Somewhere in the north, though not terribly far away at all, Razo Redefin was cursing the life choices of his beloved spawn. She had practically been his favourite until shortly before her first birthday when she had revealed that she simply couldn’t wait to romp her merry way away from home, and Razo still couldn’t decide whether to be put out or downright proud.
 
She was days away, then, and essentially a blazing beacon against the dull, rocky expanse of landscape she was picking her way carefully across. There was really no hiding here, and certainly a nil to zilch chance that she might be able to change gears at a moment’s notice, but she smiled astutely. Much like a lighthouse through a veil of fog, other ships might note the perils and steer clear into easier tides to avoid the sharp and unforgiving rocks that waited in the shallow tides — those that jutted, and those that would never advertise their presence. It was a good thing she herself had inherited those uncanny Redefin genes, and that she was all confidence to the point of arrogance and beliefs of invincibility. It was difficult to watch her sure and nimble steps, however, and not notice the light her movements shed on her entire outlook on life.

She was out to chart new lands and soak in all the experiences she could carry like a sponge carries water before it becomes saturated to excess. Fenix wanted to be like the sponge, and so unlike her dear father, whom she loved and would always love even with kilometers and vast lands of distance between them, she did not actively avoid the company of others. She sought them out. While the rocky, sparsely vegetated wasteland made it seem otherwise, it was actually the closest she could get to the packs she had sensed without treading so impolitely all over their doorstep. In the meantime, she fixed her gaze on a small body of fur that moved not far off to her right. She knew how to keep herself occupied.

She kept both keen yellow eyes trained to the fumbling, scurrying creature that floundered amid the rocky footing of her surroundings, watching it dart in front and then back to the right. She was statuesque, then on the move as quiet as she could manage even when the scent of an adult male wolf drifted into the fringes of her greedy awareness. While she had no indication that he had any intent to approach her she was committed in her efforts not to turn away and lose sight of the small mammal she hunted. Suddenly, however, she couldn’t put off noticing him any longer. He’d hunted her, and her unwitting prey had been made all the wiser. The tiny creature, no more than a morsel, had opted for flight.
 
With a quick turn of her head, she shot him a look and set him with a deadpan stare. He was physically sound, she surmised, and near to if not already in his prime. Fenix was absolutely horrid with guessing age, though, and for all she could really tell he was eligible to be her father’s age as much as he might have been a vernal frat boy.

She didn’t respond to his question. “You frightened my lunch,” she alleged with a frown that simply didn’t check out when her feathery tail began to wave behind her.

He ended up close enough to breathe on her through all his talk, which was about a league closer than she had thought she might allow him willingly. She wondered with a distinct air of skepticism if he would ever actually make good on his decided debt if she happened to oblige him in his wont, but he soon proposed a different sort of arrangement that prompted a raise to his wiggle (of an eyebrow, of course). Instead of balking, she rose to match him.
 
To his credit he was direct, but Fenix had no intention, much less inclination, to extend the same courtesy once she was struck by the thought of angling for something else. She had never done the thing he was after, she wasn’t in heat, and she was months away from reaching sexual maturity. She simply didn’t see the point to his advances, and imagined he was better off making them at someone who could satisfy the procreative facet of his fervour. He himself, however, in the peak of physical health and with none-too-shabby-looks to boot, would be a considerable ally if he consented to be so.
 
She twitched her sleek red ears at him as her eyes gleamed with what could only be construed as delight. “I really don’t settle for anything less than one of every animal and the severed heads of all my enemies,” she said with falsely grave sobriety. “And I keep a running list, so you’ll have to check it twice.”

Being young and relatively unscathed by the world of males and their desires for dominance and their wanton thrills for proliferation, Fenix hardly knew what had struck her in a blinding matter of seconds. Her eyes widened by a few millimetres as she watched him with some foreign feeling that unfurled closer to perplexity than it did to astonishment. It wasn’t just that she’d been wittingly dismissed as part of his plan to persuade her, either — dude wouldn’t even play along. Fucking rude.
 
There was a pristine little pause that developed between them as her gaze hardened a little, quietly restraining an entire fleet of choice remarks from surging through a seemingly calm surface, and she found herself squaring her ruddy shoulders as she looked him over. She managed to settle on tendering a fairly petulant, “Nah,” then blinked and moved to brush past him on deftly placed paws.