Cerulean Cape blood canticle

he toiled in to the east from the tall trees. days passed—he kept company with sea-birds and their shadows. far out over the sea there was a darkness, a gathering breath. he watched this from time to time, too.
it was quiet here upon the cape. drusk descended across a sandlot; he explored a copse of battered trees which somehow had not been uprooted; the scent of food lured him along a stony ledge but he didn't get far, as his feet were not used to the barnacles clinging to everything.
the stinging of his paw-pads was not new, but the subtle trailing of his ruddy cracked palms drew the attention of a pair of crows. these he chased up upon another stretch of loose sand and intermittent gravel, at least until they cackled and wheeled away across the tideline.

Oh hello!

She knew how to use her nose—tracking, trailing, these came naturally to her. The rest was another matter entirely. She had simply been drawn by the briny breath of the coast, a place her sister would have loved, a place where she perhaps hoped to cross her path. But it was a subtle scent of blood—faint, nearly imperceptible—that had slipped into her awareness. A wound far too minor to cause any real concern. Still, she had followed the trail.

At the horizon, she glimpsed the creature that had left it in its wake. A great brown beast. The pale woman narrowed her eyes, as if doing so might bring it into sharper focus. She moved closer, gliding across the expanse of sand with her light, floating stride.

A man. A tall man, swathed in a coat of many hues of brown. Silent, she drew level with him—she’d even had to stretch her gait, shifting from her usual airy trot to a measured amble to conserve her strength. She studied him without a word. Was this what the hunters of these lands looked like? What kind of trophies could men such as this possibly bring back? The question lingered in her mind.

grains of sand caked his paw pads. he had ignored it for as long as he could but the salt that dried there among the grains burned in to him, and he began to limp. this was not something he would have done around others—showing such a small but obvious weakness—and it proved he was oblivious to the stranger tailing him.
it wasn't until she was level with his trajectory that he took notice of the shifting sand, the sound of weight pacing behind him, and he stopped to look over one shoulder. the darkness of his mantled shoulders, looking more haggard and pronounced given his recent thinning, prickled with an indecisive energy. was this a threat? was this something else?
he flashed his front teeth with a lift of his lip, but said nothing—not even a rumble.

Common sense and the subtle art of canine communication were not her forte. If only her sister were here.
In Hunting Ground, solitude was the norm. One mingled with others only to breed or to boast of hard-won victories. Exchanges—if one could even call them that—were typically swift, succinct, and often entirely one-sided.

Bared fangs had served as a warning—one the woman in the ivory coat had failed to read. Still, she had slowed her pace slightly, uncertain, ears lowered, eyes averted. Words—those she commanded well. Gestures, intentions? Far less so.

I’m looking for someone, she said at last, hoping to shift the dynamic, to defuse a situation she could not decipher.

You’ve been walking a long time, haven’t you? This time, her voice carried a hint of hesitation. She had only her earlier deduction to go on: paws roughened by the journey—traveler’s paws. Of that, there could be no doubt.

his teeth are warning enough. the stranger stops their approach but, they do not run. he watches them intently for any movement; although his wounds are not great, they are wounds and drusk would rather not expend the energy necessary for a fight if he can help it.

when she makes noise it is the tone he follows, not the words. he does not know a lot of what is said. common tongue is not his favorite. judging the way she does not shout at him, does not bare her own teeth, and does not have an accusatory note to the sounds, she is not threatening him.

her attitude appears... meek.

boldly turning to face her, squaring off to her position, he searches the air for other scents; maybe she came from a pack? maybe she was a dispersed girl trying to feed the season's impulses. he came closer to study her, which might have made her uncomfortable, but he did not care. there was no heat scent to her, which drusk slowly discovered - making her useless to him.

He had little regard for whatever she might have said—at least, that was the impression Beaver had taken from it. When he had drawn near to catch her scent, her tail had lashed the air instinctively, a sharp crack like the snap of an irritated jaw. She knew males—Beaver did—the rough-edged types from Hunting Ground, but never had one approached her in such a manner: wordless, without forewarning, without even the courtesy of a name.

And yet, she had let him be. Her muzzle had crinkled, not so much from unease, but from a mounting impatience, awaiting a response that never came.

...Red. Red Bison. That’s my sister’s name, she said at last, hoping the name might stir something in him, might ring a bell somewhere in the recesses of his memory. What are you—mute? Or just one of those lumbering brutes too full of himself to bother answering a woman? Her words came low, tinged with the faintest growl.

Where she came from, travelers were few. There was only one tongue, one people, one way of life. The lands of Teekon would be a true journey for her—an unknown path that began, oddly enough, with this silent stranger.

the words she spoke registered, to some degree anyway. he knew some of them, and was bright enough to string them together for some kind of understanding. plus, people often had one of a few obvious reactions to his level of wordlessness: aggression, which she so far had now shown, confusion, which lit her features at first, and more words—as if speaking more might impart understanding upon him.
more than once in his life people had used the word mute for him.
drusk, he drawled in response.
motioning with a tip of his chin at himself, at his chest. tih hake drusk.
he probed at her hip with his nose, and moved around her like a hungry shark; testing, tasting. she smelled more wild, and not like the brine of the sea. where had she come from?

Words she could scarcely grasp—were it not for the gestures that brought them to life. Drusk. Was that his name? He had repeated it, threading it through other strange sounds she had never heard before. Such a name—she couldn’t recall ever encountering anything like it. Drusk. What was it? What could it possibly mean?

As he began to circle her in turn, she lowered her head, unsettled by his recent revelations and grasping at any thread of logic that might offer a plausible conclusion. Head aligned with her spine, she too began to move, pacing around him—two strange vultures, turning around one another.

She had brought her nose into play as well, seeking the subtlest traces of information. He too carried the scent of wild lands. He had traveled. He did not seem to have settled anywhere of late. It was only his scent, and the wilderness clinging to him.

Drusk, she echoed, her voice shaded with uncertainty. The Drusk—was it a mighty beast? Was it the hue of his coat? A tint unknown to her ears and eyes? Or perhaps he was still a novice in the art of the hunt, unworthy as yet of a complete name. In the Hunting Ground, names bore particular weight, laden with meaning—clues by which one could judge the being who stood before them.

So it was without pride that she gave her own, a name she intended to shed soon—through a true act of the hunt.

Ivory Beaver. She dipped her head. Have you never hunted for glory?

He spoke. He listened. Of that, she was now certain. But did he understand? That was another matter. Still, this simple introduction had been enough for the woman in the ivory coat to set aside her rising frustration, to soften the edge of her growing annoyance.

And yet—was she not already brushing up against another barrier? Would he offer more words in return?