Backdated to January 15th >.>
They had finally made it. Ralla and Noss had finally made it to the Halycon Mountains. The rocky range looked so daunting now that they were up close--it being Ralla's first time and Noss's second--and the snow still seemed thick. In order to get an accurate reading on when the best time to cross would be, though, they would at least have to make it to some sort of crossable point. Whether it was blocked by snow still or uncrossable was yet to be seen. The two remained optimistic, at the very least.
Having travelled for days, the two were tired, to say the least; even after sleeping in hospitable hollows or caves, nothing could beat the rest one got while in a familiar home. Scaling a mountain wasn't very high on their to-do list at the moment, however much it had to be done... With the bright sun mercifully shining and lighting their path that day, the siblings began their ascent. Sugar plodded carefully and faithfully behind, finding easy purchase on the rocks with his hooves. The quarter horse was not made for such treacherous heights, yet the path that they were currently on was easy enough for him to climb. Their food supply had run dangerously low three-fourths of the way through their journey, so the two had opted to hunt along the way from there on, using the preserved food if only the hunting was bad enough to warrant it.
As they got higher and higher, it was evident that it was still too early to hope for a premature thaw. The gypsy luperci would be arriving on the other side for their triannual commute to the south--picking up and dropping off exports of their travels--and Noss and Ralla had to time it well enough that they wouldn't miss the chance. Should the ice thaw too late... Their journey south would be doubled in time, at the very least. Not to mention riddled with dangers that they had faced on the way up (well, more on Noss's side, since Ralla had been clever enough to catch a gypsy luperci ship up). At a certain point, as the small group rounded a corner, Noss grew still as he scented a boundary. Ralla caught on not a second later, stopping in her tracks and soothing Sugar to a halt as well. The look on Noss's face told Ralla that he did not remember such a thing being there when he had crossed the first time, but seemed to unnerve him. She knew he had a bad sense of direction in the first place, but to overlook an entire pack was impossible. If only she knew how oblivious he had been when he had affronted Dahlia by mistake... The obstacle now in place, their only choice to scout further was to cross through the territory. But doing so without permission was out of the question. Alone, they might've gone unnoticed, if not been more vulnerable. But together with a horse was another story.
Noss howled his deep howl to the sky, but Ralla kept quiet. For some off reason, even as she soothed Sugar's impatiant lifting of his hooves, there was an aura of uneasiness about the silent pass that she could not shake. She could scent some prey animals nearby--as there should be, in a pack territory--and could even see some moving specks in the distance, all grouped together on a gently curving mountainside. Near the group of specks was a larger, unmoving dot, which Ralla supposed to be the entrance to a cave. Did the animals live there? Did something else? Or was she just being paranoid and was it empty? Ralla was being so jittery that she nearly let out a yelp--that which she hadn't done since she was a young pup--as a bird cut a corner on the downdraft and flew straight towards her, narrowly skimming her head as she ducked. Noss was momentarilly surprised as well, but he did not comprehend the full meaning of what it meant. For Ralla, the sign was clear; bad luck was iminent, somewhere around. For the time, she only saw the bad luck as one meaning 'there will be no early thaws'. Being in a comfortable situation in AniWaya had let Ralla grow less suspicious of the world around...
Moon walks. "Moon talks." Moon thinks.
![[Image: RallaP-1.png]](http://i419.photobucket.com/albums/pp275/ShadowLycan22/RallaP-1.png)