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Emma was starting to feel a little numb the more she went on her daily life in AniWaya. She did not feel connected to the pack but she could start to feel a disconnection from her family. She wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. It didn't make her feel better and it didn't make her to feel any worse, either. She felt rather useless and without any sort of motivation. Why could she not find her family? And why could they not find her? It had been a month now, more than, and she felt at a loss day in and day out when she was no closer to solving the mystery. And being too young to leave the pack, afraid not to have any sort of safety, she was not ready to put herself in danger until she was ready.
Again, as she was almost every day, she lingered on the borders. Sometimes she would walk the invisible line that it was just for her scent to be there, just in case any of her family members were there and found it and knew to ask. Maybe it would help. Today, however, was not the same. Today she approached the border and just sat there, staring out hopelessly. Her eyes were stinging with tears that were long overdue, missing from when she first lost her family. Now they were really lost and she was trying not to accept the fact she would never find them on her own and that no one around her would help her either. She was just dropped off in the pack to be another member. They didn't want her her, they didn't want to help her, they wanted nothing to do with her or her sister.
"Mancarla," she whispered in a broken voice, lowering her body to the ground and feeling the last bit of hope inside her drift away.
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-nab-
In order to combat the increasing chill in the mornings, Alacrity had taken to starting the day with a brisk jog. Today's run had taken the foreign female farther west than she'd ever gone before, into territory that was strange all over again. She loved that about these strange shores, half a world away from the land where she was born. The landscape might be decidedly ordinary to natives, but was still fantastic to her eyes. These lush woodlands were a far cry from the seasonal savannas of her youth.
Presently, the figure of a young wolf appeared between the slender trees. Alacrity approached without thinking, despite the fact that the scent of a strong pack hung thickly in the area. But there was something in the face of the other that she recognized - homesickness, or sorrow, or loneliness - that compelled her forward. She neared the youth slowly, giving the other time to acclimate to her exotic appearance. Alacrity broke the silence by tentatively asking, "Do you live here, little one?" Her voice was deep and rich, and although she spoke clearly, it was evident that English was very much not her native tongue.
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Thanks for joining!
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The appearance of another startled her at first but she came up slow enough to give her a chance to accommodate her being there. Emma shuffled her front legs slowly to a sitting position. The way the other look did not bother her. She was only three months old and was not exposed to one particular thing. She'd been cared for by a coyote for a while and she thought she looked strange. While the other may have looked weird, Emma felt no different. "Uhm... yes," she said and watched the other. It was the first wolf-thing she'd seen in a four legged form in a long time and it made her feel a little better not to have her neck in pain trying to look eight feet above her.
"It is... uhm, AniWaya," she said and hoped she got the name right. She couldn't be sure but she shrugged it off. There was no one to object her if she managed to get it wrong somehow. It wasn't worth dwelling over, anyway. Slowly, she followed on to a standing position. She was growing like a weed but she wasn't all that tall and didn't compare to the odd dog in front of her but it made her feel better, at least.
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<3
The youth appeared to take Alacrity's bizarre appearance in stride, a fact for which she was extremely grateful. Conversations tended to get awkward quickly when perfect strangers asked, wide-eyed and aghast, "What are you?" as if she belonged in a menagerie or circus show. Alacrity was perfectly willing to let conversation develop normally, and so she plunged ahead as blindly as her carefully-studied English would allow. "AniWaya?" the odd word rolled slowly off her tongue. "How strange. Does it mean anything, I wonder?" The last was vocalized, but the question was meant, mostly, to be rhetoric.
The youngster stood, and Alacrity's tail began to wag in a friendly manner. She'd grown up with a gaggle of younger (and older) siblings, and was at least comfortable in the presence of children. "What are you doing all alone out here? Don't you have sisters or brothers to play with?" At home, one was followed by her siblings all the time, and it was difficult to get a moment's peace. But Alacrity was fairly certain of the sadness she'd seen, and this was the only thing she could think of asking.
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Emma hadn't expected being asked about the meaning of the pack name and when she had, she felt nervous and her muscles tightened up as if she were on the spot. Her golden speckled eyes stared ahead of her at the painted canine, shaking her head in a simple no. "I denno," she whispered and glanced at the ground because she did not have the answer. No one had given her much of a rundown on the pack, what it meant, what they were working for, she had no idea. She wondered if it would help her father find her. If she gave the information to the strangers she met on the border and perhaps they would run into her father or any other family. It seemed far fetched and it was a little late now to get the information for the African.
"I have sibling. Sister," she said but her tone didn't hint much playing was actually going on. "I try find my papa but... I not find him," she said in a whimper, shuffling her feet and she lowered her rump back to the ground in defeat. "I denno if he out there," she said with a frown and stared at the woman, expecting no help from her either.
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Listening to the youngster talk, Alacrity was beginning to wonder if English had been the girl's native tongue. It might have been worth it to see if they had any other languages in common. Alacrity held off on trying the idea for a number of reasons. First, Alacrity only spoke a couple of other languages, and none of them very well. Secondly, trying to establish which language would be most convenient was likely to be more trouble than it was worth. And finally, they were in a place where English seemed to be the common tongue of choice, and if both of them were to live here for any length of time (which it looked like they might be), then it only made sense to become fluent, even if the process was less than enjoyable.
"Fathers can sometimes be unreliable things," she told the girl softly. Her own had been present, but emotionally detached from all of his children. Extremely protective of them, but his heart was miles away. Alacrity didn't know how this girl and her sister came to be fatherless in a pack, but if they were with others at least their basic needs were likely to be met. "If he's worth the title, he'll find you and your sister when he can." Alacrity hoped that the girl's father would find her, but in life there were no guarantees - and she was not about to offer empty consolations.
She didn't consider it healthy for a child be so defeated, and said so. "Cheer up," she smiled and nudged the girl to standing, defaulting to big sister mode. How many times had she had to rebuild her little sisters' self esteem, after her elder sisters had destroyed it? "Let's go hunting," she proposed, giving the girl some (but very little) margin to refuse. A diversion was what she needed, and youths could always use the practice anyway.
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