She'd finally made her way to the northern part of the territory, thus far unexplored. She moved between the trees with ease, pausing now and again to pick snow from between her toes. In the cover of the trees, the snow was thick and wet, and clung to her fur easily. It was stubborn, and it took her a while to work free her limb, but she succeeded eventually.
The sparkle of something through the trees had her trample through the snow towards it, immediately getting even more snow stuck thick in her coat. Ignoring the unfortunate fact, she neared the sparkle, finding it to be a tumble of water, frozen solid. It was beautiful; she padded near and poked the icy trickles carefully, delicate and undisturbed.
The sheepdog spun to see another approach, a male drabbed in dark colours. Her feathery tail set to wagging behind her, approaching him spryly and pausing when he addressed her, quick to correct him. "you don't need to call me that - I'm Poppy." Ma'am was a title for mothers and those of high respect, or so she'd been taught to believe, and she was neither. She thought his name a touch odd - it'd be like calling a bird tweet or a sheep baa, but she said nothing.
He was very formal, something that made her a touch unsure, she'd never been addressed like this before. But she smiled anyway, glad to tick another wolf off the list of might eat me.
As his statement sunk in, she understood the true meaning of it to be what it belonged to. Well spoken dogs had always made her a mite nervous, that she'd slip up somehow, or their meaning would be lost in their fancy words. Still, she replied without delay. "I'm a dog - a colle." She said with a twitch of her tail and a small smile, peering at Howl with interest. She'd attempted to speak with the same kind of eloquence Howl'd used in the past, but had quickly abandoned any attempts to do so.
She managed a quirk of her muzzle at the male's words, head canting a fraction in interest. She'd never considered that wolves switched packs; nor had she had the mind to learn more about pack life than what she experienced. Still, it was the mention of a dog-like girl that intrigued her, reminding her of something Murdock'd said. "Murdock said his brother mated with a dog, once." She mused, assuming that everyone within this pack would no Murdock; he seemed rather important. "what was the name of it? your old pack?" She continued, gradually growing used to the male's formality.
He reaffirmed her suspicion, and she nodded. "I know about Morningside." Murdock had never mentioned what happened to the mother, said he'd never asked; and while she was sharply curious about the fate of the dog, she knew better than too be nosy. "Grayday is Murdock's brother," She elaborated, though a moment later asked, "do wolves switch packs? I thought they just - chose one and stuck with it." She's never really given the issue much thought but had merely assumed that wolves tended to stick with the pack they chose, or perhaps had their own, like Murdock's brother. She was always encountering empty pockets in her knowledge that she hadn't truly been aware of, and the subtleties of packs were foreign to her.
The male took in the fact with an alright, and after a moment continued on to speak about packs at length. She found herself losing focus midway through; unlike Valette's talk of hunting, this was harder to retain. For a moment she paused, trying to gather together the fragments that she'd caught, before taking a page from Birk's book. "are you hungry?" The waterfall stood abandoned now as she focused on him, muzzle canting to the left.
Yeah. I'll make this short.
So she had intended for them to have fresh meat. A preference most wolves... and canines had. He gave her a smile and gestured with his head for her to lead the way. Howl wasn't sure how good of a hunter she was, but he felt confident that between the two of them he could at least catch one. And so he followed her to the birds she had mentioned and they set off on thier hunt.