Iktome Plains you mean like all the cool kids with their leather jackets and their pickles.

Poe had been quite the homebody for the past couple of weeks since joining the Redhawks. She'd needed the time to recover her strength, as well as to contribute as much to the pack as she could manage. She had a promise to keep, after all. But that was not the only one she needed to keep, so she had set out early that morning to spend the day hunting once again for the Willows and her wayward brothers.

She'd made good time. It was approaching mid afternoon when she found herself on a wide, flat spanse of ground that seemed to stretch out in all directions for miles. The Ostrega frowned a small frown and then sighed a large sigh. No willows for miles and miles. No brothers either, for that matter.

There was, however, the scent of prey. The air wasn't terribly cold, and the ground was merely dusted in a light layer of frost - likely kept warm by the ocean she could smell and hear not all that far off. There was a hint of a chill on the wind that warned her that snow was coming, but Poe figured she had some time to kill still before she needed to turn back and return to the Plateau. So, dipping her muzzle to the ground, she began to trot a weaving path around the frosted bunchgrass, tracking the scent of vole that was littered all over the vicinity.

Dash's ragtag band had settled into the depths of what was (ironically in Dash's opinion) called The Neverwinter Forest, but the boy quickly found that living with a thick canopy of trees above his head was not at all to his liking. It kept the warmth in, sure, but with the sky constantly obscured Dash found himself feeling trapped. Clausterphobic. 

Oceanwater ran in the boy's blood, or at least that's what Dash's parents had always told him. Perhaps that was why Dash felt himself drawn to the seaside, with it's wide-open beaches that stretched for miles and flat expanses of neverending water swallowed up by the horizon. There were beaches closer to Neverwinter, but they were occupied by other wolves, so if Dash wanted to visit the ocean he was forced to travel out here. Not that the boy minded the walk; he always had extra energy to burn, it seemed. 

Dash stopped in his tracks, lifting his gaze to scan out over the frosty plains grasses. He had not yet reached his destination, but movement at the corner of his vision had caught his attention. He had always been a hopelessly distractable creature. There! A weaving, progressing crease in the grasses betrayed the presence of another. Squinting, Dash thought he could make out some glimpses coppery-colored fur visible through the brush. He was a boy who had never really known a stranger, so he let out a friendly woof.

Poe quickly realized that this was going to be a real pain. The whole area was apparently a rodent playground, and it was difficult to find just one trail to stick to with them all criss crossing all over the place. She prided herself in being a pretty decent hunter (better than her mother anyway), but this seemed to be a little beyond her talents. She needed some help.

Oh, cool! There it was!

The Ostrega picked up her head and peered around until she spotted the stranger on the approach. She smiled brightly and gave a wag of her tail as a hello until he was near enough for her to actually give him a verbal one. "Hey there!" she said, turning to face him, "Are you a wayward soul in search of a good meal and a friendly face?" She playfully pitched it like a Jehovah's Witness searching for converts, not that she knew anything about such things.

A pair of curious eyes popped up out of the grasses for a short moment, and Dash waved his tail invitingly. The crease in the grasses began to cut towards him. Imagine his delight when the lissome creature that emerged happened to be a fresh-faced young lady-- perhaps the most attractive he had ever laid eyes upon.

Her coloring was like a raging inferno burning across a soft, snowy landscape. Fire and ice. Her bright eyes glowed intensely, two hot embers nestled among the surrounding ash and cinders. Dash felt a rather uncomfortable heat prickling down his spine, as if the girl-on-fire was warming him with her presence alone. 

A chipper, feminine voice greeted him energetically. Dash's apple-green eyes danced merrily as his delight soared. Rarely did he meet a wolf whose happy-go-lucky energy seemed to match his own. Her invitation came swiftly, and an easy grin broke out across Dash's features.

"Absolutely. How could anyone turn down an offer like that?" Really, she could have asked him if he wanted to watch the grass grow and he would have agreed. She could have asked him to walk across hot coals, and he would have said yes, he'd love to. Whatever she had in mind, he was the man for the job.

Poe grinned as her efforts were declared successful - or so she had determined once she heard her new companion's eager acceptance of her offer. "You know, impossible-to-turn-down was exactly what I was going for," she answered with a smile, then turned with a gesture over her shoulder to indicate he should follow.

"I've been wandering around here for a while and there are like, ninety-thousand trails," Poe informed him as she walked, "These fields must be like a mecca for vole and bunnies because their scents criss-cross all over the place. I follow one for a few minutes and then a new one cuts straight across it that seems fresher, so off I go following that one and then it happens again and suddenly I'm spinning in circles like a lunatic! I'm not the world's greatest hunter by any means, but this place has me totally turned upside down."

She paused for a breath, and only then realized, "Oh my gosh, hi, I'm Poe. I should've introduced myself before, I'm sorry." She glanced over at him and gave him a sheepish smile.

The girl returned a line that was rather like something Dash might say himself. She was turning over her shoulder before he could respond, so he simply trotted after her. The seawolf was typically the one leading the charge when it came to adventuring; it was kind of nice to be the one following behind for a change. Especially when the behind he was following was so shapely. 

She explained her issue, but admittedly Dash was having some trouble focusing on the story on account of the drop-dead-gorgeous lady in his presence. "Mmmhmm," he murmurred along as she spoke, doing his best to simply make concerned, thoughtful sounds since apparently his brain wasn't going to let him concentrate long enough to even attempt to solve her problem. 

Dash's attention snapped back to the fiery girl's words as her tone changed abruptly. Oh. She was introducing herself, and she was also offering an apology for some reason that Dash couldn't fathom. Why were women always doing that? "Hi," he returned with his usual roguish grin. He had thought that they were well past "hi," at this point, but he could go with the flow. 

"I'm Dash," he added, shrugging off her apology. Thank the gods her name was easy, because he didn't always remember names so well. "Poe," he began, liking the feeling of the short, peppy name on his tongue. "..sounds like you need a new strategy." The boy nodded toward one of the taller patches of beachgrass-- one that seemed capable of concealing two hunters of their size... if they squeezed together. 

"Have you tried the sit-on-your-ass-and-wait approach?" The seawolf stepped toward his suggested hiding place, giving it a sniff before turning over his shoulder expectantly. "..Might make you feel less like a lunatic," he added enticingly, his grin widening. It seemed he had caught a few bits and pieces of what she was saying after all.

Except for noticing the odd way he looked at her just after she introduced herself, Poe was unaware that he'd been admiring her. For all she knew, he'd been listening with rapt interest in her every word. Which she appreciated!

"Sit-on-your-ass-and-wait?" she repeated, curiosity etching her tone, "Can't say I've ever tried an approach like that before. Tell me more. I do like not being a lunatic." And in any event, her approach of actually trying to track down prey hadn't done her much good thus far. Maybe he was onto something here with what seemed to be a more casual way of doing things.

So he had intrigued her-- Dash liked that very much. He liked the feeling of her eyes on him, liked that she was looking to him for the answers. "That's too bad," he returned, humor sparking in his expression. "Lunatics are my favorite kind of people." 

He cleared his throat, adopting a more serious (or perhaps mock-serious?) demeanor. "Sit-on-your-ass-and-wait..." he began, sounding very much like a teacher introducing the topic of his class. "...goes like this." With a flourish of grandeur, he turned in a full circle and then dropped his rump to the ground definitively.

"This whole place is infested," he explained, unaware that this was exactly the point Poe had been making moments ago. "All we have to do is wait, and some dumb creature is bound to come running by." He tilted his head expectantly, waiting for Poe to praise his brilliance.

Poe grinned with amusement as he spoke of liking lunatics and proceeded to explain his method. She canted her head as he demonstrated his technique, though it seemed straight forward enough. Glancing at her own rear-end as though uncertain of herself, she shifted her paws a bit on the ground in an attempt at making a show of her own move. Then finally, she dropped onto her haunches and looked back at her companion.

'How'd I do?" she asked, trying to stifle her smile, "Am I sitting-on-my-ass enough?"

Poe adopted his playfully serious demeanor flawlessly, glancing backward at her own rump with so much uncertainty, you would think she had never sat down in all her life. Dash's breath rushed out in a snort of amusement. As she adjusted her stance, he squinted at her with the most somber and judgemental expression he could summon, doing everything he could to fight back the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

Poe's fiery gaze resettled upon the seawolf as she requested his feedback, and Dash finally allowed his grin to break through. "Absolutely not," he answered her, "Not nearly enough. You are by far the prettiest sitter I've ever laid eyes on. It's a wonder your pack doesn't have you sitting-on-your-ass all day. You're a natural." A playfully wicked gleam sparked in his eyes as he delivered the expertly-crafted backhanded compliment.

Up until that point, Poe hadn't noticed the young man had been admiring her. She peered at him with a small, suspicious grin as he commented on her ass-sitting abilities, her tail flicking to and fro playfully at her haunches. "You think I'm pretty?" she asked boldly. Poe had never been coy about these things. She might be a little dense about them sometimes, but never coy, "Or was it just my sitting?"

"You think I'm pretty?"

Dash's ears raised in surprise and immediately flattened in embarassment. Had he let that little secret slip out somehow? Dash opened his mouth to answer, but Poe was already following up with another question. He closed his mouth and tilted his head appraisingly. 

"Hmmmm..." Dash took a moment to recover, masking it as careful consideration of the question she posed. "Well," he finally said, releasing a breath. "The sitting is top-notch. Highly professional." A hint of amusement quirked at the corner of his mouth. 

"..But the sitter herself is what makes the sight so damn pretty. In my humble opinion." He finished with his most winning smile. She was already onto him, so he might as well lean into the curve.

Poe grinned at his answer. She was flattered by the compliment, but not naive enough to think this was a rare occurence for him. He was young, good-looking, and clearly quite charming. He probably knew it too.

"Oh, I bet you say that to all the pretty girls," she quipped with a small laugh, "A guy like you knows we ladies are suckers for a good sitting compliment."

"Oh, is that the trick?" Dash replied, encouraged by Poe's grin and her playful comment. Truthfully, Dash had been fairly hopeless with the ladies as of late. Let's see... he had smacked Tuya in the face with a bunch of branches, cracked a penis joke in front of Cyclone, dumped Lilah into a river... And those were only the recent examples. 

"You must get compliments all the damn time, then." Dash was still speaking playfully, but his tone had lost the teasing edge. Of course a beautiful, spunky girl like Poe was getting all kinds of attention. "C'mon, I bet you have at least one boyfriend in that pack of yours. Probably more, am I right?"

Poe nodded confidently, though her eyes were still glinting with jovial mischief. If she'd only known what was going through her head at the time, she might've rethought her ascertion that he was super smooth with the ladies. But seeing as she didn't, she went right on assuming.

His compliment flattered her once again, but she hid it with a playful shrug that was meant to say well, yeah - I mean, what can you do? Her ears twisted forward at his question about her multitude of boyfriends, which illicited a gentle burst of laughter from her smiling lips. "Oh goodness no," she said, shaking her head, "I'm the flakey newbie no one wants to get too close to because I already told them my stay with them is only temporary. All the boys are too on guard now of their hearts to even notice my sitting abilities."

Not entirely a lie. She knew at least one that had been rather blatant about disregarding her once he learned of her intentions. Fortunately Quixote had been more accepting, but his mate was such an incredibly kind and beautiful woman. Poe would've punched him in the face if he'd looked away from Raven for even a second.

The flakey newbie... Dash knew a thing or two about being one of those. The amusement didn't fade from his expression completely, but a look of understanding lit in his eyes. 

Her let out a snort of laughter as she injected their new inside joke into the end of her explanation. Poe seemed like the kind of girl who didn't like to go too long without smiling or laughing, which suited Dash just fine. 

"Their loss," he said with a shrug to match Poe's. He was fairly baffled by the attitudes that Poe described... what heart was so fragile that it would hold a dude back from getting to know such a magnetizing girl? Did the men in Poe's pack have like... zero balls? 

"I figured the guys would be tripping over each other to follow you," he remarked, grin forming once more. "They should be trailing you around like a fucking parade. And every time you flake on a pack, you add a couple more to the train." Yes, Dash was enjoying himself immensely imagining such a ridiculous scenario.      

"So where are you marching your army next, then?" If Poe had already told the pack she was leaving, that didn't make her "flakey" in Dash's eyes. Were she truly a hardcore flake, she would just bail in the middle of the night, no word to anyone... that was Dash's specialty.

The picture he painted made her laugh. Poe had certainly been admired by men (and a few women) during her travels, but not enough to have them trailing after her like lost puppies. They usually had their own friends and families to keep them in place. There had been a couple that had wanted to come, but she had gently deterred them. She was no homewrecker, after all.

"Well, my army of one will be heading back home in the next couple of months," Poe said, trying to subtly let him know that she didn't actually have a parade in tow, "I'm here looking for my older brothers. My parents left them here when they were young and my mom sent me back to see if I could find out whatever happened to them and make sure they're okay. Haven't had any luck yet, but whether I find anything or not, I want to get back home before Summer so she doesn't have to start wondering whatever happened to me. She already has enough regrets in the motherhood department."

Poe smiled a little wistfully. She'd always felt bad for Harlyn and the way her mother quietly suffered over her failures in child-rearing. Pippin ran away, Silas was abandoned, Larkspur was plagued with dark melancholy. She and Cajun had turned out alright, but Harlyn had always watched them as though just waiting for it all to go wrong. It was sad, really, and while Poe could find quarter in her heart to pity her mother for Pippin and Larkspur, she could only remain neutral at best when it came to Silas, who'd been left behind.

Dash's attention span was fair at best when he was presented with a long explanation, and Poe lost him as soon as she mentioned that she was looking for her brothers. That sent his mind whirring on a tangent, because looking for her brother was probably exactly what Melaine was doing now, if she was alive. If she was alive. Her stupid brother had stupidly led them directly into an avalanche, so that was up in the air. 

"What are their names?" Dash asked when Poe fell quiet. He had completely missed all the stuff she had said about her mom, but the stuff about the missing brothers... maybe he could help with that. He had traveled a good bit, after all.

Poe didn't even notice that he wasn't listening. She was a chatterbox by nature and was so often rambling on and on about something or other when no one was really paying attention. She didn't mind in the least. They usually clued into the bits she really needed them to know anyway. Which is exactly what Dash did.

"Silas and Pippin Ostrega," she informed him, then added with a wry grin, "And before you even say it, I already tried the sit-on-your-ass-and-wait technique with them. No dice."

No, sit-on-your-ass-and-wait wouldn't work with missing brothers. If they were missing, it was because they wanted to be. Dash knew this because he had lived it. If he had really wanted to find his way back to Oceanview Peaks after the accident he would have done so. Something within the seawolf knew that he was not yet ready to face the possiblity that Melaine was dead. The longer he stayed away, the longer the possibility remained that she was alive and well. 

"Nah, you need a different technique with brothers. Brothers are idiots-- believe me, I know-- so you can't assume that they did anything practical or logical. Whatever that crazy thing was that they were always talking about, that's what they went for. That's where you'll find 'em."

Poe laughed at his claims that brothers were idiots. She had never known her elder brothers, but she knew the one she'd been born alongside. She was too kind to call Cajun an idiot, but not so kind that she didn't consider that Dash had a point there. She grinned and kept that to herself, though.

"Well, I unfortunately never knew them so know what crazy things they would've been drawn to," Poe replied with a smile, "All I know is that they were last seen in a forest of willows, so that's where I'm headed. I mean, I don't know where it is, but still."

As much as she enjoyed Dash's company, she began to realize she really needed to make some progress. Before she could excuse herself, though, his sit-on-your-ass-and-wait technique actually produced some results. She spotted the rodent creeping along a few yards behind her new friend and after only a few seconds preparation, she leaped up and ran for it. After only a short minute, Poe had a dead vole clutched between her jaws. After another short minute, Dash had succeeded in talking her into keeping it for herself and they parted ways as friends.