[html]
OOC: Pictou Falls, late morning, optime Caspa, sosu ramble, backdated to about the 2nd or 3rd of January, GO!
This was the way she had travelled through that terrible previous winter, next to which even this one felt mild. Although she had heard of settled areas along the coast up from her family's encampment, she had often headed inland to avoid wide estuaries, and supposed she must have missed them during one of those detours. Direction had been very hard to tell in the blizzards that had dogged her footsteps, and by the end of it she had hardly known which way was which. As bemusing as events often seemed to be when she travelled in the north of this peninsula, nothing could have quite as much impact on her as that long trudge had done. It had washed away any vestiges of the person she had used to be - might have been - in as efficient a manner as the doctrines of her family would have if she'd stayed. Despite this, Caspa was not much to believe in fate. Hope and fate were both excuses used to relieve personal responsibility. You were always in charge of your own behaviour - even she was, she who had dedicated every footfall to something she had never seen or touched but believed to be all-powerful.
She trailed vaguely south, following a much more benign sun, for it was visible behind the grey cloud as a faint pool of white instead of being obliterated from view by raging swaths of blizzard. What view she got of the mountains reminded her of her first journey here, when she'd believed she would be trapped and would also be protected from following footsteps, for she had somehow gone too far North, and ended up on that side of those granite-stern cliffs and peaks. Caspa had eventually found a narrow and icy passage through, by chance that seemed almost unnatural in its unlikelihood. Although it had almost killed her it had also provided some relief, when she had recovered enough. She had been sure that her family would never find her through here - not that they were searching, but the idea of putting real barriers as well as distance between them was a comforting one. Oh, she had no grudge against the clan, or a particular reason to fear them, for they could not touch her now she had chosen to follow the most protected and sacred path of their belief. But the idea of being utterly separate, able to function entirely alone without thought of their possible knowledge of her whereabouts or their curious and domineering wish to keep tabs on all their far-flung sons and daughters... it was her greatest wish at the time, if not an aching need. That was the sole reason she'd gone north anyway, aiming to find the ports and cross the sea, but her blundering route had led her a different way in the end. She had sought refuge in the Miracles pack, thinking the mountains would provide enough of a barrier, and now her loyalty was bound to them, never to be severed.
Of course, she'd been wrong. It was only her bad sense of direction, her naivety and lack of knowledge of the landscape that had taken Caspa to the north side of the Halcyon range, for, as she was proving even today as she walked, there was a much smoother and simpler southern-side passage between the mountains and the sea that all could traverse with ease. Still, there was little way her family the Samirans could hear of her presence here in the far-eastern shoreline pack, a tiny establishment even compared to her own home. The Courtly wolves were not known for travelling, and she kept her head down, either unwilling or incapable of making a name for herself in the lands of 'souls. So the chances of an Al-Fateh arriving here were remote, and she could retain the peace of mind she'd originally sought, although sometimes a strange yearning to hear their news would hit her, thoughts of the sisters that she hardly been allowed to see enough to become friends, despite obvious litter-mate inborn love that would probably never fade. Where they were now, she could not imagine nor presume to know. Likely most still at home, but if they shared even a fraction of her desire to leave, they would be far away now themselves.
When she came to the river, she found it brimming with angry winter currents and cold as ice to the touch. She had found easily a shallow ford on the way, but today had no such luck. She had crossed further down, but instead her logical mind told her to walk upstream, where the water was bound to lose some ferocity. Caspa would not swim: her long coat would not dry, and the cold was deadly to a creature like herself, and she did not even wear her leather trench-coat today, dressed only in a sheepskin tunic - yes, warm enough but much less expansive, the arms potentially left bare, except that she also wore a black leather hood with long cape-like extension at the throat, wrapped much like a scarf or a cape over her shoulders. Still, there was absolutely no desire in her heart to get wet in this icy weather. The river did not calm, though, remaining if not turbulent with savage currents, at least deep and dark and unpredictable looking. She had not spent one of those youths, so far, with exploring and adventures galore, keeping herself to herself and staying mostly in one place or moving at a moderate and sensible speed to a pre-determined destination, and she had never crossed a dangerous river. Cautious enough, the hound continued up the Pictou with a heavy heart, sensing the extension of a journey that had already taken longer than she'd intended.
By the time the morning had worn on, the part-wolf dog was already half-way back the same direction she'd come, although she did not know this having approached from a different angle and having reached the first of the foothills. Whatever crossings she had found, she judged too wide or too deep, and the riverbed too difficult to see. Upon the rocks of the mountains, though, the river - now rather shrunken - was bound to soon become a stream, and where there were streams there were shallow patches, or at least stepping stones. Her breath froze in the air as she stepped delicately from rock to rock, now taking a steep upwards slant. The sound of highly violent water rushing came ahead, and she craned her swan-long neck to spy a low - very low, only a few feet - waterfall tumbling noisily to feed the infant river. Above the waterfall, the stream that fed it crossed rocks, she was sure - the place looked shallow. Caspa had to climb up, though, and this took her long enough, feeling each handhold with great care. She bore still-recent injuries, and a fall - especially into the water - would be immeasurably undesirable. When she came to the top, she nodded in satisfaction to see a place where the stream ran over a sheet of rock only an inch or two deep. But her attention was caught, and she looked around before walking across. The stream ran out of a nearby pool, its waters a dark slate colour due to the lack of light from the sky. Above this pool fell a much more statuesque tumult of water, taller than Caspa - hell, taller than Liam. The place was beautiful, with the cold spray resembling wafts of kicking snow, the rocks behind it gleaming in a subdued manner where the water slicked their sheer faces. So this was the beginning of the river's climb - or the end of its descent - from the mountain, the place that held the source of the water that fed the lands that sat at the foot of the Halcyon mountains. It was quite a momentous place, with especial significance to the wolves she knew that roamed those lands. Caspa allowed herself to gaze into the water for a moment, taking a seat on a boulder and dropping her newly-scarred chin into her elegant hands. Every droplet she watched would be carried down to the grasslands and then to the sea, if it wasn't drunk by a wild creature or a wild Salsolan on its way. It was a mystical journey, and instilled great awe in Caspa to think of all the liquid in the world that was the only substance keeping them all alive. As usual, where another might have leaped to play in the pool, or run to climb the rocks, or tried to draw or paint the complex ropes and crystal spatters of water she did nothing, simply sitting and staring while her busy thoughts got to work on this new subject for consideration. As a picture, she could hardly take it in, the complex layers of light and refraction, solid and liquid, but as a theme for one of her many mental wanderings, she could appreciate the beautiful waterfall and its pool in her own way.
<style type="text/css">
.caspaseaview b {font-weight:bold; color:#212527; letter-spacing:1px; }
.caspaseaview .ooc { font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:11px; color:#4d5050}
.caspaseaview p {text-indent:25px; padding:5px 10px; margin:0px;}
.caspaseaview {margin:0px auto; width:400px; background-color:#e8ebe9; background-image:url(http://i.imgur.com/yDXkc.jpg); background-position:bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:1px solid #ffffff; padding: 8px 0px 206px 0px; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#434644; line-height:15px; letter-spacing:.5px; text-align:justify;}
</style>
