02-25-2012, 04:51 AM
[html]
<style type="text/css">
#river01 {width: 410px; margin: auto; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; background: #524549; border: 3px solid #D95D5D; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 10px; line-height: 13px; color: #ADD8C7; text-align: justify;}
#river01 .triangles {color: #D9E68E; font-size: 15px;}
#river01 .ooc, #river01 .speak {color: #E1E6CF; letter-spacing: 1px;}
</style>
<style type="text/css">
#river01 {width: 410px; margin: auto; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; background: #524549; border: 3px solid #D95D5D; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 10px; line-height: 13px; color: #ADD8C7; text-align: justify;}
#river01 .triangles {color: #D9E68E; font-size: 15px;}
#river01 .ooc, #river01 .speak {color: #E1E6CF; letter-spacing: 1px;}
</style>
Lindsey's a little like Arthur Weasley when it comes to humans.
Excepting the short story bit (which may be extended to include his travel to and through 'Souls in the future, but goddammit, it's done for now), this is set in the middle of Ethereal Eclipse, at about 7 in the morning, and is forward-dated to March 11th.
Final word count is 2609.
▼ ▼ ▼
Could life get any more awkward?
River didn't think so. It was enough that he had been born a little mixed-up. It was enough that his sisters ragged on him sometimes, usually, all the time. It was enough that Lilah liked to argue — she called it "debate", but River knew what everyone was thinking — with stubborn traders (like that one big gray male who called himself Julian. He'd dealt in gemstones, and among his wares was a fine moonstone that Lilah wanted for Io. It had ended in a black eye for the male, and a moonstone for Io. Lilah, being a giantess from the Yukon, was not one to be trifled with). It was enough that he and his sisters reaching eight months of age, an event that one of the human books that Uncle Lindsey had shown him referred to as the "onset of puberty", came on hard and fast, and River wasn't sure he liked it. It was enough that his sisters were starting to elicit curious sniffs from young and not-so-young males among the outposts they passed by, and it was definitely enough when the young males, misinterpreting River's feminine scent as having even the slightest shade of indication of his willingness to mate with them, flirted with him. He sighed.
"What's up, kid?" Lindsey yawned, padding up alongside his nephew. For a while, the pack hadn't been sure whether he should call River his niece or his nephew. Fortunately, wolves aren't required to use pronouns, so no one was especially inconvenienced the day River said "I'm a boy," which had been a day not so long ago. Lindsey, who was in the preference of other males, and who had always been avant-garde besides, had felt bonded to River from birth, and they had become loyal friends since. Lindsey, guitar-strumming wolf of the world, had taught River whatever he expressed interest in knowing, believing that those who sought knowledge should always receive it. He himself was in the habit of gathering knowledge from esoteric places, most notably certain extracts and botanicals that were said to alter one's perception of the world. Every once in a while, Lindsey would come into possession of this or that strange plant, and isolate for a spell — up to a few days — then return, looking a little different each time. River considered Lindsey his best friend, and the sentiment was returned in kind.
"Those boys won't stop flirting with Talia," River groaned, turning away from the spectacle a few yards behind. It wasn't that he was a prude, and it wasn't that he was jealous — at all. It was that he was conflicted. What do you do when you don't fit in with one or the other? His sisters were pretty she-wolves, and their mother was a pearl. Io had told the pups, when they were very young, that their father, Rowan, had been a great and grandiose charmer with a heavy pelt and heavy bones. They were fairly certain that she had been exaggerating, as none of them were growing into lions, and timber wolf blood was not among giant blood like Lilah's, but they had decided only to joke about their mother's obvious fondness for her lost mate. Even if Rowan hadn't been the hunk of Io's dreams, Lilah certainly was, being able to put her hand-paws around the tops of pines while on two legs, and crush them if she ever had a reason to try. But River himself...? 'Nah,' he'd think, looking a little nervously into still water. Truthfully, his androgynous beauty was starting to draw the eyes of a few youthful bohemians in the settlements they traveled through.
Lindsey processed, then said, "So what? You sayin' you don't know why?"
River growled, "Of course I know why." He cast a disapproving glance over his shoulder, for reasons he couldn't quite divine.
"My niece is a very pretty wolf," Lindsey hummed. "And Lilah, overbearing as she is, taught her how to handle herself. I don't think you have anything to worry about, Riv." His own copper-colored eyes, glinting in the sunlight that poked holes in the overcast day above them, noted with amusement the pup trying his best to look suave while courting Talia on the path.
River turned away, and trudged to the edge of a quiet stream that ran to the right of the trail they were following. "Actually," he mumbled, "it's not her. It's me. I'm... confused."
Lindsey raised an eyebrow, so far as it can be said that wolves have eyebrows, and wryly quipped, "Oh... do we need to have a talk?"
"No!" assured River, slightly embarrassed. He remembered Lilah's lecture on sexuality that emphasized both feminine power and technical accuracy, courtesy of her blunt and realist Yukon way of thinking. Sierra had stuck her tongue out, Talia had giggled, and River had noticed his mother's eyes twinkling with laughter. "I just... don't know where I fit," he confessed, voice wrung like a rag.
Coming of age was awkward for anyone. Unevenly grown-in fur, gangly limbs, a newly-begotten mating drive; and River was getting the brunt of the awkwardness, as far as emotional and social development were concerned. The pack had chosen to raise him sans the application of gender, and if you didn't fit the mold when it came to courtship between males and females, it was easy to feel like a sharp stone on a smooth beach. Lindsey knew that. At nine months, his first crush — on a dashing young red male named Tobias — had ended in heartache, when dreamy Tobias ran off with a petite she-wolf who had the most adoring eyes he'd ever seen, next to Lindsey's. He sighed out of his nose. But, like a fish peeking out of a lake, a thought revealed itself to him. Of course. "Hmm... ever heard of a vision quest? It's when you travel far and wide, searching for yourself," he said, theatrically. More conversationally, "Maybe you should try it."
"Really?" said River, outwardly skeptical, but with an undertone that suggested that he'd appreciate not being around when Sierra and Talia's suitors started bringing them squirrels in genocidal numbers. More hopefully, he said, "Do you think it would help?"
Lindsey chose not to explain why, because knowing the meaning beforehand was not the point. Instead, he opened the pouch slung about his waist and fetched a modest pipe, made of dark, sturdy soapstone. The bowl rose convex from one end, and was amply concave within itself. He presented it to River, who took the ends of it in either hand-paw and examined it curiously. "Get ye northeastwards," an arbitrary but likely direction, "and befriend someone with a good heart and green tobacco." Lindsey knew the technical term for this alleged green tobacco, but it was much funnier to think of his nephew asking for "green tobacco" than for cannabis. He'd find out, and Lindsey was more than prepared to take the blame for the mislabeling. "Ask them to smoke it with you out of that pipe. It'll aid ya."
He reflected. "If the ladies approve, that is."
▼ ▼ ▼
It had been a long journey. Not the walking part, although that had been long, too. The "ladies' approval" part. Tough-as-nails Lilah had been enthused about the idea, boasting about the trek southward that she had taken on her own when she had been about a year and a quarter old, having had to travel a far greater distance to get where she was going than River was likely to. She told him that she had managed to scare a brown bear from her kill on the way, and if that should have to happen to him, literally or metaphorically, confidence was key. The other three? Not so easy. Io, who was to Lilah what a flower petal was to a block of iron, welled up, effusive with tears not in her eyes, but in her body. Sierra, who had been hunting in Secui, hip-bumped the two-legged River with much violence, tail raised and waving stiffly. He'd nearly toppled over, but caught himself, ears pulled back. Her forceful communication had been understood, and River's tail tucked somewhat. He couldn't bring himself to snarl in defense and reprimand, though he'd found himself wanting to do so a lot lately. Talia had chuffed at him playfully, and wondered, in a tone of great feminine curiosity tinged with challenge, if he couldn't handle her.
Lindsey, naturally, was the one to step in and try to loosen the tension, calm in the chaos surrounding him. He assured them all that his charge was quite capable of taking care of himself, and drawled, no, Talia, you're not chasing away your sibling because you're the "queen bitch", whatever that is, and no, Talia, it doesn't sound like something to be proud of. She criticized him for "thinking like a bottom," which earned her a nip from Io and a level "I've transcended pack hierarchy" from Lindsey. Talia complained about how weird her family was, and told everyone how normal Basil's was in comparison. Lilah, territorial, inquired tersely about who all Basil was and why he had had the audacity. Sierra smirked, teasing her sister about her new mate; Talia rebuked it, and Lindsey averted his eyes from the scene in silent embarrassment. Always interesting, this living with females thing, he thought. Turning his attention to River, he joked that maybe his only boy shouldn't leave him after all, lest he go insane, and River quietly asserted, with a smile in his voice, that he was pretty sure that Lindsey had crossed that line long ago. Lindsey laughed, and they nuzzled briefly.
▼ ▼ ▼
The two of them stole into the ruins of Portland that afternoon to find River what Lindsey termed "some duds." There were well-sheltered stores of human clothing here and there, and torn posters of humans wearing it. They marveled. Clothing was not especially popular among their family — Io had once been warmly tolerant of Lindsey putting a strange flowered headdress on her, just for fun, but Lilah was adamantly nudist. As it was gaining popularity among other packs, Sierra and Talia had grown interested in little things, like necklaces and beaded bracelets that they had seen older females wearing. Lindsey was the only one among them to truly appreciate the artfulness of it, and had consequently passed this trait on to River. They found him a plain long-sleeved shirt that was charcoal in color, which looked quite fetching with his nigh-on monochromatic pelt, and gray jeans that were slashed at the knees. That feature made them easier to wear with wolfish legs, and Lindsey, admiring, assured River that they'd modify them for his tail. "You'll look as torn up as you feel," Lindsey said knowingly.
They went on the prowl again in search of a belt, to appease River, and found one with a simple interlocking buckle (they would have recognized it as being similar to the seatbelt in a fancy car, if they'd ever investigated one — Lindsey had poked around a couple of dilapidated cars in his day, but not a one had been expensive enough for him to have seen a buckle so streamlined). It was made of sturdy canvas cloth, and it cut a swath of bright red across River's hips when he wore it. Pleased, he stored it in a deerskin pouch with the rest of his findings, and they started to meander back to their pack on all fours, bags hanging from their necks. They had been out for some hours, and dusk was soon to fall — the dome of the sky was still day-blue, but the reflection of the moon hung alight, and the horizon was ringed with small, fluffy clouds; a lemon-rind yellow that would give way to soft sorbet hues of purple, pink, and orange. Shadows from juts of thick winter fur made patterns on the wolves' bodies, and they walked amiably side by side.
"So, now that we've reached a consensus," Lindsey commented, recalling the short discussion that ensued after the extended back-and-forth, when he'd turned on his quiet confidence and won the girls over.
"Yeah?" River's tail was swaying low, slow, and contentedly, his deerskin bobbing most leisurely.
"When were you plannin' on leaving?" He'd hesitated, but hey, had to go through with that one...
The younger wolf didn't miss a beat. "Tomorrow, I think." Were that an inquiry from his sisters or mother, he would have stuttered, or paused for an uncomfortably long time, or said the wrong thing. Not so with his uncle.
He of pallid pelt was most relieved, though he didn't show it, keeping his cool de rigueur. "I'll miss you, kid."
"I'll miss you, too," said River, and they touched noses as they walked.
▼ ▼ ▼
About a week later, after traveling upward along the coast of Maine and New Brunswick, he had come upon a charred stretch of land. With just enough new moss slumbering on the remains of trees and rocks to say, he knew that tiny flowers would curve up from the ground in spring. He pushed inquisitively forward, and found himself on a land bridge, where the scents of many other creatures began to converge. Surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the smell of saltwater carried on the cool March breeze, over rocky beaches and the boughs of evergreens. There was a vague path carved by pawprints and canine musk further in toward the island, and River entered, butterflies in his belly. He was as northeastward as northeastward got from his starting point, or so it felt like.
Traversing the base of mountains, into valleys blanketed with snow, he wondered idly and then more intensely as he traveled why his uncle had told him to go to an island, and the further toward the center he got, the more rational he found it: though it had been faint for a while, he could now sense the invisible presence of packs. In the middle of a heavy forest, quiet in early morning, he became overwhelmed. Foolishly, he had traveled through the night, sleep taken away from him increasingly in favor of new information, and the weight of it bore on his mind and vision. That was to say nothing of the perfume of wolves tracing patterns around him. Because his pack had been composed of travelers, he was somewhat versed in the art of formal communication, but had always tended toward shyness. Lindsey had told him to befriend someone. Befriend someone? Outside of his family? Had he ever even done that?
Dawn opened up, sunlight peeking through the cloud cover from which the air had extracted dustings of snow for most of the night. An owl hooted, happy to have caught itself breakfast. Spooked in the stillness, River burst forward into a clearing, and in front of him, there was a shallow reddish cave jutting up from an outcropping of rocks. After hours of cold air in his eyes, it was a mirage of shelter in the dark woods akin to an oasis in the desert. With the foggy mania of the sleepless, he scratched the ground around the perimeter — the "Do Not Disturb" sign of lupine communication. He ascended the flat rock leading up to the mouth of the cave with a sway in his step. The two paws he stood on were sore and cold, eased by the dry smoothness of the cave floor. Dropping his leather knapsack in a back corner, he slumped down gratefully opposite. Grumbling egregiously at the light of day, he curled to face the dark end of the cave, mind swaying into the black of sleep.
[/html]
Excepting the short story bit (which may be extended to include his travel to and through 'Souls in the future, but goddammit, it's done for now), this is set in the middle of Ethereal Eclipse, at about 7 in the morning, and is forward-dated to March 11th.
Final word count is 2609.
Could life get any more awkward?
River didn't think so. It was enough that he had been born a little mixed-up. It was enough that his sisters ragged on him sometimes, usually, all the time. It was enough that Lilah liked to argue — she called it "debate", but River knew what everyone was thinking — with stubborn traders (like that one big gray male who called himself Julian. He'd dealt in gemstones, and among his wares was a fine moonstone that Lilah wanted for Io. It had ended in a black eye for the male, and a moonstone for Io. Lilah, being a giantess from the Yukon, was not one to be trifled with). It was enough that he and his sisters reaching eight months of age, an event that one of the human books that Uncle Lindsey had shown him referred to as the "onset of puberty", came on hard and fast, and River wasn't sure he liked it. It was enough that his sisters were starting to elicit curious sniffs from young and not-so-young males among the outposts they passed by, and it was definitely enough when the young males, misinterpreting River's feminine scent as having even the slightest shade of indication of his willingness to mate with them, flirted with him. He sighed.
"What's up, kid?" Lindsey yawned, padding up alongside his nephew. For a while, the pack hadn't been sure whether he should call River his niece or his nephew. Fortunately, wolves aren't required to use pronouns, so no one was especially inconvenienced the day River said "I'm a boy," which had been a day not so long ago. Lindsey, who was in the preference of other males, and who had always been avant-garde besides, had felt bonded to River from birth, and they had become loyal friends since. Lindsey, guitar-strumming wolf of the world, had taught River whatever he expressed interest in knowing, believing that those who sought knowledge should always receive it. He himself was in the habit of gathering knowledge from esoteric places, most notably certain extracts and botanicals that were said to alter one's perception of the world. Every once in a while, Lindsey would come into possession of this or that strange plant, and isolate for a spell — up to a few days — then return, looking a little different each time. River considered Lindsey his best friend, and the sentiment was returned in kind.
"Those boys won't stop flirting with Talia," River groaned, turning away from the spectacle a few yards behind. It wasn't that he was a prude, and it wasn't that he was jealous — at all. It was that he was conflicted. What do you do when you don't fit in with one or the other? His sisters were pretty she-wolves, and their mother was a pearl. Io had told the pups, when they were very young, that their father, Rowan, had been a great and grandiose charmer with a heavy pelt and heavy bones. They were fairly certain that she had been exaggerating, as none of them were growing into lions, and timber wolf blood was not among giant blood like Lilah's, but they had decided only to joke about their mother's obvious fondness for her lost mate. Even if Rowan hadn't been the hunk of Io's dreams, Lilah certainly was, being able to put her hand-paws around the tops of pines while on two legs, and crush them if she ever had a reason to try. But River himself...? 'Nah,' he'd think, looking a little nervously into still water. Truthfully, his androgynous beauty was starting to draw the eyes of a few youthful bohemians in the settlements they traveled through.
Lindsey processed, then said, "So what? You sayin' you don't know why?"
River growled, "Of course I know why." He cast a disapproving glance over his shoulder, for reasons he couldn't quite divine.
"My niece is a very pretty wolf," Lindsey hummed. "And Lilah, overbearing as she is, taught her how to handle herself. I don't think you have anything to worry about, Riv." His own copper-colored eyes, glinting in the sunlight that poked holes in the overcast day above them, noted with amusement the pup trying his best to look suave while courting Talia on the path.
River turned away, and trudged to the edge of a quiet stream that ran to the right of the trail they were following. "Actually," he mumbled, "it's not her. It's me. I'm... confused."
Lindsey raised an eyebrow, so far as it can be said that wolves have eyebrows, and wryly quipped, "Oh... do we need to have a talk?"
"No!" assured River, slightly embarrassed. He remembered Lilah's lecture on sexuality that emphasized both feminine power and technical accuracy, courtesy of her blunt and realist Yukon way of thinking. Sierra had stuck her tongue out, Talia had giggled, and River had noticed his mother's eyes twinkling with laughter. "I just... don't know where I fit," he confessed, voice wrung like a rag.
Coming of age was awkward for anyone. Unevenly grown-in fur, gangly limbs, a newly-begotten mating drive; and River was getting the brunt of the awkwardness, as far as emotional and social development were concerned. The pack had chosen to raise him sans the application of gender, and if you didn't fit the mold when it came to courtship between males and females, it was easy to feel like a sharp stone on a smooth beach. Lindsey knew that. At nine months, his first crush — on a dashing young red male named Tobias — had ended in heartache, when dreamy Tobias ran off with a petite she-wolf who had the most adoring eyes he'd ever seen, next to Lindsey's. He sighed out of his nose. But, like a fish peeking out of a lake, a thought revealed itself to him. Of course. "Hmm... ever heard of a vision quest? It's when you travel far and wide, searching for yourself," he said, theatrically. More conversationally, "Maybe you should try it."
"Really?" said River, outwardly skeptical, but with an undertone that suggested that he'd appreciate not being around when Sierra and Talia's suitors started bringing them squirrels in genocidal numbers. More hopefully, he said, "Do you think it would help?"
Lindsey chose not to explain why, because knowing the meaning beforehand was not the point. Instead, he opened the pouch slung about his waist and fetched a modest pipe, made of dark, sturdy soapstone. The bowl rose convex from one end, and was amply concave within itself. He presented it to River, who took the ends of it in either hand-paw and examined it curiously. "Get ye northeastwards," an arbitrary but likely direction, "and befriend someone with a good heart and green tobacco." Lindsey knew the technical term for this alleged green tobacco, but it was much funnier to think of his nephew asking for "green tobacco" than for cannabis. He'd find out, and Lindsey was more than prepared to take the blame for the mislabeling. "Ask them to smoke it with you out of that pipe. It'll aid ya."
He reflected. "If the ladies approve, that is."
It had been a long journey. Not the walking part, although that had been long, too. The "ladies' approval" part. Tough-as-nails Lilah had been enthused about the idea, boasting about the trek southward that she had taken on her own when she had been about a year and a quarter old, having had to travel a far greater distance to get where she was going than River was likely to. She told him that she had managed to scare a brown bear from her kill on the way, and if that should have to happen to him, literally or metaphorically, confidence was key. The other three? Not so easy. Io, who was to Lilah what a flower petal was to a block of iron, welled up, effusive with tears not in her eyes, but in her body. Sierra, who had been hunting in Secui, hip-bumped the two-legged River with much violence, tail raised and waving stiffly. He'd nearly toppled over, but caught himself, ears pulled back. Her forceful communication had been understood, and River's tail tucked somewhat. He couldn't bring himself to snarl in defense and reprimand, though he'd found himself wanting to do so a lot lately. Talia had chuffed at him playfully, and wondered, in a tone of great feminine curiosity tinged with challenge, if he couldn't handle her.
Lindsey, naturally, was the one to step in and try to loosen the tension, calm in the chaos surrounding him. He assured them all that his charge was quite capable of taking care of himself, and drawled, no, Talia, you're not chasing away your sibling because you're the "queen bitch", whatever that is, and no, Talia, it doesn't sound like something to be proud of. She criticized him for "thinking like a bottom," which earned her a nip from Io and a level "I've transcended pack hierarchy" from Lindsey. Talia complained about how weird her family was, and told everyone how normal Basil's was in comparison. Lilah, territorial, inquired tersely about who all Basil was and why he had had the audacity. Sierra smirked, teasing her sister about her new mate; Talia rebuked it, and Lindsey averted his eyes from the scene in silent embarrassment. Always interesting, this living with females thing, he thought. Turning his attention to River, he joked that maybe his only boy shouldn't leave him after all, lest he go insane, and River quietly asserted, with a smile in his voice, that he was pretty sure that Lindsey had crossed that line long ago. Lindsey laughed, and they nuzzled briefly.
The two of them stole into the ruins of Portland that afternoon to find River what Lindsey termed "some duds." There were well-sheltered stores of human clothing here and there, and torn posters of humans wearing it. They marveled. Clothing was not especially popular among their family — Io had once been warmly tolerant of Lindsey putting a strange flowered headdress on her, just for fun, but Lilah was adamantly nudist. As it was gaining popularity among other packs, Sierra and Talia had grown interested in little things, like necklaces and beaded bracelets that they had seen older females wearing. Lindsey was the only one among them to truly appreciate the artfulness of it, and had consequently passed this trait on to River. They found him a plain long-sleeved shirt that was charcoal in color, which looked quite fetching with his nigh-on monochromatic pelt, and gray jeans that were slashed at the knees. That feature made them easier to wear with wolfish legs, and Lindsey, admiring, assured River that they'd modify them for his tail. "You'll look as torn up as you feel," Lindsey said knowingly.
They went on the prowl again in search of a belt, to appease River, and found one with a simple interlocking buckle (they would have recognized it as being similar to the seatbelt in a fancy car, if they'd ever investigated one — Lindsey had poked around a couple of dilapidated cars in his day, but not a one had been expensive enough for him to have seen a buckle so streamlined). It was made of sturdy canvas cloth, and it cut a swath of bright red across River's hips when he wore it. Pleased, he stored it in a deerskin pouch with the rest of his findings, and they started to meander back to their pack on all fours, bags hanging from their necks. They had been out for some hours, and dusk was soon to fall — the dome of the sky was still day-blue, but the reflection of the moon hung alight, and the horizon was ringed with small, fluffy clouds; a lemon-rind yellow that would give way to soft sorbet hues of purple, pink, and orange. Shadows from juts of thick winter fur made patterns on the wolves' bodies, and they walked amiably side by side.
"So, now that we've reached a consensus," Lindsey commented, recalling the short discussion that ensued after the extended back-and-forth, when he'd turned on his quiet confidence and won the girls over.
"Yeah?" River's tail was swaying low, slow, and contentedly, his deerskin bobbing most leisurely.
"When were you plannin' on leaving?" He'd hesitated, but hey, had to go through with that one...
The younger wolf didn't miss a beat. "Tomorrow, I think." Were that an inquiry from his sisters or mother, he would have stuttered, or paused for an uncomfortably long time, or said the wrong thing. Not so with his uncle.
He of pallid pelt was most relieved, though he didn't show it, keeping his cool de rigueur. "I'll miss you, kid."
"I'll miss you, too," said River, and they touched noses as they walked.
About a week later, after traveling upward along the coast of Maine and New Brunswick, he had come upon a charred stretch of land. With just enough new moss slumbering on the remains of trees and rocks to say, he knew that tiny flowers would curve up from the ground in spring. He pushed inquisitively forward, and found himself on a land bridge, where the scents of many other creatures began to converge. Surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the smell of saltwater carried on the cool March breeze, over rocky beaches and the boughs of evergreens. There was a vague path carved by pawprints and canine musk further in toward the island, and River entered, butterflies in his belly. He was as northeastward as northeastward got from his starting point, or so it felt like.
Traversing the base of mountains, into valleys blanketed with snow, he wondered idly and then more intensely as he traveled why his uncle had told him to go to an island, and the further toward the center he got, the more rational he found it: though it had been faint for a while, he could now sense the invisible presence of packs. In the middle of a heavy forest, quiet in early morning, he became overwhelmed. Foolishly, he had traveled through the night, sleep taken away from him increasingly in favor of new information, and the weight of it bore on his mind and vision. That was to say nothing of the perfume of wolves tracing patterns around him. Because his pack had been composed of travelers, he was somewhat versed in the art of formal communication, but had always tended toward shyness. Lindsey had told him to befriend someone. Befriend someone? Outside of his family? Had he ever even done that?
Dawn opened up, sunlight peeking through the cloud cover from which the air had extracted dustings of snow for most of the night. An owl hooted, happy to have caught itself breakfast. Spooked in the stillness, River burst forward into a clearing, and in front of him, there was a shallow reddish cave jutting up from an outcropping of rocks. After hours of cold air in his eyes, it was a mirage of shelter in the dark woods akin to an oasis in the desert. With the foggy mania of the sleepless, he scratched the ground around the perimeter — the "Do Not Disturb" sign of lupine communication. He ascended the flat rock leading up to the mouth of the cave with a sway in his step. The two paws he stood on were sore and cold, eased by the dry smoothness of the cave floor. Dropping his leather knapsack in a back corner, he slumped down gratefully opposite. Grumbling egregiously at the light of day, he curled to face the dark end of the cave, mind swaying into the black of sleep.