Tut-tut was the sound that found its way from her lips as she stepped into a pile of snow and sink-sank-sunk. The pine-needled floor had deceived her in this instance, sinking Liatris into the snow drift and causing her to express her disapproval. Above her the boughs of the coniferous trees creeked in protest of the heavy snow and ice that they carried and Liatris's light brown eyes watched them with an abundance of caution. Her limbs struggled in the snow to free themselves, careful not to twist or turn akwardly and cause her muscles to contract in the cold.
After a few moments of careful deliberation and action, Liatris freed herself from her snowy capture and took a moment to review her surroundings. She had only traveled seventy or so miles in the last week, taking her time to get acquainted with the area. Winter didn't yield her too many encounters, most, she assumed were sticking close to their packgrounds. Liatris knew, however, that her safety relied on numbers. Eventually, she would need to learn more about the packs in the area and determine if any of them was an appropriate fit for her. The trouble was, the yearling still wasn't entirely sure what her fate had in mind.
The weald was picturesque, decked out in its full winter glory – the mantle of snow and ice that crowned the treetops was heavy enough to bend boughs, and the ground was a powdery, pillowy cushion that was festooned with needles, cones, and a few broken branches. More interestingly for Kinder, it was also littered with footprints of creatures passing through the snowy realm. Here, a chipmunk with an erratic, twisting flight pattern through the snow bank; there, a parade of deer had made their way, though the scent was long cold. Hither and yon, signs and smells of life infected the cache, intermingled with the strange and pungent scents of berries and hardy herbs that poked their heads through the snowy blanket. The male allowed his nose to carry him throughout, following an interesting or likely scent for a time, before he allowed himself to be torn away by another, and another, and another, until he was so deep into the wood that he would have had to track his own steps backwards to have found his way out.
It was then that a sound intruded on the otherwise still air, the gentle tsk-ing making the male lift his head and focus his attention on the source of the sound. He narrowed his ice-cold eyes briefly before he abandoned the trail he was following (a murder of crows, which had picked clean some kind of berry bush), and instead followed the gentle sound to its source. The broad, ruddy male chanced upon the small open glen that enveloped the creature in question – female, young-ish (slightly younger than himself), and by the smell of her, new to the lands – and Kinder observed her for a few moments as she wrested her leg from a snowy trap. He made no guise to hide himself from view, nor did he call out to her to draw attention to himself either.
He had only been in this strange place a few days, though he had traveled a fair distance since leaving his family, and thus far had only chanced upon one dark male during his occupation. The pack life had been… interesting… in his youth, and the yearling was not totally sold out on the notion of living under the thumb of someone else, with morals that were not necessarily the same as his own. He had lived like that up until he was a year old, and though he had to be grateful for it (at least in part) as it had formed him into who he was… he was tired of that reality.
After several moments of uninterrupted observation, Kinder dropped his head over his throat and made a soft whuff in the back of his throat to draw the girl’s attention. Due in large part to his wild look and his girthy stature, he didn’t have to do much to look intimidating – he hoped, then, that the cautious expression on his face and the forward set of his ears would dispel any thought of outward aggression. Y’ new?