join me. meeting thread but also possible trade thread?
The lovely freckled girl paws through newly sprouted leaves in the ground, careful not to break them and careful not to pull them up. She wants to take them and make a little stash-- but she truthfully can't remember what they are. She leans forward and sniffs at the small leaves with interest, hoping the smell would trigger her memory.
Alas, it does not, and she's left to
"Hmpf," dramatically and stare harder at the greenery.
The golden Fimmta had just traded guard duty over to the mute coywolf, and so was steadily winding down from such hyper-vigilance necessary for the queen's whelping den. He now moved without a specific purpose and was content to peruse the Dragon's slopes until something caught his eye. Evidently, trace of a female he did not recognize well was what he came upon, so he ambled his approach her way without much hesitation.
As he strolled over, he tried to see what she was doing, but did not come up with clear answers. Dio chuffed his greeting once closer, and paused a few body lengths away, squinting at the greenery she looked to be engrossed in. "Looking for something?" he asked, figuring it's a place to start.
A voice grabs her attention-- perhaps she might've scented him, but the wind did not seem to favor her today-- and she turns to look at the face of a tawny colored male. She blinks a few times before smiling, her posture low and submissive in regards to his already.
"Not quite, hun," she says, glancing down at the plant.
"More like at something-- though I can't for the life of me remember what it is..." she trails off, dipping her muzzle to sniff at the
leafy plant once again.
"Any idea what it might be?" she asks, nose twitching as she glances back at him.
He followed her glance downward, and then squinted at the greenery in question. It lead him into noticing the leaves, how they centralized from one point in the stem at a time. Briefly, he managed to find that peculiar but he doesn't have extensive plant knowledge to consider much else from that. He'd only picked up a few scraps from Lucani and even overhearing Gluskap on their beach-combing trip, although none of that seemed at all relevant to here and now, unfortunately.
Dio shook his head with a soft sigh. "No, just seems like leaves to me," he replied with a disappointed shrug of his shoulders, although he held his muzzle closer to them for a better sniff. It didn't help much because he did not recognize it as anything noteworthy. "Does it have a certain usefulness you know about?" Besides all things apparent just by nature of being a plant.
Portia huffs, sitting back up and staring down at the plant. "Good for childbirth," she tells him, glancing at the man curiously. "Relieves stomach cramps and things of that nature-- otherwise I'm not sure I've heard it be used for anything else." She squints at the plant one final time, but no names crawl into her mind. Oh well.
She turns-- a little more fully-- to look to the man, her head dipping gently finally in a formal, respectful gesture. "I am Portia, by the way. It is a pleasure to meet you."
His ears splayed somewhat. "That's probably why I don't know about it," he said. He didn't have the parts necessary to concern himself with the matter, and anytime females were giving birth, it was his policy to not be immediately involved. He guarded the vicinity, and that was that. "So like eating regular grass, but more effective?" he quipped. That was all he'd ever done concerning his own stomach aches, and thus, deemed it halfway relevant.
"Likewise. I'm Dio. You're newer here, right?" he asked with a subtle sniff and nod. He had smelled her around before, so she'd probably had time to settle in at least.
What the golden guardian wondered next was if she was here to fill a niche originally vacated by Lucani. Granted, they had Gluskap now too who knew the uses of many herbs, which Dio knew this firsthand from following along on the gathering trip, but he saw the use in having multiple wolves experienced in this -- all further testament to the Dragon's power and security.
"Perhaps," she hums with amusement, her eyes glinting. "I don't believe that this plant would make you throw up, though," she adds in, more of a side comment as she thinks aloud.
"I believe the newest," she replies, tipping her freckled face to the side as she thinks. "And I assume you've been here a while, haven't you, Hun?" she asks, although she feels she's correct and doesn't expect to be surprised by anything he says.
He glanced between the plant and her, nodding somewhat as he absorbed her thoughts on these greens. "I wouldn't really want to find out," he chuffed. She seemed to know her stuff about these plants pretty well. That by itself was impressive, but Dio did not dabble in such so it did not take that much to surpass him.
"Yeah, I have. Since winter.. I joined not very long after it formed here," he said. Thuringwethil had collected him off his wandering once the coastline had gone too barren for him to benefit from and he'd had nothing better to do. "I came from North of here, up the coastline a ways." Even battered and on the end of winter travels, the Heda had seen his value enough to let him join, and he did supposed it was immensely better than wandering without cause still.
"The coast?" Portia repeats curiously, her tail waving behind her.
"I haven't been to the sea in a while-- so beautiful there," she says, her ears cupping forward.
"Were you born there?" she asks him, her head cocking to the side.
sorry short
He nodded. The coast, indeed, the only one he'd ever known and in a few different times and places. His latest stint on it was probably not his favorite but the timing was far from ideal for several reasons. "It is, although I appreciated it less in the dead of winter," he imparted with a roll of his shoulders. "Not born there, no, but my last home before this one, Stavern Rise, was not too far from the shore." They weren't immediately coastal but a solid jog could get a wolf there in good time.
"Where do you come from before here, anyway? And is that where you learned what you know about plants?" he had to ask.
"You appreciate everything less in the dead of winter," she agrees, "I prefer the green-- more plant life," she adds, eyes glinting with amusement. He asks of her old home and she hesitates before she answers. Not to be sly or guilty, she simply can't remember where she lived last. "Well," she begins slowly, looking up in a manner of thought. "I was born far away-- a pack called Broken Valley, I learned some basics back there-- just enough to get me on my feet safely. Everything else I picked up along the way," she tells him with a soft smile. "Wolves are rather friendly, if you know how to talk to 'em," she adds, her tail flicking.
"True," he agreed readily. In the dead of winter and after the worst losses of his three years, Dio had been in no mindset to admire the barren frozen in earth. He then nodded, smirking softly -- it was no surprise she would prefer the green, especially with it shining in her eyes. It just suited her, he reasoned in silence.
Anyway, she came from far, and had learned along the way. Reasonable, for it was how he had done much of his learning too. On the road, from various sources. Some were luxuries, others born out of the need to survive above the rest. Then, to her last bit, he nodded knowingly once more. He had once taken a more manipulative approach to it, but a silver tongue could do wonders in the right situation. He knew. He'd been there. After Stavern Rise, less so. He still felt.. like a piece of him had burned there too. "Do you know what eventually led you to here?" he asked, curious to piece her beginning into the Dragon's history. He had watched it take shape and grow just during his time here, so he always wanted to know more.
The man asks her of her journey here, and how she discovered Drageda. She shrugs. "Like I said, I'm a wanderer. I'll admit though, something about this pack just called to me... I'm usually not one to settle..." She trails off, studying a rock formation behind Dio with interest. When she glances back to him, her head tilts.
"Ever felt like that, Hun?" She asks him sweetly. "It's a strange feeling, really, but you just can't ignore it."
As he listened, he nodded thoughtfully. '...something about this pack just called to me,' struck him above all else, however. "Yeah. I felt the same," he mentioned, although did not elect to go into many details. It had just felt right at the time and he had originally planned to just leave if he ended up not liking it. But he was glad he had stayed. Hopefully the same stood true for her and he was good with knowing what he did now.
"Anyway.." he began, motioning his muzzle back towards the plants originally in question. "I wish I could help you more with this, but I can only tell you a few plants I know it's not," he frowned downward.
When Dio motions back to the plant, she shrugs, returning his frown. "That's alright... as long as I know it's use, I suppose it's fine," she says with a slight tease laced through her voice, a smile playing on the edges of her lips. "Well, Hun, I'll let you go. I have a few things to tend to," she says, but really just wants to go find more plants-- none of her pack duties are really that important right now.
"Pleasure to meet you, Dio," she adds with a quick look down before she begins to pad away, tail waving lowly behind her.
As she walks, something seems to stop her and her tail comes to a still. Her ears perk and she turns back towards him, calling out. "Hedge Bedstraw," she calls, her tail beginning to wag again. Pleased with herself, she set back off into the territory to find more herbs.
She does not seem to be very fettered by his lack of knowledge, and instead, accepts her knowing what it does as good enough. He can agree well enough to that so offers a quick nod in return and lets her edge this meeting towards its natural close. Dio's usefulness here has probably long been used up, so she's probably had enough of him for a while, and he can surely attend to duty elsewhere. Nevertheless, returning to the borderlands sooner or later is inevitable for the pale gona. He'll do whatever he can.
He dips his muzzle, farewells issued as necessary, and begins to plot where he will go next exactly as he watches her turn and make her leave. He does his own much slower, and when she stops to perk her voice up over the silence again -- unexpectedly, too, his ears spring back up to attention.
He listened with a furrow of his brow, not sure what he heard at first. But, he realizes after a beat and his tail waved, slow but sure. The plant's name. He chuffed a quiet bark, one to say he was glad it had finally hit her -- even if he'd been no help.
Afterward, he moved off, halfway committing himself to remember the plant name too. He may as well.