He doesn’t know where he’s going. He took the step over the borders of Phoenix Maplewood and just began his trek. For a while, he headed toward the mountain terrain he knew Capri would be but eventually he deviates, changing his path north and walked until he couldn’t walk anymore. His feet were tired by the time he came to a stop to figure out where he’d ended. The scent he left behind doesn’t give him a good chance to follow, not really paying attention where he’d been going in the first place.
The air is saltier than he’d ever tasted before, it left his fur heavy and weighed down, even if it were already thick to begin with. The gusts from the ocean reach through the field he walks, moving from one mound to the next as he looks over his shoulder a few times to make sure he hadn’t been followed. The feeling hadn’t hit him until the other side of the ravine, but it lingered in the back of Ukko’s mind of possibilities.
@Erzsébet,
@Ruffian. I didn't ask Rachel but I felt like tagging you in case you wanted to come play. :o
kick me out if this isn't really all welcome, mica. :P
Saltwater met his nose some hours later as he ticked miles off to the north. He knew a little bit about salty waters, though his experience with the ocean had been a fleeting sort of thing. Plus there had been an assorted amount of experiences involving some others that were a little uncomfortable that made him steer clear of it, but that was some time behind him. Months behind him, a summer behind him in honesty.
Still, he wound his way through the terrain akin to that of a snake, low and evasive though he had nothing to hide from. It was a habit, a throwback to those experiences that told him maybe he wouldn't like what he found. But at the same time his mind wandered like a wildfire, spreading rampant and uncontrolled as he pondered over the possibilities that laid ahead of him. He was hungry, but it was peckish at best. He'd find something later when it nagged at him and his strength was sufficiently sapped towards warning levels.
And then like a bolt of dark lightning over a rocky grade he spied out the wolf, pitch and dark like an inkwell his paws would never hold or encounter. Like a black hole he found himself engulfed and drawn towards him, only to play it off at the last moment of possible cover as though he were merely passing along.
"Smells like ocean," he said, only halting some quarter length of his own body past the dark fellow.
"Can't be far off now, is it?"
Another wolf catches his attention, first by voice, then as he turns he sees the culprit. It takes him a moment to register the words in his head, repeating them once or twice to try and garner the meaning, and he shakes his head once he’s recognized the words. Ukko takes a deep breath of salty air and nods his head—he can’t imagine anything else would be the culprit of the heavy air around him, weighing down his thick fur.
“I’ve never been,” he muses, looking the way he’d been traveling. The ache in his feet is forgotten and he takes a few more steps in the snow before glancing behind him. What he can pull together through the humid air, he doesn’t notice the scent of other wolves on the stranger. “Going the same way?”
Surprisingly enough, he managed to get an answer out of the dark-haired wolf. No chiding remarks about how close he had come, no slights against his appearance. So far that had been a warmer reception than he had hoped for, though perhaps it was only for show. He can't avoid the urge to size up the other, though the once-over is brief and through various sidelong glances.
"I'm headed towards the ocean," he answered, as though he wasn't secrelty wondering when the tables would be turned on him. "It's quite a sight, I assure you." Beneath that was the veiled offer for the other to join him, though Roach had his reservations about that too. But if that was what he was supposed to draw from the query, then he thought it to be a half-suitable answer.
Ukko turns his head, looking the direction he’d originally been walking—the similar direction his newest companion had been going. He confirms he’s going to the ocean, too and he feels the urge to take a step forward to continue his travel. He hesitates, glancing away from his destination and toward the other.
“I’m Ukko,” he introduces though he feels a little hang up with his name. He doesn’t have anything to associate it with anymore and it feels a little short lived and empty. “Can I follow you?”
In the scant few moments where silence prevailed, Roach considered moving on. He was leery of the wolves, uncannily, if not expectantly so. Chalk it up to a few bad experiences or not, he didn't just limit to an entire species either. It was all of them that had given him some sort of nugget of mistrust that had been tucked away into what became a mire.
He didn't get the chance to dwell upon it for long either, as his dark-haired company moved towards introductions. An olive branch between them, at least as far as Roach was concerned, and he found himself nodding to the request that followed afterward. "Sure," he said, drawing in a breath, "just as long as you don't plan on sticking a fork in me when my back's turned." He offered Ukko a cheeky grin, though it was far from a joking matter.
"You can call me Ro, though. Let's go."
And off he set towards the span of shoreline in sight; the ocean was still a way off.