Wild Berry Meadow a windy day with the white clouds flying

Moving north was Coelacanth’s sole instinct, and she allowed it to rule her with or without the companionship of the wolves she’d recently come across. She had allowed neither of them to touch her, leaving the fresh punctures at her scruff a fertile breeding ground for bacteria and infection. At long last she’d bathed her face, revealing a mild case of conjunctivitis that rimmed her eyes in an angry pink and wept a milky white discharge, but self-care was honestly not a current priority for the tiny Groenendael.

Home! Under cover of darkness she’d struck out, following the map of stars, but when a wall of wolfscent began to coalesce in the cleft of the mountains she’d fled, retracing her steps. Panic and habit found her back at the lake where she bathed her face again, sluicing the infection from her Neptune eyes, and this time when she headed out, she headed west. North was home. West was freedom. Home!

She found herself in a field of berries and picked out the soothing scent of chamomile — it triggered a memory that her feralized mind could not place — but her attention was diverted to a soft scraping from deep within the undergrowth. A pink, sharply tapered nose and a round agouti body registered immediately as food in her honed down psyche, a blaring neon signal that had her stomach clenching along with the bunching of her emaciated hindquarters and the curling of her dark lips. She threw herself into the foliage, perfuming herself in the ambrosia of crushed fruit as she snapped up the shrew between her jaws.

It was at this point that Coelacanth experienced a particularly odd quandary: she had the food, but how was she supposed to eat the food? She kept the little corpse between her jaws, her ridged spine arched impossibly as she huddled in on herself and glanced suspiciously around, her scalloped ribs heaving rhythmically as she spent each breath on a warning growl. They ticked in her throat, more akin to the purr of a particularly enthusiastic kitten, and she was perhaps kittenish in her defensiveness. Her fur, still dirty and tangled, stuck out in an array of disheveled quills as she scuttled off to a little hollow —

— where she continued to stand awkwardly, food in her mouth, and growl at nothing.

It was not often that the cat left the northern permafrosts, and it was never without good reason. The heights provided all that Majorca needed, and then some; food was plentiful and company was not. It was how she preferred it.

But that day, the apparition descended her mountain and struck out in a southwestern clip. She cut through the land, movements full of purpose and intent. It was one of those strange moments when he body spurned her on to find comfort in the arms of her own kind. It was truly the only time she sought out others lions — so volatile and cantankerous they were! — and having reared only two cubs thus far, Majorca guessed she could count her relations on one golden paw.

The scents of others traced the land, but they were nowhere to be seen, so the apparition gave a languid pursuit of each. More often than she preferred, it turned out to be a molly; and if there was anything she liked less than another cougar, it was another female cougar. So she gave the territories a wide berth, offering the land a serpentine hiss as she slithered across the landscape. Eventually the lands turned sodden and sandy and the summer heat became too stifling for the cold weathered cat; so Majorca took to the aegis of the shadows in an attempt to stave off her eventual retreat. She had made it this far away from her domicile, and Majorca wouldn’t let it be for naught! She would find what she sought, even if it meant experiencing such inclement, burning weather — only then could she return to the familiar solitude of the alpine cliffs, hopefully with child.

The scent trail the apparition followed suddenly intertwined itself with something distinctly canine and immediately Majorca froze in her place — not even her mind moved as she processed this new information. Somehow, she felt territorial over this place even though she had never seen it before [and, honestly, did not truly like it]. The cat’s immediate instinct was to gain a higher perspective, so with ease she ascend a nearby pine. From her new vantage point, she saw a dog, clearly mad— and it stunk of infection. Majorca’s salmon nose wrinkled in disdain and disgust.

The thing needed to be gone, away from this place — and it was determined that Majorca needed to descend in order shoo the growling pest towards whence it came; and so came her catlike saltation, using limbs to reach forth and grab the land so that she might lightly, silently, alight upon the earth. From there she obscured herself in the shadows on the underbrush so that her form was nothing more than an argent flash of light. Her quicksilver gaze trained on the dog and tail lashed behind her in a devilish manner, observing the feral thing completely, her feline form nothing but a shimmer in the light of the summer solstice.

and then, as unceremoniously as she came -- she left.