Northstar Vale houndmouth

@Warbone

Typical of this time of year, the sun rose and set once more behind a wall of featureless gray clouds. Darkness was a comfort to her, though it was not her favored time of day. True, most wolves thrilled at the shadows that enveloped the world, but she was a creature devoted to the following of Hati, the great wolf who sought to chase the moon from the sky each night so that the sun may rise again. Naturally she knew the merits of the evening hour where the illusion of security led the smaller fauna to seek nourishment and thereby feed the wheel that drove life to take life.

A rabbit, disembowled and hollowed by her hungry jaws, lay limp between her outstretched limbs. Her pale face was flecked with blood; muzzle soaked. She looked positively ghoulish as she tore into flesh and bone with ravenous abandon. One paw held the body while her neck pulled away another strip of meat. She devoured it greedily, and twisted her ears toward the sound of the scavenger raven hovering in the boughs above her head. 

She ignored him and continued to eat.

Warbone had never felt partial towards any particular time of day; having found over the years that it all bled together whenever one was so consistently unfettered. But since the closure of one of his eyes, he had come to discover that darkness was not as impersonal to him as he'd once thought. It was a bane now— limiting him more than ever now— except that he wouldn't allow the moonlit hours to conquer him. The wild had carved him, so it would not the same wild that would defeat him.

The scent of blood took his thoughts away from the irrepressible night. He followed the scent slowly, assuming that he would come upon Saena, but he was well within sight before he realized that he had not been tracking his small, pied companion. At first he only saw gold. The sun's abandoned cloak across the back of an unfamiliar she-wolf. Warbone's approach was decidedly neutral, perhaps unwilling to outwardly admit that he had been wrong about who he thought he might find.

This she-wolf, however, was almost twice the size of his partner, and if not for her gender, she might've been as large as himself, if not bigger. (And then because he was naturally inclined to think such things, he thought she would bear some very powerful pups— given the father was anything like him.) He did not face her directly, but rather stood perpendicular to her, his head angled acutely in her direction. He felt no reason to accost her; the damage was already done. But it need only take a glance to ascertain that he felt he belonged here. More so than her.

Without speaking, he waited (read: expected) for her to get up and move on.

Unbeknownst to her, a beast of a male approached. Her teeth worked on a bit of exposed bone until it cracked under her expert ministrations and her tongue greedily sought nourishing marrow within. She shattered the femur with a soft snap—echoed only by the rustle of the undergrowth as it gave way to the shadow that materialized on the fringes of her feast. Her skin prickled; hackles rose and fell as the electrifying thrill of anticipation raced through her. 

The rabbit was cast to the earth at her feet when she rose, stiff-legged, and met the wolf with a piercing stare. She hovered over her catch with her head hung neutrally level with her spine—tail cricked in a lazy curve against her hindquarters. He was rugged, rough-hewn, and handsome with a lordly bearing. There was a fleeting moment that she felt endeared to him as kin for she, too, was born of all things Wild and Untamed. Barring the queerly disfigured eye he was, above all, capable. 

But she would not be cowed into submission. Solveig offered him nothing but a rumble of displeasure and a drop of blood splattered onto the soil between her paws.

All blood and gold, she rose like a tide of the Red Sea coming to meet the shore, her expression imbued with a defiant petulance that Warbone found insulting. He had given her the opportunity to take her catch and be on her way, but found the offer thrown back in his face and punctuated by a warning growl from behind a deceptively soft-colored muzzle. Though at first there was no imminent threat to his posture, his body changed dramatically now; tail lifted and flagged, hackles rising as his body stiffened, and his lips drew back like curtains into a grimace.

Perhaps he should have known, by her impressiveness, that she would not relent her space without confrontation. His actions, however, had been entirely dictated by her own, and now his fuse had been irrevocably shortened by her unwillingness to acknowledge his claim here. His chin tucked and his tongue flashed, tasting her scent and the blood of her catch on the air, before he decided to warn her. "I do not wish you harm, but this vale is mine, and I am tasked to defend it. You may take your catch, if you so wish, but you may not remain here without intention to join me."

He watched her without malice, but it was intensely clear that he intended to accost her should she further disrespect his claim. Though more than he hankered for a good fight, Warbone hoped this defensive, aurelian Amazon would remember her status as a self-sufficient wolf and know that any injury served here could be a severe detriment to her life.

A rippled disturbed the air as she rose in defiance to him—his plume lifted, hackles prickled, and legs drove straight like pillars against the earth. She did not respond in kind, but she stood her ground with no measure of uncertainty evident in her expression. Her sunny eyes were cold with distaste as he curled his lips back in a threatening display. He intended this place as his own though it was not yet his to own. She had done no wrong, not yet, and was prepared to make that clear to him. 

But his demands came with the chance of reconcilation. Despite her defiance, he extended a branch towards her and, for a moment, she considered it. He would be a suitable father for her children should that time come and, perhaps, offer her a home and a vision different from those imposed on her at Broddr's Rise. The stiffness in her limbs softened a few fractions and her ears slid back a few notches as she hesitated. 

In an instant, they snapped forward again and she frowned. "If you had come with this offer only days prior, I would have accepted gladly. But I made a pact with the Sea, and the Blackrock wolves." She replied, lowering her tail and submitting to his superiority. It was not worth injury to protect her pride. "The winds favor you," Solveig added cryptically, looking up at the raven who waited, patiently, for her to abandon her meal. "as do I. Your conviction is inspiring."

As each of her muscles begin to loosen, so does Warbone start to relent on the pressure for her to do so. He only ever required physical respect, as words hardly meant anything to him anymore. For as much as he speaks, the weight of words never carried on him half as much as the distinct heaviness of tooth and claw did. And some wolves understood a bite better than they did a command. Fortunately for them both -- as the battle surely would have been epic -- the stranger finds value in the latter.

Needless to say, an unbidden stab of disappointment strikes him as he's told she's promised elsewhere. Warbone might have liked nothing more than to have the sun's spear at his side; another mother to the powerful children that would certainly be born in this alcove of the mountains. He liked the ocean, so he somewhat understood her choice, but realized that it was the vain part of him that was hurt -- the part of him that thought himself too magnificent a beast to be passed up by any woman intelligent enough to see his worth.

She saw it. Or at least alluded to it, and it served only to scar him deeper, knowing that this was not enough to keep her. "Not inspiring enough it would seem," he huffed, a dark edge of humor glimmering in his tone. "But I do not fault you for choosing the sea. She is the greatest force we know, after all, and will one day swallow these mountains, long after we wolves have long lost our bones to time."

Warbone sighed, sparing her his gaze so that he might glance northward, towards where the ocean surely lie. He looked back at her, neither threatening nor completely at ease with her. "Queen of the Valkyries... what is your name?"