Swiftcurrent Creek to be the wing that fans the flame

It was hotter here than he was used to; his thick winter coat was still in the process of slimming down, and there were places his legs couldn't reach to scratch. The top of his back, mainly, and the front of his chest, and his hind haunches themselves. He looked a bit ridiculous, truthfully, but there was nothing for it. The fur would come loose in its own sweet time, and all King could do was try to encourage it.

Which was why he was rolling in the dirt, just a few-dozen yards off from the gurgling creek where he'd last stopped to drink. Dust and fur was flying everywhere, but it felt so good to scratch at his back, and to feel some of his thick winter pelt coming away from his skin. When the gravel began to hurt more than scratch, King hopped back to his feet and shook out his pelt. His jowls shook and splattered drool as he tried to loosen the grit and fur that now clung to him, and eventually, the male realized that a quick dunk in the river would probably do him some good.

Anxiously, King approached the water, remembering just how cold it had been when he'd taken a drink twenty minutes before.

When Adeline first sees the wolf in the distance, flailing around on the ground, she feels her heart sink at the thought of Grayday. She’s traveled far (she thinks) and has met a small handful of wolves that the thought of seeing him so soon causes her heart to plummet. Only when he picks himself up, shakes himself out, and padded toward the water. A sigh of relief washes over her and her shoulders feel the weight fall away. The longer she looks, he doesn’t much carry that much resemblence but his carefree nature swept her away so easily.

Still, the girl does not speak as she remains out of his line of vision. She does step closer with uncertainty in her place, not too careful about the sound she makes, but her curiosity wins her over anyway.

King's nose twitched when he caught the scent of another wolf, but he was already charging into the water, and he figured it could wait long enough for him to rinse off. But as soon as the icy current had touched his skin, all the muscles in his body seemed to lock up, and his quick dash turned into a painful march. "Shit!" he gasped, wheeling back for a moment before stealing himself, and ducking quickly under the water.

A moment later, he'd resurfaced, and was already scrabbling back onto dry land. His whole body was shaking, his muscles clenched almost painfully against the assult of cold on his skin. Even out of the water, he couldn't seem to shake hard enough to rid himself of the water's chill. He kept at it until he began to burn with returned warmth, trotting in circles and stopping to shake intermittently.

Only after this did he remember he'd smelled another wolf. Reluctantly, King peeked around, and winced when he caught sight of the other standing so near. It looked like she'd caught the show.

"Hey," he called out in greeting, his voice a bit weak.

She loses him when he lands in the water and she stumbles forward in a knee jerk reaction. He pops back up a second later and she hovers back on the taken step taken. Unsure of the response, her cheeks feel flush with overwhelm and she puffs her chest a little. He eventually steps back out of the water and shakes and shakes and shakes himself off until he looks like a giant, frizzy fluff ball of damp fur. A smile curves on the right side of her muzzle but she quickly suppresses that as she’s startled when he makes sudden eye contact with her.

Her ears fall back upon her head when he speaks and she offers a sheepish grin in return. “Hey,” she responds with a shy shake of her tail behind her. “Is it cold?”

"Hell yeah, it's cold!" he replied, the words slipping from his mouth before he had time to put more thought into them. He immediately felt silly for the outburst, but he was shaking from the ankles up - the girl could probably see with her own eyes just how cold the creek had been.

The male shook out his pelt one last time and made a concentrated effort to stop his body from shaking. Though the cold was slowly seeping out of him, he couldn't seem to get his muscles to stop twitching. The sensation made him feel light and almost giddy, but he tried to quash that, too.

"Why? Thinking about taking a swim?" he asked.

Adeline smirks when he responds jovially. His aloofness is warm and it pulls her closer, taking a few more steps to close the distance between them. In the process, she is sprinkled with water from his last shake out and she wrinkles her nose and dances back out of the splash zone. “No, no, I can’t swim,” she answers when it’s safe to settle her attention without getting wet again. “I mean, like… it’s physically impossible. I can’t get wet. I just end up walking on the surface,” she tells him rather nonchalant, aside from the playful quirk of her brown and flick of her ears.

Though he tried to seem nonchalant, a flicker of ears betrayed his attentiveness, and when she spoke of her inability to swim, his opened his big mouth to respond, the beginnings of what was surely some half-cocked advice already unfurling on his tongue.

But she went on, and King let his jaws click shut, his ears falling back in shy embarrassment. She's teasing me, he realized. "My uncle Searshaw had that same problem," he said instead, speaking with the same gravity of the strange, ruddy girl. "Only, he didn't levitate. The water just went around him. Got to be where we'd all huddle next to him when it rained, so that we didn't catch a cold."

The moment between the words falling out of her mouth and him speaking weigh heavily and she feels her heart beating faster, worried her joke may not have quite reached his ears. Instead, he counters and continues along with it. She allows her tail to shake a few times and smile, taking a step forward once it’s been cleared she won’t get wet again. She can’t allow herself to get wet now, trying on the façade as he makes it easier to be around him. “That’s a good place to be,” she comments with a lift of her brow, though it’d easily get crowded rather quickly. She smiles anyway, ears cupped forward in rapt attention.

He gave a cheery nod, settling into this game they were playing. "That's how I got over here, actually. I had to cross the ocean, but it was no big thing. I just walked behind Uncle Searshaw, and he got me here just like that." He paused to lick at some of the water that was still dripping from his chest, and was gratified to find that it tasted clean and fresh. Perhaps he could go a few more months before his next bath.

"It's a shame I didn't inherit it from him," he went on with a sigh. "But then, I guess I'd have to find another way to get clean. And I reckon he must get awful thirsty, sometimes."

Adeline’s smile widens as he continues the story, her tail waving back and forth as encouragement. For a little while, she’s able to set aside the anxiety looming over her. Her heart is a little lighter now and she’s slowly able to relax. “That must have been some journey,” she muses with a tilt of her nose upward, as if imagining the scenario for herself.

“Well, I’m sure you have some kind of super power,” she adds offhand as she moves a little closer, circling around to approach the bank of the lake. She does not yet dip her head to drink, waiting to see if there’s anything he thinks is particularly good at.

King wagged his tail at the thought. It would be cool to have a superpower. His cousins to the south had their noses, and although Uncle Searshaw had never show signs of supernatural water-resistance, everyone knew that he'd swum through that lake in winter and hadn't suffered even a cold for his efforts. King certainly couldn't do that.

"Maybe!" he agreed, glancing around as if said superpower might suddenly reveal itself to him, nevermind that they were only telling stories. The male seemed to remember himself and shot the stranger a sheepish look. "I guess I'll have to look into that," he decided. And then, realizing he still didn't know the girl's name - "I didn't catch your name. Mine's King, of Elkbone-by-the-Mountain."

[b“We’ll have to find it,”[/b] she says as he continues on to introduce himself. Her jaw opens to respond rather quickly but she snaps them shut for a moment longer. Her ears fall back against her head as she realizes she’s never before had trouble with this. Even when she’d been nervous, or scared, she knew her name, but, somehow, “Adeline” feels just as foreign as any other word in its place. Still, it rolls off her tongue as if it should be there and deep down she knows it doesn’t. A fight for another day, she decides, and offers a reassuring smile to hide the sudden bout of anxiety. “It is nice to meet you, King,” she says after a moment and dramatically bows to the meaning behind the name.

His ears flickered uncertainly when he picked up a sudden change in her mood. His ears fell back against his head, and he took a quick half-step backward even as his tail began to wag.

"Well, I better be on my way," he said, his voice still friendly, but edged with discomfort, now. He realized that he was talking to a girl - not his sister or his mother, but a real, actual girl. Suddenly, everything he'd said to her seemed foolish, and the male wished he'd come up with something better to impress her with.

But they were past that, now, and all he wanted to do was get away, and maybe think of some cool things to say to her if they ever met again. "It was nice to meet you, Adeline," he added, and his voice was sincere, but he was already walking away.