She is not sure that she is ready. Thyri knows she has made many mistakes in her (short) life and after spending months trying to reconcile, to find her identity as she struggled to shine among her siblings left many unresolved, open wounds and not a single one of them had been easy to clean and heal. She knows that just because Gyda and Gabriel have given her a second chance in Sangeda she is not so sure that Heda, Eske, or Freyja will; nevertheless she had struck out from her parents and her feet found the path back to Teekon Wilds. She is not so sure she even wants to attempt to rejoin her family; which she is in conflict with as she stands upon Frostfire Ridge and peers at Sleeping Dragon in the horizon, ruined. Ready or not her earlier concern about being ready seemed no longer necessary, she thinks with lips pressed into a terse line. Had they escaped and relocated? Or had the Dragon become their graveyard? She does not know. She left before it erupted. She turns from the edge of the Ridge and picks her way carefully down the path she has taken to reach it stepping into the rich evergreens, grateful for the shade they provide her with from the warm, humid morning sun. It is always colder up here, on the Ridge and on the Glacier but it is almost Summer and she feels the warmth that gives it away, even here.

Thyri tries to think of the packs she knows of in Teekon but it has been a long time since she has been in the Wilds and she doubts if they are still around. There is no desperation that drives her to immediately seek a pack for the summer is plentiful and she does fear starvation. She can provide for herself well enough but she knows the press of winter’s cool mouth will be in a handful of months and there is a part of her, a deeply ingrained desire of her ilk that seeks companionship. She has made the journey alone and seeing the ruins of Sleeping Dragon has only intensified the ache of loneliness within her breast.

Languages, Thyri dares to assume, is something she knows. She is fluent in three of them: common, Trigedasleng and the nordic tongue of her shield-maiden mother. Yet, as a golden male, older than her near year of age approaches making all sorts of ungodly noise her ears slick flat against the elegant crown of her head. The champagne and cremé dappled warrior’s light caramel gaze snaps upon him with a low growl bubbling in her throat. If she’d had envisions of hunting they were gone now for she believes all the noise he makes would have spooked them. It seems, to her, like enough noise to wake the dead from their graves. What kind of wolf moved announcing his presence with singing like that? More importantly, what kind of wolf did it and was still breathing? The noise he makes has the very real potential of spooking off nearby prey it also harbors the possibility of alerting other predators to their presence and further their position. She bites her tongue — though only barely — against the desire to chide him for the noise he makes.

For a moment Thyri's eyes widen as he speaks to her, greeting her in a manner that is far too casual for her comfort, using words that she cannot make sense of. Toots? What is a bay and how does it sway? Her confusion evaporates quickly as her gaze narrows keenly. “What did you call me?” She demands feeling that it is within her rights to ask for an explanation so she knows if she has just been insulted or not. Her tail lashes against her hocks as she stares him down, unrelenting.

His explanation does not really give Thyri the answer she wants. As to the meaning of the word “toots” she is still in the dark on and she doesn’t like it. According to him, it is a greeting he uses for all females and she struggles with the consideration that she should be insulted for all females. Despite her trilingual fluency she can produce no translation for the bizarre word and that bothers her. She recoils with indignation. “What does it mean?” She demands next, correcting her earlier wording. Clearly, she was not clear enough in what she desires to know. A mistake she has no intention of repeating. Doll. She knows this word and her lip curls back over her teeth in a gesture that clearly states No. She does not like being called ‘doll’, either. He gives her his name and a shorter variation to address him as despite that she has not asked for it. “Skaði.” She tells him simply, as if she is speaking out of reluctant obligation to return the courtesy. Her mother’s goddess of winter is the first name that comes to the champagne and cremé beauty’s head and thus it spills effortlessly from her lips. It seems like a good enough persona to adopt as Thyri is not so trusting enough to give her real name and she sees no harm in putting on a performance as if the world has suddenly become her stage. It is a lie but he does not know that and she has no intention of leaving room for doubt.

Thyri shifts her weight, brown, sharp needles that have fallen free from the towering evergreens of the Ridge’s forest crunching beneath her weight. It is a sharp, poignant scent but above it she can pick out his scent — lone with faint traces of others. Nothing consequential from what she can tell. He is lone, like her. Her ears perk, alert for a moment as somewhere in the forest an evergreen lets out a creak of protest. It holds her attention fleetingly but her gaze does not rise off of him. She takes a deep breath, thinking that it is just the breeze and an archaic evergreen and that he has not alerted a mountain lion or worse to their presence. It may be Summer with plentiful prey to assuage the hungry belly of a lone wolf but she is still lone and she is not seeking a fight. With another predator or a fellow lupine. If she were to be wounded she does not know how to heal beyond the bare basic measures — that a pregnant Gyda had unwaveringly and emotionally insisted upon — and Thyri could not afford recovery time. There was no pack to hunt for her. Her advantage, she knows, is that her temper is not fly-away like Eske’s. It is the kind that seethes and brews. Patience has always been a virtue of her’s. Her ears flutter back to rest at half mast atop her skull, following the elegant curves of her crown as he repeats the alias she has given him back to her placing emphasis upon it’s pronunciation. SkaðI is not a particularly hard name to pronounce for those who are not used to the elongated vows and harsh rolls of the tongue that her mother’s native tongue demands. “Yes, Skahd-ee.” She repeats with a terse and reluctant approval. The champagne and cremé warrior does not wish to be idle here any longer. She shifts her weight again. He has made too much noise for her personal taste, especially when she favors stealth and feels too exposed. Not to mention, Sleeping Dragon is nothing but ruins — a possibly graveyard for wolves she has once loved and she suddenly seeks to put distance between the territory and the memories it drudges up and herself.

Thyri thinks that her first conversation since coming back to the Teekon Wilds is kind of reminiscent to her last conversation — hostile. The only difference is she is being hit on (she presumes) by a strange male she does not know; whereas her last conversation was with Freyja — the sibling she had the largest dislike for. Perfect as she was. The jewel of the Commander’s eye. A sour, metallic taste rises in her mouth, lingering and she shoves those unresolved feelings back down. Thyri does not like being made inferior and suspects that is much of where her tenacity and her assertive tendencies stem from. Those memories have no use here and may be too late to resolve, regardless. She does not wish to linger upon them and turns her thoughts to the present and back to her unorthodox companion. Her gaze narrows keenly at him once more as he apologizes, claims he has to do a thing — she doesn’t ask for elaboration because she doesn’t care — and feels her lips pull into a terse line as he suggests that they tango — again, what does that mean? she wonders — later in life. She is smart enough to draw her own assumptions to the meaning with his bizarre language though she is uncertain whether she is correct or not. The richly champagne colored pelage along her spine bristle as he calls her beautiful — surely meant as a compliment but she feels her worth is beyond her physical attributes — she may be beautiful it is a deception. She is deadly. Or she strives to be, at the very least. She does not comment, instead watching him leave in silence, lingering to ensure he is actually gone before she turns her back to the direction he has disappeared in and goes the opposite way with no real destination in her mind.