The tall dog huffed a sigh. "You don't have to worry anyway," he corrected, although it did secretly please him to know that he was still on her mind so often. "It's not as though I'd leave you behind, petite. I will always come back." He smiled lazily in the warm sunlight, soaking up the last rays the days would offer before autumn and winter sapped it all away.
Ruri clung to him, her slim arms wrapped around his lean chest as she rested her small face against his fur. He smiled, relishing the contact as he swung his good arm about her slender shoulders. They were inseparable like this, a duo of opposites, but both as needy as the other. Their relationship had been symbiotic from the beginning, although it might not appear that way to outsiders. What had he been worried about? Nothing would ever tear them apart.
"My trip? Well, I spied on some of our neighboring packs," he admitted with a wicked grin. "There are a lot of different packs here, but they don't seem to fight at their borders like they did in the South. Oh, there is one clan, up in the sharp and craggy mountains, they are called Inferni! I met their queen, a fearsome warrior with only one eye..." He did love telling stories, embellishing where the tale could use flair, and omitting adjectives that his blind companion would not comprehend. "And when I left her domain, I came across the flower pack, the Dahlians. Firefly lived there after she stopped sailing, and Svara grew up there! Their land has more forests and fields than ours, but they don't have the soaring cliffs and caves." He glanced down at her upturned face, pleased by her rapt attention. She had always been the best listener he'd ever had. He rubbed her shoulders affectionately, glad that she was still his sidekick.