Totoka River Spending quality time with the floor

There were many packs of wolves located along the shores. Foxglove had travelled from West to East and had caught both scent and sight of at least three large groups. She had walked around them carefully and only, when hunger had reached desperate levels had she dared to draw closer to the heavily marked borders and in the cover of the night inspect, whether they had any scraps of food lying around. Usually they did not - it was winter, after all.

Scavenging the oceanside had been more fruitful today, but in the process she had cut her foot on the ice - not a serious injury, but still painful and bleeding, making her limp and leaving little droplets of blood on the trail. She decided to take a rest and tend to her wound, when she reached the riverside. With no one else in sight, the she-wolf dared to lie down and rest.

He had a nose for blood and rot. Or to put it another way: he had a nose that was particularly accustomed to finding easy meals. So the sable pirate honed in on the blood droplets quickly as he searched down the shore for grub and for potential recruits. Curious to know if there was an exploitable situation at the end of the trail, the corsair set his course accordingly and travelled to where a river ran to the sea.

There she was: a peculiar looking young female who had a two-colored face. Raptor narrowed his eyes in scrutiny. He could not care less about how funny looking she might be. He focused on her position. She was curled up and resting. Fortunately for her, the sable pirate did not indiscriminately attack. Unfortunately for her, the devil always found work for idle paws to do.

Mischievous to the core, Raptor swung wide so that he could approach with the wind in his face. Conveniently, this also meant he came from behind her. He did not know if she was sleeping, but he committed to a game of let's-see-how-close-I-can-get-before-she-notices anyway.

When it came to sensing danger - Foxglove had almost supernatural knack of knowing it coming her way even before it made it's presence known. She had lived on her own for a very long time and never let her guard down. Therefore wind might have obscured the attacker's scent from her, but the sound of his footsteps in the snow weren't.

The second she heard him, the she-wolf froze momentarily, to spring to her feet after that and face her opponent, who was bigger, stronger and apparently more well-fed that she had ever been in her life. Foxglove's fur along her spine bristled and she growled at the other to keep his distance.

That game did not last long at all.

"Relax lass, I ain't gonna eat ye," he said as the female leapt up and spun around to bristle and growl at him. For a half second he contemplated having a go at her — he did enjoy a good scrap from time to time — but quickly decided that was a poor idea. She was a defensive stranger unbound by the code of the crew. If he wanted to scrap he'd need only set his teeth into Smoke's ass (what is a bite on the buttocks among friends after all). Then he could roughhouse properly with a wolf he trusted.

"Too much work," he added with a cackle, plunking himself down into a sit and letting his burnt umber eyes slide across her uninviting form. He raised a brow and grinned crookedly.

"Unless ye want me to eat ye..."

Either Foxglove did not understand men in general or all of them were very weird creatures. First they attempt to attack and kill you - then they pretend to be Nice Guys. She had not bought his reasons for not eating her - because, if finishing off a meager wolf like her was hard work, then how had he survived this long in the world?

Yet again she remained unfazed by the other's charms and after one long and hard look at the guy, she did not grace him with an answer. Simply turned around and began to walk away. Her foot still hurt, she was limping and wincing at every step she took, but she was not going to hang around in this guy's company. He had jumped straight in her bad person list.

Raptor's eyes raked across the curve of her buttocks and travelled up the length of her spine to where they fixated sharply at the back of her head. His tail drifted side to side at his hocks with mild agitation. It was a fool's move that she made — turning her back on someone she did not know and could not trust — and had he been a more bloodthirsty specimen he might have savagely showed her her error. The devil in him was half tempted to as it was but he let her go.

For several paces at least.

Raptor strolled to her side then and casually walked astride her. "So," he said, smacking his lips as he looked sideways to her. "Where are we goin'?

Foxglove would not have cared, if he had decided to attack and kill her. When a person has so little attachments to this world and cares only to live another day, a death to finish the mundane existance would be a relief. Anything was better than slowly wasting away and losing strength. 

However, he had decided for the annoying route - flooding her with his unpleasant presence. She growled again, when he came to walk next to her. And rather than replying to his inquiry, she increased the distance between them. So that they were still walkin paralell, but not so close to each other anymore.

"This the way we're goin'? I say that's a great choice, lass," he complimented. Since she was not participating in the conversation he would have to pick up the slack and imagine what she would be saying if her tongue had not seemingly fallen out her mouth. "Of course I will accompany ye and protect ye from gulls and ghouls. Ye can count on ol' Raptor here." The pair strolled along, with the sable pirate making no effort to move into the space she had put between them. Not to say he would not do so later. "Why thank ye! Yer a rather good lookin' specimen yerself."

Foxglove was annoyed, but, when the unwanted company said - Of course I will accompany ye and protect ye from gulls and ghouls. Ye can count on ol' Raptor here - she stopped, gave him a glance of disbelief and snorted, and resumed walking. As if she was afraid of any of those things! Why was he hanging around and talking nonesense, was beyond her.

Yet he did not give up - complimenting her about her looks. She stopped again, bared her teeth at him, then ran forwards in a quick pace. There was a heap of sea-weeds and what-not washed ashore and the prospect of finding food was enough to make her forget that she was not alone.

Raptor was not a wolf that was easily deterred from any of the (often random) things he set his mind to. Her bared teeth were met in kind — only he was grinning stupidly and not threatening her at all. She surged ahead, and this time he hung back, a vulture in waiting for another opportunity. He could only carry on a mocking one sided conversation for so long (and not long at all) before he grew bored. So he let her move ahead, and bided his time as he jogged along after her.

Foxglove arrived to the pile of the sea-weeds and other rubbish that the waves had brought out from it's depths first. She did not realize at once that her tail was wagging now (a wonder that it remembered such a movement at all) and she was smiling to herself, though the joy of finding this pile was something she had not felt in a very long time.

She jumped right in the middle of it, plowed through with her muzzle, dug vigorously and after some effort, pulled out an oddly shaped thing that a human would have described as an old Wellingon boot. She dragged it to the side, sniffed at it and then shot a questioning glance at the other wolf, who was still nearby. Did he know, what it was? Whether you could eat it?

The talkative she-wolf dove into a pile of kelp and Raptor held back. His muscles were coiled and his eyes were unblinking in their focus. He was just waiting for her to haul a fat crab or something out of the tangle of seaweed so that he could dart in and snatch it from her. But when she did pick up her snout, dragging what she had found to the side, his forward motion was barely a twitch before he sat back on his ass, lifted a brow, and appraised the thing with a cocked head.

He did not know what it was and neither did she. Sensing that she might tolerate a closer inspection, the corsair stood back up and stepped toward her, dipping his snout to sniff at the curious object. It had a sharp stink all its own that resembled nothing he had ever encountered before. He kept the corner of his eye on the she wolf as he leaned in for a nibble. The texture was smooth with a thin coat of algal slime. It gave under his fangs, but then bounced back into shape.

Raptor drew back with a shrug and a "hmm" as he looked at the other wolf.

Despite his bravado earlier, now that there had been a prime moment to prove his value in Foxglove's eyes, he turned out to be just as clueless at her. She furrowed her brow, scrutinized him for a bit and then turned her gaze away, feeling disappointed. Men were all the same, weren't they? Cool and smart until you asked them a question that truly mattered. 

She forgot about the boot and dived into the pile of sea-weed and debris again, catching a scent of a rotting fish somewhere and therefore beginning to paw and dig with more intensity than before. The target of her actions probably did not escape her unwanted company.

His immediate assessment was that the thing was inedible. But Raptor saw it as something else entirely: treasure. The form and texture would make for a unique chew, and he waited patiently to see what the female would do with it. Much to his delight, she abandoned her interest in it favor of a dead fish — the smell of which did not escape him. But the sable corsair could find dead fish anywhere anytime. So while she was distracted chasing after the routine, he lurched forward, latched on to the boot, and scampered down the beach cackling with the rubber pinched firmly between his teeth.

Certain that he had a suitable head start and equally confident that the female would have no inclination toward chasing him, Raptor did not so much as cast a look back as he sailed away with his prize.

Last post for me unless she catches up to him :)

Foxglove found the fish (a whole one!!!) and grabbed it. Had it's flesh not been frozen solid by staying in the sea-weed mush overnight, it would have disintegrated in her jaws. She had not been paying much attention to, what the man had been doing, but with a treasured and hard earned thing in her possesion she thought he ought to know that this was hers. Therefore a menacing growl...

...followed by confusion. The man was nowhere in the vicinity and the object she had found earlier was gone as well. A moment later she maked out a dark disappearing in the distance, considered going after him to retrieve the thing, but then decided against it. She had food and he had... well... trash. 

Fool... Foxglove thought, when she settled down to eat the fish.