After her brush with death at the hands of a poisoned corpse, Zero took her leave of the Tuktu Hinterlands. Well, death was a bit of an overstatement, but regardless, she wasn't keen to repeat the experience. Her paws carried her north at that leisurely yet ground-eating pace canids maintained for long travel, and she might have gone many miles indeed if not for the sea stopping her progressing.
Zero remembered the sea from past excursions. This stretch of coast was just like any other, so she didn't linger long where the water was tainted and impotable. She swept back inland, finding a vast plain with no trees in sight that appealed to every coyote instinct.
Presently, she was lying on her side and munching on half a field mouse trapped between her paws. It had been some time since she worked with local wildlife, but teaming up with that amiable badger earlier had proved prosperous. It had waddled off somewhere with its own spoils, leaving Zero alone once more. Overhead winged a crow, but the coyote held it at bay with a vigilant eye, her muzzle lazily tracing its course across the sky as she slowly turned her head.
No bird would be getting her lunch, but her vigilance on the sky meant she wasn't paying as much attention as she should to the approach of any land-dwelling hunters.
The coyote did not respect what wolves thought to be theirs, but he was not so invested in the object of his curiosity as to tempt a pack's wrath. Furthermore, he had less need to when the coast was providing him so much fare. Dead cormorants and seals had supplemented what he pilfered from the lonely grotto while his own foraging yielded sweet snacks of molluscs and crustaceans.
Plenty of fare indeed but only for his stomach. Though he was reluctant to leave his haunt — all that accessible food and that one black wolf he still wondered after — Nahualli ventured south in a bid for another kind of satiety.
His gamble was not for nothing. Breaking from the shoreline to follow a familiar scent, he soon spotted an unmistakable silvery coat beneath the wing-shadows of a wheeling crow. Drawing closer, Sorcerer discerned that his old companion was distracted by that bird with its eye on her meal. He considered a more devious approach given the opportunity, but opted against it.
Nevermind the crow,
he called out. How about a bite for an old friend?
The keen-eyed corvid spotted the approaching coyote long before Zero did. From high above, it loosed a caw and began winging south, leaving her with the brief impression she had scared it away with her evil eye. Her lips quirked into a smirk at the thought.
She plucked another bone from the halved mouse and was crunching it down to the marrow when a familiar voice brought her ears swiveling up to attention. There was that brief moment of astonishment that coyotes were accustomed to, the suspended moment between holding their ground and taking flight when another predator showed themselves, but Zero relaxed the impulse. There was no reason to run from this one.
Son of a bitch, she thought, you're still kicking.
Number One,
she identified, having granted him the number some time ago. There was surely a Number One already named in her organization who might take exception to her use of their code for another, but Zero had not met another coyote quite like this man. His manner was peculiar, to say the least. Where most coyotes sought only to save their skins, this one sought out trouble, and yet seemed always to escape its grasping fingers.
There was little left of the mouse to offer him, but Zero snipped free a clawed foot and flicked it in his direction, ensuring the toes landed pointing in the direction of the slough she had left behind. The double meaning of it — danger this way lies — would not be lost on him.
Zero.
Sorcerer grinned at his old companion, greeting her with a subtle body sway and wag of his tail.
The only companion he truly kept as it were. Number One, as she called him, was too much a wanderer to maintain arrangements for long and he sought things which were different from most. But more importantly, Zero never asked more of him than he wanted from her. There had always been an easy understanding between them.
Sorcerer swept his gaze from the mouse foot to the direction its orientation indicated. Then he darted forward, seizing the foot in a play bow. He froze for half a heartbeat before dropping onto his stomach and crossing his forelegs. The foot, he crunched and swallowed.
There's a grotto,
he began. Far north along the shore at the base of a sheer cliff.
Too far to scratch warnings in the snow and too far to show her. Some wolf likes to store meat in there but some of it is tainted.
Sorcerer gave Zero a look. And then he smiled.
To Sorcerer's disappointment, Zero had another trajectory in mind for herself and declined his invitation to mischief. But he knew their paths would cross again one day and she might join him then. For now, he enjoyed her brief company while he had it.