A way to approach a wild Esma is definitely not by thrashing loudly through the woods and calling her to present herself. She had heard the stranger before, but it took her a while to realize that rather than passing through and minding his own business, he would decide to pick up her trail and follow it. For a while so she let him do it, going in zig-zags and circles, making loops and attempting to get him lose her trail. Yet snow was to her disadvantage. If he could not smell her, he could still see the path she had made. 

So in the end, when the meeting was inevitable, she played her last trick. Her dappled pelt so easy to pick out against the white of winter and green of the spring and summer, melted perfectly here at the fern grove. The snow matched her white markings and the dry, brown fern bushes, along with branches of undergrowth helped her blend in the scenery. So that at a first glance she was not readily visible. 

The stranger came into a view - an odd looking wolf of a small build. He emanated friendliness and - in Esma's opinion - a level of carelessness to the dangers to lone wolves in unknown places. Ever so careful and aware about her own place on the lowest steps of this world, the young man's ignorance of it all was puzzling. Dangerous to himself even. 

"Who are you?" she asked, after a long moment of silence had passed and she had decided to engage with him. There she stepped out of her hiding place, but kept a safe distance from him and appraised the fellow with watchful gaze.

Esma could be honest and tell him - no, I was trying to evade you. But she intstinctively felt that this would put her at a disadvantage. She would signal to Dusty Rose that she was afraid of him and that could encourage him to abuse the situation (author's note - does not mean that Esma's assumptions were right, she just judged people based on her own experiences). Therefore she decided to act smart and reply: "Yes, I was. You are stranger to these lands." 

Lately she had become a little bolder than usual. "I am Esma from Riverclan. It's nearby," she introduced herself and at the same time let him know that her home was not far off, the wolves of her group could be within earshot and thus he should not get any funny ideas. "Where do you come from?" she asked.

"Yes," Esma answered with a furrowed brow, as if wondering, if this was a trick question from her companion. "It means me," she said, as if pointing out to something very obvious. She had not met any other Esma's around here, therefore she could safely say that at least in this corner of the world Esma by definition was a young, adolescent wolf with a brown-white coat from the Riverclan. "Does your name mean something else than you?" she asked, feeling curious. 

"It is home," yet again Esma did not fully understand the question. Home to her encompassed the feeling of safety and familiarity. That was, what Riverclan meant to her. The other descriptives regarding the landscape and history did not really matter. "What is a wellspring?" she asked.

"How can you be two things at once?" Esma asked, continuing to ride along the tracks of her own thoughts and ideas of the world. She could not understand, why would anyone name their children in names that had already been claimed by other beings - alive or inanimate. "Are you more of a dusty rose or a wolf then?" she asked next, still not understanding, how could a wolf be a flower at he same time. Dirty one too. 

"Riverclan has water everywhere," she remarked, finding it odd that one had to dig for it. "Why did you live in a place, where you had to dig for water?" she asked and the question reflected her own lack of experience with the outside world. She just could not picture, how could it be that the water would not be easily available. Found everywhere. 

"Yes," she nodded. "Do you?"

"My pack is clan that lives by the river," contrary to Dusty rose Esma saw a difference between a name of a group of people and name of a single person. Her home's name was self-explanatory and she thought (with a sense of pity) that the other was not very smart either. Had he engaged more in the ideas she was putting forth, she would have given him credit for having made a good point.

The next thing he told her, made Esma frown. It was as if he was blaming her for asking questions on unclear things. As if she was doubting him or giving an impression that she knew better and he was wrong. The sense of injustice riled up in her mind, while she sought the best way to counter him. "You did not answer the question," she said. "Would you want to live there now still, if water here is plentiful and you do not have to dig it up?" she decided that she needed to clarify, what she had wanted to find out and ignored the rest of his sentence, because it was just plain wrong.