The Vale Ptarmigan had found her way into was profoundly similar to the Spine, but it was more of an extension of the mountain range itself than a walled-in valley, with rolling hills and verdant herb beds. She paid these no mind as she padded through them—she'd never seen a use for plants, not even as agents of death.
She held her nose aloft as she walked, drawing in the heady, earthy scent of the autumn vale. The musk of wolves had long since faded from it, so that Ptarmigan would never have guessed that a wolf pack had once made this place their home. The female's tail draped in a relaxed fashion behind her as she strode through the veritable paradise, enjoying the newness of the place and the burn of her moving limbs moreso than the sights.
Marcy Playground — Sex and Candy
Some mornings she would wake with guilt in her chest, feeling as if she had betrayed her family. Ever since she had been chased of by the bear she feared for the survival of her packmates and herself. When trying to find them, she found no bodies or blood. Only faint traces of them, her kin had fled. By the time she has summoned the courage to investigate the area the woman had been too late; they were gone. The change devastated her, shattering the world she had known all of her life. And so she would head to Teekon, trying to escape sour memories.
But living as a loner was difficult, as Aure felt as if she was trapped in a reverie. Every thought was accompanied by a memory, bringing a river of bittersweet emotions. How frustrating it had been, unable to focus on the simplest of tasks. The snow phantom was in a coma, uncomfortably surrounded by pesky feelings. Did they ever miss her? Or had she already been forgotten, another character in childhood tales? Though busy her parents tried their best to give attention to all four pups in her litter, and all of the friends she had bumped into were there when her mother and father couldn't.
And finally she had woken up to the sound of her stomach growling. Lost and hungry, tired and cold. Phytsical pains had coaxed her back to reality, the white wolfess was now determined to stay. And so running into a few loners she would learn more about the land, and about the wolves that inhabited them. Very soon after she had joined the Glacier Pack, and no longer did she feel alone. However she had become quite curious, and to get a better view of the foreign landscape and the prey in it she had convinced herself to travel a bit.
As the fem approached an unfamiliar scent quickly hit her nostrils. Stiffening her muscles protested against the sudden tenseness, but this gradually faded. Autumn's coolness had caused growth in her fur, which now was doing a better job of disguising her leaner build. However the transition was not yet complete, and the tall yet slight female felt vulnerable around strangers. But she was probably close enough to have been scented, and Aurelie was very interested in who this was. Besides, she could always try and out run the unknown if it turned out to be hostile.
Padding closer the young adult came near enough to spot an onyx form, the source of the scent. "Hello?" her voice was steady, yet laced with a light amount of hesitance and without a doubt quite noticeable interest.
There was a stillness to the place that promised history, yet no lips could speak it. The Endore was momentarily entrenched in her imagination, fabricating great battles fought in the crux of the valley and leaders of legend. It was unfortunate that her imagination eclipsed reality so greatly; she would have laughed, had she known what had really happened here, that the pack's highest ranked had abandoned it without word and left it to die. The Vale seemed worth more than that, and she fancied that it was.
She had never been much of a listener in her youth, but Ptarmigan was a secret historian in some ways. She knew all the history of her family's pack, the Winterheart Forest pack, up until the time the wolves left their homeland. The exact names were foggy aside from those relatives who had been drilled into her head, as they always were in memories, but she could recount every important event from its founding to its quiet death at the hands of a volcano. This was something no one knew about Ptarmigan, who acted very much like she knew nothing at all.
When she came out of her imaginative trance with the conclusion that the Vale's secrets were just too grand to ever be known, it was to see a trim white female padding toward her, calling tremulously across the distance. The Ouroboros Alpha paused, twisting her ears forward and calling back, “do you know the legends of this place?” It was a brief and rare thirst for knowledge, though it could easily become something much more sinister if given the chance.