and sound in this pack.
As the sun set it began to cast a different sort of light over the territory. The rays hit the snow at just the right angle, shining off of the pieces, creating tiny glares and glimmers as she passed by. She would stop and stare at a particular spot only to see the same dull white as before. The glittering seemed to be happening out of the corner of her eye in certain places that the light hit just right. The cinnamon-tinged wolf smiled at the mystery of nature; she didn't wonder why the snow glittered at times, simply accepting the fact that it did and observing the pretty spectacle out of the corner of her eye as she went. It was getting a little later in the evening, and soon she wouldn't be able to see the glimmering at all.
She was a short luperci but her shadow stretched out before her as she walked. She observed the lengthening process and wondered about her own height; she was at the lowest measurements for height and was quite small when she was in her lupus form. She primarily stuck to her optime form for this reason. Addi didn’t have a Napoleon complex by any means, but would have preferred to have been born just a tad taller than what she was. She didn’t enjoy others looking down at her because of their height difference and that was often what happened. Maybe if she did manage to make herself some boots she could put some kind of a heel on them or a support so that she could gain those few inches back. But no..that would likely make them too difficult to run in or hunt in. Maybe they could just be for social events.
Her height was one of the few things that the usually bold girl was insecure about, the other being her odd eye coloration. She hadn’t met many others with eyes as peculiar as hers and when she did she often attempted to befriend whoever it was. It was rare to see…and she enjoyed being around those who shared the same characteristic as she did. As a child she had been teased about it and made fun of by a few other wolves, so it was a slightly sensitive subject to her. She would feel more normal if she was a more socially acceptable height and had eyes that were the same color instead of the blue and gold ones that she had. Designing her own custom boots was the first step to solving at least one of those problems.
The girl was coming up with new ideas for clothing, shoes, and accessories each day, though it wasn’t a fact that she would share with most. She kept to herself most of the time and didn’t interact with many, not even members of her pack, if she could help it. She preferred solitude to company most days, especially when she got into one of her creative moods. Last time she’d painted her cabin…this time she had gone crazy in her sketch book, drawing sweater after sweater, boot after boot, bag after bag. She needed to go to the city for more materials, as well, she realized. She jotted it down as a note in her memory; if things didn’t go well in Anathema and she was sent home, she could be in Halifax by tomorrow.
She was nearing the border area, she could tell. The scents were getting stronger and stronger, reaching a point. She stopped there, clearing her throat and letting out a low howl to announce her presence to anyone in the general area. She could smell Grace. Addison had heard that her sister had settled nearby and had moved to a completely different pack, and she couldn’t understand why. She had brought the orange pup to ‘Souls to get her away from their neglectful mother Dierdre, and the girl had turned around and betrayed her. See if she’d ever help her out again. She’d been heartbroken when her little sister hadn’t come home to her and the girl hadn’t even had the decency to leave a note or let her know that she was taking off before she had left. It had reinforced Addison’s notion that she never, ever wanted to have pups and that blood relatives of her mother Dierdre were all back-stabbing assholes. Sirius was the only one that she’d come across that was halfway decent.
Addison clapped her mittened hands together to try and warm them up, shivering slightly. As she had gone Northward she had realized that the snow was getting deeper but she hadn’t wanted to turn around and waste the trip and had trudged on. Now that she wasn’t fighting to take steps through knee-deep snow and wasn’t creating as much heat, she felt much colder. She hoped that by announcing her presence she would be viewed as less threatening; she wasn’t trying to be sneaky here, she was only trying to figure out why her sister had come to join this pack rather than stay with her in Phoenix Valley with her family. She couldn’t let it go, after having searched for Grace D’Angelo for over a month. She would get her answer, one way or another.