The days were beginning to stretch into weeks. The sun's radiance no longer satiated her desire for company. The moon did not give her the bliss it had in the beginning. Eva had never wanted to leave, but those first few days she had loved being on her own. It was the first time she was required to be her own person, to master her own loneliness. It felt freeing to leave all of it behind. Freeing, and confusing.

Now, her heart was forlorn. Eva felt lost. Cold. She had pushed forward anyway.
Today she could be found in the hollow, enjoying the sunlight. Most of the day had consisted of napping and feeling bad about herself. Angst had been the theme until she'd caught a small rabbit. Predatory instinct took over and an old part of her brain was quite happy to mow down on it, crunching at a femur to get at the marrow within. For these moments, she was at peace.

Just then, something dark moved on the horizon. Blood still smeared on her muzzle, she held the remainder of the kill between her paws and looked up with a bone in her mouth. When she realized it wasn't a bear making its way toward her, a reflexive curl of her lip replaced her calm. Wolves were often unkind to those like her: lonely beasts with no place among them.

The two stared at eachother tensely. When the dark female made no move to steal Eva's meager prize, she exhaled slowly and blinked, licking her lip and dropping the bone in the same motion. Her ears and neck relaxed, though the guard hairs along her mane were still bristled with anxiety. "Don't worry, I don't bite," she called out calmly. The black and white creature had startling eyes, which unnerved Eva.

Eva casually swallowed a piece of the spine she had already eaten the majority of. The rabbit was fine, but she was much more consoled at that moment by another person being near her, even a stranger. Despite her reservations and anxiety around other wolves in the area, her social nature was too demanding to resist even a moment of company. She looked up to the stranger and regarded her for a moment. Then, she abruptly tossed a scrap attached to a little bone to the beast. It landed several feet in front of the stranger.

She would easily rather have less food than no company.

The dark beast accepted what Eva had thrown to her, smirking at her and mocking her physical prowess. Eva twisted her lip, then licked it nervously. It was obvious that even from her seated position, the other she-wolf was significantly larger than she was. Eva had never been much of a fighter. Her fights were relationship-heavy, sneaking in drama and gossip where she could to get what she wanted. She could lie and cheat better than most people, but in the ring she'd be toast in seconds.

"It hasn't come up much," she said in response to the question. It was true. It had probably never happened that Eva had caught something and then immediately met a stranger. Her home pack was small and rarely saw travellers coming and going from the territory. "But the world is cruel enough as it is, and nothing brings people together more than food, right?"