Oops, Renn's acting like a puppy again!
After her encounter with Malice and Cog, the torbie female had made her way down the peak to return to the serenity of the vale. Her breath billowed out in steaming clouds as she trotted lightly across the crust of snow that lay blanketed throughout the season. A light breeze tickled her pelt, riffling through the strands to enhance her copper hue.
A scuttle off to her left captured the woman's attention immediately and she sprang towards it with a low growl, jaws outstretched, ready to clamp whatever juicy morsel was hidden in the snow. Success! She backed up, relaxing back onto her haunches with a lemming(?) clasped neatly in her maw. Wow, she hadn't expect that to work. Grinning, she wagged her tail and pawed playfully at the deceased creature before tossing it up in the air to snap it up in one huge gulp. It wasn't much but it was enough to cease the growling in her stomach for now.
The wolf dropped his leg back to the ground, lifted his head and peered across the valley at the base of the ridge. From their vantage point, the pack wolves could pick out a great many things in the enclosed vale, and a playing wolf was no exception. Leaving the snow yellowed in his wake, the beta male departed the fringe of his territory and began picking his way through the snow melt toward the fair dark creature in the distance. His steps were taken with swaggered grace until he wound down into the vale's center, where the river yawned widest and the sparse trees grew even thinner, and was soon near enough to smell the immature female on the breeze.
His intent upon descending had been questionable, but upon learning she was not a receptive female from the ambient smell of her glands, Farstep decided to make no effort to lead her back to the ridge. They had enough yearling females there already. Instead, he settled himself on his haunches, close enough to watch but not necessarily close enough to be inviting or threatening, and observed with an arched brow as she flung a lemming into the air and snapped it up, somehow without choking herself.
Maybe it was the sudden drop of temperature or that she had already eaten and was by now feeling quite full, but the lust for hunting and playing began to fade rapidly. She shivered and drew her tongue over her maw before casting her nose to the ground to search for any scraps of her meal that she had forgotten. Finding none, she turned her attention to the scent of a wolf, frowning as she picked up the odour of an unfamiliar pack. Now that she had succesfully gained the acceptance of the dark royals, she wasn't planning to interfere with a possible rival. Nevertheless, curiosity soon got the better of her and she began to pad stiffly forwards.
The tweet of a bird caught her attention, causing the youngster to raise her head sharply. Upon doing this, her amber optics located the source of the scent trail, an auburn canine making himself comfortable further down the vale. Instinct told her not to venture any closer and she paused, grazing his eyes before returning to a neutral posture. She hoped he was friendly enough to not provoke a fight so she yipped a a short, respecful, "Hello."
Momentarily, Renn met his eyes and the little feral part of him that was adapting to his authority prickled indignantly, but the gaze was fleeting and he reminded himself of where they were. This was not his pack's territory. Licking his chops, the man remained motionlessly seated and stared back at Renn a moment as they surveyed each other. He sized her up automatically, but knew much better than to underestimate any other wolf. Even the smallest of wolves could prove to be superior fighters, and the largest of wolves could be the weakest. There was one such wolf born of his litter, a female, monstrously large but timid as a mouse, but he scarcely remembered such a thing.
To his ears, Renn's words were mostly a bark, though they flung forward slightly to catch a hint of something else, something decidedly not very wolfish at all, hidden in there. Time spent around these speaking sorts would eventually cause him to tune in to it, but presently the male didn't know anything of it, and assumed the strangeness of her bark was just that: an anomaly. He chuffed in return, but that was all he did, aside from craning his neck to sniff the air between them and thumping his tail against the ground.