The freezing rain had finally past, its last remnants bunched up on the western horizon. Leaving behind a warm air, Ivev found herself wondering if this winter was actually summer.
For all of time, her people had noted the cooling and warming, the rain and the sun, all things that correlated with the seasons. And now, as the wolf limped along a meandering run, she felt as if the Earth itself was toying with something that been, for so long, consistent. This weather in the middle of winter? Astounding! She normally would have loved for the weak rays of winter sun to heat her pelt, but the air was oddly muggy, and much too warm for her to see her breath fogging in front of her nose.
Perhaps she was putting too much thought into this- after all, Ivev had some tasks to do and purveying all this odd weather was not an effective agenda. She stopped to get a bearing on her surroundings. The female had slowly struck out west from the Spine, her pace slow but steady as she worked her injured back leg into service. The pine forests were still a faded, wintry green, but as she moved farther, towards the coast, the ground became more rugged and deciduous. Evergreens gave way to bare-branched aspen, ash, and elder. The woods ran along gently sloping hills with wide valleys, of which she stopped on the crest of one of them. Across the valley to her right, the ground steadily began to climb and formed the feet of a sleeping giant- Silvertip.
Thanks for starting!!!
As the last, heavy clouds rolled languidly to the West, leaving behind them a wet warmness unbecoming of the season. Aesop rose from his hiding place beneath the eaves of a fallen tree, wet and miserable. He shook his coat and shivered, the cold cutting. He counted his blessings that it was as warm as it was, and strode through the dripping landscape, the weather heavy on his mind.
Many times, now, he had passed under the shadow of the mountain. It was a constant in his life, a monolith bearing down on the horizon no matter where he went, as he had not traveled far enough to hide it. Many times he had passed beneath it, but never had he picked among the detritus that lay at the foot of the mountain, great rubble of fallen trees and stone. Often these areas were full of small prey that darted around the cracks and eaves in the rocks.
Rather than prey, though, he found a wolf of purest white, striking in the purity of her coat. Petite, lithe, she seemed a pale ghost in the monochrome of the land. Feeling friendly, he barked at the woman, hoping to catch her attention.
of courseee <3
Gently the female lowered herself onto her haunches, splaying out her back right leg so that it rested comfortably against the cool earth. The bite wound was slowly beginning to stitch itself up, but it left a gnawed appearance to her lower hock. Turning her gaze away, she jumped a little inside when a bark rang out from the surrounding woods.
The figure emerging from the trees was a rather scarred individual, with a light beige and gray pelt with cream undersides. It was a common color save for his unusual green eyes that seemed to glow with an unseen light.
The male had his gaze trained first on her, and then to the looming presence of the mountain on the near horizon. Ivev noted his same sort of enrapture with Silvertip as she did, and glanced back towards the right. In the cool, late afternoon sun the face of the mountain was a hazy blue, darkened with it's vertical ridges and large crevices. The peak was thoroughly entrenched with snow. From where the light was positioned, the wolves were able to see the face of the mountain that looked back at them, but towards the right of Silvertip the lands were submerged in a dark, pastel blue.
"How do you think shadows have come about?" she questioningly mused aloud, wrapped up in the thought. For her entire lifetime Ivev had seen, experienced, and even created shadows, but it was only now, peering at the valley below, that there was always a dark spot against the day.
While the woman gazed upon the mountain looming above, Aesop picked his way over the rubble and earth to come up beside her. His approach was far from graceful, so he was glad that her attention was divided, her thoughts clearly elsewhere on the mountain. At last he drew nearer. From a few feet away, he could see that her eyes were piercing, an icy blue, clear and cold.
For a few moments, they glanced about in silence. The valley was cast in shadow, cool and dark and deep. He imagined forests set in darkness, the unknown comfortable. The white-tipped mountain seemed to clean, raw yet unnatural in the sharpness of its edges. The pureness of the white, light glancing off of it, was artificial and violent. The darkness below was soft and safe.
The stranger broke their shared silence with a question. He glanced at her, clearly unsure if she was being serious about her question. Well, he supposed that there was beauty and there was intelligence, and they didn't always go hand in hand. "Shit blocks out light," he explained, deadpan. Was he missing something? He tried to convince himself that he had missed some cue.
Her ears flattened against her skull at the male's rowdy tone. However, she should've had expected that, for he looked a little worn and scarred around the edges. And maybe her insight seemed a little off-hand.
I just always noticed there's a balance of shadows and sun.. for as much light there is in the sky, there's always a place hidden by darkness.
Her nose tilted to the valley shadowed by the mountain.
Like there.
However, Ivev wondered if she was being a little too whacky- sitting out on this ridge alone, staring glassily at inanimate objects while others would be out doing important, political pack things. It had made her a reserved person when others frowned on observations gained only by sitting still for many hours and meditating. It made her self-conscious, and to overcome that was an uphill battle.
Slowly, the arctic bird rose to her paws and lifted her mangled back one, taking his rough voice as a signal to move on. Perhaps he claimed this forest.
And, naturally, he was right. He'd misunderstood the question, though he thought that his was a fair assumption. It'd been rather vague, left-field question. Quickly, he reassessed his original assumption. She wasn't as dumb, perhaps, but she still seemed a bit flaky to him.
Still, he followed the path her nose pointed out and nodded, paired with a soft grunt of assent.
"Alright, guess that's fair. It's the nature of the thing, I guess. Gotta have the light on the one side to make shadows on the other, with whatever twilight thing you got goin' on in the middle. Two sides, same coin." He looked embarrassed, as though he hadn't meant for that to go on as long as it had.
Aesop looked back to the tip of the mountain, one of the few places where snow clung to the earth. "You from around here?" he asked, hoping that she would be able to answer questions about the unseasonably warm winter.
Ivev turned her gray eyes on him, a pondering silence hovering in them. He didn't seem to be one for an outward philosophic, and neither was she, but there was beauty and importance if once could describe and interpret nature. It had taken awhile, but she remembered her own grandmother spending most of her life studying the movements of prey that had greatly aided the pack's hunting. Ivev would never aspire to be that, having lost the tutelage, and still had plenty to learn.
The Spine wolf nodded.I admire it because it's always been that way.
He had his explanation, and it was clear and the tone seemed to reflect his personality.
She pointed off to the right, where the ridge sloped into a forest, with a mountain range rising hazily in the distance.
I've a made a home over there- what about you?
Aesop wasn't prone to sharing his musings. He pondered, yes, because there was much to think on and he had a tendency to travel great distances. Wandering lent itself to solitude, which lent itself to a good deal of thinking. Aesop liked to think that he had gotten pretty wise over the years, pretty philosophical.
That didn't mean he was comfortable doing so out loud.
"Right. Yeah, guess it had," he replied stiffly, still trying to recover from the embarrassment of his rambling. Thankfully, the conversation changed directions rather quickly, and she pointed in the general direction of wherever she made her home. Aesop hadn't been that far into the Valley, so the action had little meaning to him, but it answered his question all the same.
"I'm from the Bay. Back that way, on the coast," he said, jerking his own snout in the general direction. "Was askin' because I've been watchin' the weather, n'it's been pretty damn warm. Not like any winter I've seen this far north, at least.
i like your new avatar!
Her ears drooped a bit in response to his brute voice, and she glanced away. There was a hint of thought behind his pensive gaze, but Ivev had little motive to push him to share whatever might be on his mind after the obvious presence he was putting out. There was nothing better, in her opinion, than sharing those lingering ideas that clung to one's mind when observing the natural world. But she wouldn't press, and instead fell into the usual conservation between strangers, her blue eyes melding into ice.
The male inducted himself as one of those sea-creatures she had heard about, where the pines grew into massive redwoods with arching branches.
Oh really? He had mentioned their latitude. It has been warm. If this is pretty north for you, I wish I could show you my homeland.
Thank you! Lauren is such a great artist!
Oftentimes, Aesop's brusque nature had a repelling effect, which baffled him. It baffled him equally as much as the number of times others had formed a very wrong first impression of him. And though he never understood it, he could often see it happening. Now was one such time. He shook it off like a particularly pesky leaf, and that was that.
"Hella warm," he confirmed with a stout nod,
"I'm accustomed to this sorta thing where I'm from, but I'd expected it to be a whole 'nother beast. I take it you're from farther north than this?" Listen to him, talking about the weather. With a grunt, he adds,
"'s funny, didn't see anythin' indicating a fair winter."
cool! wrap up soon? i'll try to turn this into a somewhat weathery/naturalist post
It's north enough that most summer days only have three or four hours of night. And it doesn't get very dark, Ivev responded.
I'm a little nervous for when it warms up here, honestly. Will it get pretty hot?
She glanced over at him. You probably know better than me, it seems.
The male had mentioned being from the south, and from what Ivev had noticed, traveling in the direction left of the setting sun had always brought about warmer climes, less snow, and more trees.
If you kept going south, I wonder what it would look like... she mused to herself. From their vantage point, Ivev could see in multiple directions, but her view was either blocked by a mountain or faded into the hazy distance of pine and coniferous forest that seemed to stretch to the edge of the Earth.
The stranger had added something else, and Ivev smirked lightheartedly. What do you mean, indicating? Can you read the sky or something?
Aesop wrinkled his nose at the prospect of a night that only lasted a handful of hours. How could you sleep like that? How could you hunt? The Northern Naturalists must have had other ways of going about their trade, but Aesop would be crippled without extensive use of the stars.
Her next question was one he himself had given little thought. The strange winter weather patterns had been arresting that he had hardly thought much about the coming summer. "My guess is storms," he said, "wild weather, a different beast than hot."
"The sky, yeah, and some other shit. Got the stars tellin' me a good deal, but there's other signs. How the weather in the Fall is. There's, uh, caterpillars."
Her frame wiggled slightly with the mention of of wild storms. Light but droning rain that turned into blowing snow throughout the year was something Ivev was used to, with the rumbling and dark flashes of lightning echoing through an eternally gray sky. But she had heard the details of true thunderstorms that grew on especially hot days, thunderheads fueled by humidity and clear skies. The strongest storm she had witnessed in Teekon would be the one she had watched off the coast several months ago with Echelon. There had been rain, but this summer would be the point in which she could observe and experience true weather in the Wilds.
The stars help identify the time of year, yes, Ivev nodded in agreement. Different patterns for different seasons. The male had some markers in nature that helped him, but Ivev wondered why he had such a brusque way of looking at things. Still, he was neutral and talkative.
I should be going, the wolf spoke after a moment. There was something nice about having another soul who understood and spoke a similar language inside their common one.
Last post from me!
"Yeah," he said.
"And if you do it right, they can tell you shit about the future. Luck, love, things to come." There were many ways to divine the future, and Aesop was versed in several. Of them, he found the stars to be the more pure, the most reputable. To this day Aesop was refining that ability, but he did so cautiously. He never looked into his own future, and he always made sure to take that which he learned with a grain of salt. More often than not, he kept his divinations to himself.
She announced her intentions to depart, and he nodded. Though the encounter was far from unpleasant, something about the woman made Aesop uncomfortable. She was beautiful, pristine, and her behavior matched. Beside her, he felt rough and uncouth, though he would hardly admit to feeling so.
"Yeah, me too. Things to do n' all. Nice meetin' you and all," said he, and then he nodded and began to work his way back down the rough slope.