The dale offered him a great amount of comfort, and had been his sole reason for choosing it as a temporary dwelling. He would venture out on days when the sun was high in the sky, and return when the stars glistened overhead. There were still no signs of Tiel'c, but he had not had very much company in the glade, and the thief was grateful for this. More peculiar still, he had grown rather fond of the skittish red creatures who roamed the territory with watchful eyes and sharp smiles. Tadec had started to feel as though they had accepted him in their midst and deemed him an honorary fox of the meadow.

Long and rickety limbs carried him through the terrain. He stretched the length of his back in the new morning sun and the darkest parts of him felt its warmth. The day before, he had spotted the proof of a family of voles living beneath the twisted roots of the trees. The thief did not eat much, but was fond of the smaller catches as they kept him sylphlike and fleet on his feet. Voles were the perfect prey for such a predator.

Crunching snow was all that had given her away. With a quick swivel of his ear, the dark half-blood turned his head and snapped it in her direction. He was met with a sharp glint of her warm gaze and an expression that audited his every feature. The dull fire of his gaze roamed her figure for a moment before he saw the tufted fur at her rear and the stub that showed signs of a tail having been torn away. This was of particular interest to Tadec; it was an imperfection that he had not yet seen on the wolves of the wilds. The girl was coated in a burnt reddish hue that faded to softer colors on the underside of her throat and her belly. He enjoyed the resemblance to those colors and the bright rust that coated his shoulders and spine.
 
Motioning with a thrust of his muzzle, the coywolf offered a small curl of his lips and a light twitching at the tip of his tail. “You… er… tail,” his deep voice was carried like an echo of thunder as he stumbled over his words. Tadec did not want to appear rude to the girl, so he shook his head and exhaled quickly. The thief did not enjoy conversing with their kind; the sound of their tongue was so strange against his lips. “Like it,” he said with a nod, feeling as though this would suffice enough not to scare her away. The spindly creature looked at her expectantly.

The reply was uttered in the form of a skeptical, single-worded question. The coywolf wondered if it would have been offensive to her to suggest that it was an ideal trait, this flaw. His dying firelit gaze followed her body language with a precision unmatched, seeing that she had relaxed under the light of his remark. Of course, Tadec did not wish to have her feel as though he had been facetious in his comment. The slender halfling made an encouraging bob of his head and a further wagging of his tail to suggest that he offered her only a genuine form of companionship.
 
The moonlighter extended his neck to sniff at her, noting the familiarity of the scent that clung to her blush coat. It was the same that he had gathered from the other pack wolves who had crossed him in the nearby territories. If he had thought any further on it, Tadec would have been bothered that he had shared the light with so many of their undesirable kind. In spite of this, he had not yet found a creature quite like Indra in appearance, and she had compelled him to a cordial state of mind. The spindly thing only wanted to know her deeper.
 
“You like dying sun in sky,” he then told her, motioning to her plush pelt. “Tail make you look fierce.” Then, as though to affirm this intuition, Tadec puffed his chest some and forced himself to stand a little taller; it was a mimicry, if anything. He was nothing more than a moonlighter on stilted limbs than he was a strong sort of fellow. The wild thing was more a rogue than a knight. This did not mean he was incapable of admiring the attribute in others.
 

The woman was appreciative, from what he could tell. She uttered a small word of thanks before providing a calling and then an inquiry that left him mildly baffled. The savage little pilferer gaped at her for a moment, fur ruffled along his neck, and regarded her with a touch of confusion. Tadec had been called many things in his young life, but nice had never found its way to the list of adjectives that embodied his form. There was a trace of pleasure in the thought that she found him genial. This pleasure manifested itself in the form of a shriveled smile on his pointed muzzle; the tips of his canines poked from beneath his lip.
 
“This one is called Tadec,” he introduced to her with a nervous bob of his head. Then, he analyzed the second half of her question. If she had meant it in a rhetorical nature, she may not have actually needed an answer. The dark halfling thought it rude, so he shrugged his shoulders and peered at her with an interested light in the embers of his gaze. “Tadec collects… imperfection.”
 
Though he had never admitted it to another, the bandit imagined that she could do very little harm with the information. The coywolf did not want her to think that she would be taken captive by him, so he made a great deal of effort to appear unassuming and earnest in what little he could say. The words were drawn out and challenging on his tongue, but he managed well enough aside from being stiff and formal in his phrasing. The tip of his tail twitched again at her.
 
“Not the same as other wolves. Indra is different. Indra is fierce; bright.”

It seemed as though something he had said struck her as being odd. His expression fell as she looked to him with a questioning glance before inquiring about his reasons for that particular collection. The thief regarded her with a soft glow in his gaze before he glanced away and fixed his attention to the dirt and the rocks. Finding it difficult to formulate the proper way to provide her with a response, the coywolf looked back to her warm red features with a slightly gaping mouth and a slump in his nimble frame. “Imperfect creatures fight harder. Flawed ones are stronger,” he admitted to her, though he did not feel as though the response was good enough. It was a simple as he could make it in such a difficult tongue, but he hoped that she would accept it without judgment.

The burgundy woman conceded that she did not feel strong, and she cast her gaze away from him with a dejected expression. It seemed that she was at a loss, so she turned his statement against him and fixed him with the gold of her gaze. The dull fire in his own eyes roamed across her face and he felt his limbs quiver at her direct inquiry. If she should offer him her own moment of genuine emotion, he imagined that he should return it in his own way. The crow moved forward slowly and pushed to nestle his muzzle underneath her chin in a show of comfort. The movement was soft and careful, for he was not certain how she would react to such a gesture.
 
With a soft sigh that escaped through his slender muzzle, the thief flattened his large ears to his head. “Tadec is flawed, yes,” he informed her in a soft timbre. “But… not strong.” The strength of his soul was surely weaker than her own; he could almost feel the fire in her gaze. Indra had a beauty about her – shattered, but resilient and fierce. The long-legged halfling could only long for the type of force that she carried within her very limbs. He was somewhere in the in between; Tadec belonged not to the fiery light of day, nor the creeping dark of night. The broken little coywolf was made of the late dusk, the early dawn.

Indra allowed his touch for a moment of time before she pulled back and he moved himself to allow her room. Personal space had been a vital portion of his raising, and he knew it to be a sweet comfort as well as a merciless pain. The crow did not want to offend her into leaving him; he was far too interested in her to risk the opportunity. Instead, he calculated her features as she mulled his word over and once she had spoken, he felt relief. She believed he appeared fine. While it was not a deep confession of her liking, he swelled with a rare giddiness that caused his paws to dance in place; lightly, as though he were floating on air. 

“Truly?” he asked her with wide eyes. His shriveled smile spread into a wide beam that stretched his features and accented the fine point of his nose, as well as the narrow bridge of his muzzle. “Indra is very kind.”

The phrase it takes one to know one was lost on the spindly crow, but he smiled at her anyway and his tail fluttered behind him. Then again, he did not understand fully why others would not like her for lacking an appendage. It furthered his belief that all wolves were predominantly cruel creatures and that they did not understand the importance of such differences. Tadec felt shamed that he would carry so much of their blood in his body. The black coyote would surely reprimand him when he found that he could no longer run.
 
“Others can be cruel,” he spoke softly, watching her with a soft expression. He had been told that the wolves were his enemies – the Elil – and would never bring him happiness, but he had found that not all of them were the same. “Tadec thinks Indra is touched by Frith,” he then added with a wider smile and a sure bob of his skull. Then, as if to explain himself, he turned his crown toward the sun and flattened his ears to his skull out of respect. It was true, after all; she wore the red coat of one who had been born to the summer. She breathed a warmth that he had never been blessed enough to witness in his short life.
 
But where she had been graced with the love and warmth of a Fritheer, Tadec had been born beneath the eyes of Inlé. They could not have been more different; she was of the sun and he was of the darkest reaches of the moon. It was in this realization that he did not wish to lose her, and so he peered on her with a small desperation and lowered his muzzle to show that he had no harmful intentions. "Where is Indra home?"

Bearclaw Valley!
 
Ah, he thought to himself with a pang of regret. The smoky creature had been hoping she would provide more direct means of where she called home. Tadec turned from her and looked through the terrain as though in search of this notch in the earth where Indra lived. When his gaze was back to her, she had inquired about Frith and Tadec’s home. At this, his expression gave way to surprise. So closely interwoven with his familial culture, the thief had never realized that she might not know of who he spoke when he mentioned the great god of the sun. It was pleasing for him to be able to tell her.
 
Pointing high in the sky with the tip of his narrow muzzle, the crow held his pose and then returned his sights to her. “Frithrah is Lord Sun,” he explained to her in what could have been a purr. The thought of the bright orb above them was one that showered him in a comfort he had known nowhere else. It was Indra’s second inquiry that cast a shadow on his features and turned his small smile into a blank slate. His gaze was cold for such warm color. “Tadec has home far away. Time for new home, perhaps here,” he explained somewhat curtly. The dark young thing had no means of providing her with details, but the subject of his home was a difficult one to approach.

There was an invitation and it took the crow by surprise when it arrived. She invited him to her pack. A rare sort of elation rose up within him and the coywolf twittered his tail about. “How kind,” he stated in a warm tone. Decidedly, the thief turned to where she had motioned and made note to wander to the borders of the valley she claimed as her home. Tadec wondered if all the wolves were like her. He realized it would have been an ideal location if that were the case. If not, those there were fortunate to have the sun-touched girl. She had a light in her that was not in most.