He could hear sobbing in the woods. The noise elicited a range of emotions, but fear was the strongest. He was not the most spiritual or religious member of his family, but he believed in the stories. He knew that there were things beyond his knowing, stronger and faster than him or any other wolf, things that no one could rightly explain.

He did not know if this place had spirits like home did, and if they did, he did not know if they behaved in the same way as those where he lived. He knew how to placate the spirits back home. He participated in the rituals and gave sacrifices to his familial ancestors at their shrines. But here, far, far away, without anyone to guide him, he had no idea how to move forward.

This was all assuming that the creature eliciting the sobs was something 'not of this world'. It could be far more mundane, and the spiritual fear that shot through him could be purely due to the strange new world he now found himself in. The sobbing went on as he deliberated. Sighing with resignation, he tracked the sound to its source. A she-wolf. She looked rather mundane, with silver fur and...scars on her shoulder. He laughs to himself internally and he shook his head at his own superstitious panic. Spirits don't have scars. He keeps his distance for the moment, chuffing softly to her direction. Mortal wolf or not, she could be dangerous.

The woman — she was a woman of mortal flesh, since she bore those scars on her shoulder, he told himself — reacted to his presence, her sobs ending swiftly, replaced by a face of stone as she turns to him. A warrior then, he thinks. He recognized the motions that she underwent. He knew them all too well. 

At first he wonders if she spoke a form of Common unbeknownst to him. The words sounded somewhat similar to Common, but not exactly. His face must have been blank, for she translated quickly. Her voice was soft, rough, and resigned. I wanted to see what creature was making all that noise, he said to the woman. You mourn loudly. What else could her tears be shed for? He had never see such sadness except in the face of death. Or perhaps romance? He knew more of the former than the latter.

Her face stiffens more into stone. She had taken offense. Yao frowns, more at himself for seeming crass in the face of her raw emotions. I did not mean that you cannot mourn. Just that the volume may attract unwanted attention. He bows his head slightly. Not me — I mean no harm. he adds quickly. 

He isn't surprised by her sharp words, nor the fact that her grief turned to anger and rage in his presence. He bears the brunt of her words, trying his best to quell any lashes of indignancy that bubbled inside him. I cannot, he shakes his head. No one can — no one of good intent, anyway, He does not know what words of comfort to give to this foreign woman, who speaks a second tongue unbeknownst to himself or anyone he knew back home. He had long known that the people beyond his homeland thought differently than he about many things, especially about the dead, but this was the first time he had been confronted with that reality. I don't know what you believe, ma'am, but where I come from, the dead remain to assist the living. Especially those they loved in life and who loved them in return. This person isn't really gone. Their mortal, physical body may be ended, but the important part of them — their soul — that remains. That's the part that remembers. And loves. He locks eyes with her for a moment. His normally stoic face slipped away at the shows of her grief. He cannot help himself to feel pity for the woman. Death was something that awaited them all, but even with the beliefs that he had, it never made the pain any less sharp.