Keep those eyes wide open

[Jefferson Soul]

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wc454 -- The one-eyed menace had only resided in Phoenix Valley for a number of weeks, but the lands and the fresh air that seemed to constantly wander through seemed to be having quite an effect on his internal systems. While the four-year-old was not exactly spunky as a pup again, his energy was slowly building up day by day under such new circumstances, and the bones of his belly were beginning to subside as it began to fill back up. He was still rather sickly thin and frail-looking, as well as very obviously harmless despite the number of scars that he trudged along with, not to mention the gimpy leg he stumbled upon when walking and the use of only one eye. Phoenix Valley was, however, still having a beneficial effect on him, and the hybrid was slowly growing all the more accustomed to its tranquility and easygoing lands. He might not have admitted it right off, but Jefferson was beginning to like the packlife he'd never understood as a loner. As his health trudgingly returned to his waned frame, the keen senses he'd been gifted with were slowly regaining power in turn. Recognizing scents was gradually becoming easy again, and his ears (though tattered and well worn, by the looks of them) were of actual use again. Thus, he blamed his recovering senses for waking him up when a foreign smell befell his snout, as comfortable as he had been underneath one of the trees off in dreamland. Strange--he had met only a few of his packmates at that point, but the smell reeked of a foreign one. By this point in time he had learned of other claimed territories in neighboring areas, but the opportunity to visit them had yet to arrive. He climbed up onto his feet with clenched jowls, belittling the pain in his useless right leg as he stumbled from his sleeping place and towards the foreign smell. He was in no condition for fighting--that was completely obvious--but it appeared he was the only one around when he came across the rather harmless-looking creature. Of course, he'd found her from behind apparently unnoticed at first, and stood after her with his weaker leg hung in the air. He'd already seen her walk. "Hey, gimpy," he called after her, a rather indifferent look in his one-eyed stare. "Something tells me you're not from around here. There's only room for one gimpster here." A joke, obviously, but Jefferson had always been pretty bad at making clear he was joking. He was not quite smiling, nor frowning--just watching her curiously, knowing it necessary to stop wanderers at the borders... after the welcome he'd gotten when he'd ended up there.

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