Lilia is pretty far from the borders, the kill would’ve been made in the quarry. Hoping to learn about Moonglow!
Lilia pursued the hare into the quarry, chasing it into an area full of snowdrifts. She swerved as it moved, and pounced into a deep snowdrift where she’d cornered the animal. The snow smothered its final cry.
She lifted her head and shook the snow from her pelt. It felt good to catch something and end it with her jaws.
She roved a bit further east- and found several tracks heading in the same direction. They shared a pack scent. Figuring she had some time, she followed them, approaching the spine with the hare in her jaws.
A pack lived nearby- perhaps she could barter for information in exchange for a meal.
Meal would be very much appreciated, but the quality of information the stranger would gain from Kausiut was debatable. For the past few days the wayward girl had enjoyed her solitude by sticking to the fringes of the village area, visiting older caches and at times being succesful in hunting very small prey. Hare was an animal that she could observe from afar and with longing, but too fast and out of reach. This made her think about the walrusses and the way the hunters on the shores had taken down these creatures, who were far from agile on the ground.
Moonglow still did not feel exactly like a home to her. It was like an almost fitting shoe - beautiful to look at and walk in, but you knew that after a while your poor feet would scream in pain for being locked inside the figurative iron maidens. To characterize Kausiut's situation this way was a bit of an exaggeration, but close enough. Therefore often she would find herself walking along the borders and turning her gaze northwards. On clear and crisp winter days one could almost hear the ocean waves in the distance.
This was, how her path happened to cross with that of the brown-pelted stranger's. Kausiut first caught scent of the fresh hare and only then did she pay notice to the one, who was carrying it. She stopped in the path, waiting for the other to approach.
When she approached, it was by an austere-looking pale woman, who looked like a somewhat tough nut to crack. She paused, and waited- so Lilia picked up her hare and came a bit closer, tail swinging gently behind her in a show of benevolence. Still, she left enough space between them so that the stranger could neither lunge at her and tackle her to the ground, or steal the hare from her. She kept it beneath one foot, when she set it down.
But her expression was slightly less guarded. She smiled, and gave the stranger a congenial dip of her head. "G'mornin'," She said. "I'm Lilia, of uh-redtail rrrise. It'th pretty faw from here, but I'm juth't pathin' by...Juth't intuhrested in learning about the packth in thith area." She said. A harmless scout. "Can I ply you fowa thome hithtory on your pack here?"
The stranger did not act hostile and therefore Kausiut responded to the greeting with a cautious wag of her own tail. Unfortunately the hare was still far enough for her to take it, if she so decided to do and it also did not seem likely that she would be as lucky as she had been with Sandulf. That kind of wolves were rarity.
Lilia spoke with such a thick accent that Kausiut, who had sometimes problems deciphering a very clear and regular speech, had to focus hard. And even then around 80% of, what had been told her, was completely lost. Briefly she wondered if wasting time on a conversation was better than to attempt to snatch that hare. If the latter failed - at least she would have had a consolation of giving a try.
In case of the former there were only things to lose. She did not benefit much. But those, who do not gamble, do not drink champagne (or eat hares). Kau was hungry and she had to be creative to get her meals. Therefore she appeared to ponder Lilia's request and then beckoned to the food saying: "Trade."
The wolf was quiet, thoughtful. Her focus was upon the rabbit, and her gaze lingered on it long enough that Lilia assumed she wasn’t weighing out options- but planning. Plotting. She gestured to the rabbit and uttered a word.
But Lilia wasn’t going to hand it over when the wolf so easily could steal her meal and run off with it.
”I’ll do a trade, yeth,” She said, still not budging from her catch. She raised her eyebrows. She’d already informed the other what she wanted- and she had asked first. She gave her a smile, hoping to coax some conversation from her.
So far so good. The wolf agreed to a trade and Kausiut had no idea, what had been requested in return - it could be something trivial or her soul. But this did not deter her, when food was on the line. Instead she continued to play her role, nodded in response and sat down slowly, arranging her body so as to let her crippled paw rest.
She looked over her shoulder, as if checking, whether there was any competition for the transaction (she would not mind help, but would mind sharing the spoils), then back at the stranger again. Kau forced something akin' to a smile (at least she tried) and then asked: "Name?" She added a sway of her tail too and offered her own to encourage the other to repeat: "Kausiut."
Lilia nodded. She'd already given the pale woman her own name, so she assumed she was asking if this was a suitable part of the bargain. "Kauthiut," She said, resenting her own tongue for not making certain names easier to pronounce. It was much prettier when Kausiut said it, and she earned a smile from Lilia as well.
"What ith your pack called? It'th tho beautiful heah," She coached, hoping she might receive more than a monosyllabic reply.
Try as she might - more than three consecutive words she would not be able to squeeze out of Kausiut. One word took effort. Three words were a god's given gift to appreciate. Four in a row and in the same sentence had never happened.
The she-wolf did not give her name, but proceeded with another inquiry. Thankfully - shorter than the one before. It was easier for Quu to process, find the essence of the question and answer correctly. "Moonglow," she told her. "Village?" she asked, tilting her head to the side, wondering, where the nameless stranger was coming from.
One word at a time. And an equal exchange of words and information. Hardly worth her rabbit, she thought; but all the same, perhaps she needed to give Kausiut more time. There was a chance, as well, that there might've been a language barrier. Kausiut, she thought, was doing the best that she could...But Lilia would need more than that.
So, she'd adapt to Kausiut's style of speaking.
"Redtail Rise." She said. "Northweth-t of heah," She explained.
With a shift in the breeze, Lilia caught more of the scents of wolves belonging to this pack- and something tugged at her memory. She couldn't quite place it, but there was something familiar about it. She paused. "Have you an
yoah pack evuh been north of thothe mountainth?" She asked, gesturing to the Sunspire, beyond which lay her home.
Redtail rise. Kausiut observed that people chose funny names for their villages - few were as straightforward as the one she lived in now. Moon rose and shone here every nice and the snow reflected the light and the mist that wandered here in the nighttime created that glow. What did rising had to do with red tails was beyond her. And she did not have the vocabulary to put this thought in words so that the girl would understand, what she wanted to know.
"Mountains?" her gaze first lingered at the peak behind her, then she turned to look, where Lilia was pointing to. "No," she replied. "Foot," she beckoned to her crippled extremity, to tell that she was not and would never be a mountain dweller.
No. Her point was made when she gestured to the foot that Lilia had been avoiding looking at. Perhaps she'd been wrong to think that this was the pack that had temporarily settled near the Qeya River. The scent she'd caught had been faint, but familiar, and she thought she recognized it as one of the scents she'd scouted long ago with Prophet. Perhaps she was wrong.
She didn't want Kausuit to feel bad, so she shrugged. "Mountainth are over-rated anyway," She said blithely. She didn't like having to traipse up and down the hillside, and preferred to live on less treacherous terrain. "Tho what'th your pack like? What do you typically hunt around heah? An' do you have any allieth?"
Though Kausiut did not pick it up from the stranger's words, she realized that the girl was in agrement with her. Either on the foot issue or the mountains or, whatever, she felt relieved that at least one topic of this conversation had been covered and finished.
The next round of inquiries came in a barrage and Kau needed time first to decipher, what the important keywords were in each of the sentence and where to start answering them. She decided to start with the first and hopefully the rest would be forgotten.
What was her home like?
"Village," she beckoned over her shoulder. "Anaa," that referred to her mother. What else, what else, what else... "Bride-price." So in a nutshell - Moonglow was a village led by Anaa, who took care of girls getting properly married off (and fed).
She understood already that the place where Kausiut lived was both Moonglow and Village. She'd expected at least a word like nice, or peaceful, or something like that, as a description, and some word on what it was they stalked regularly. Instead, she got words that she did not understand, and that made her frustrated. She couldn't show it, though; she wanted to seem smart.
So she assumed that perhaps anaa was some kind of adjective. It was spoken with fondness, anyway. She could parse that much meaning from the woman's tone. And as for bride-price....Well, that must have been what they hunted for. Instead of admitting that she didn't understand what a bride-price was, she nodded. "Ahh," She said.
Maybe it would be easiest for both of them if she stuck to questions that had a yes or no answer.
"You hunt deer? Elk? Caribou?" She asked, flicking her tongue over her lips. Moonglow was much higher in altitude- she assumed there were lots of delicious animals that the pack hunted regularly.
The lady seemed to get, what Kausiut had tried to convey, and she responded to the knowledgable "aaah..." with an approving wag of her tail. It was also good that she did not press forward to elaborate on the subjects, because that would be very difficult to do with the three-word disconnected sentences that the girl preferred.
Therefore - much to her joy, her companion decided to stick with yes/no kind of questions. Such as, what did the moonglowians hunt. "Mouse," she named one. "Walrus," that was the second type of prey she had eaten in her life. "Hare," and this was about it. She waited now for the girl to continue.
Walrus??? She'd never heard of that one. Maybe it was something that looked like a buffalo, though sandwiched between mouse and hare led her to believe perhaps that it was something very small.
She looked down to the rabbit she'd slain, and felt obligation tugging. She'd been given a fair amount of information, and found Kausiat relatively likeable, once they'd figured out how to communicate better. If she wanted to do a trade again in the future, she felt she should start off by being more lenient; giving more than she was getting. She would've asked more questions, but she couldn't be away from her pack for too long.
Figuring they'd reached a fair bargain in terms of quid pro quo, she picked up the rabbit and brought it to Kausiut. "I gotta get back to my pack. But thith ith yourth. Thankth, for the chat," She said, with a slight wave of her tail.
Kausiut had braced for more questions, but suddenly the other wolf was in a hurry and their conversation was over. She looke after the retreating wolf and then looked down at her prize. This was the first time talking had earned her food. And so much of it as well. Before the other had changed her mind, Kau picked the treat up and hobbled back to the safety of her den. That day she had a hearty meal and fell in a content sleep of a well-fed and tired wolf.