Blackfeather Woods ghosts

Hello! So, obviously WF can't legitimately join packs, but I got permission from Sofie to have Zaaba, here, come and try to join. She is not trespassing, and is outside the borders. I'm down for whatever, including being turned away, but having her be accepted would be far more interesting, I think. @Rowan

Many would call Zaaba insane for what she was about to do, but many had already called her insane for various reasons, and all who had done so in the past were long gone now. Yet, still, their calls haunted her, demanding to know why a coyote would throw herself to the wolves—literally. Don’t leave the desert, they cried, their voices echoing in her mind. You are safe here. What are you? Insane?

Yes. Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Bravery was often confused with stupidity, or the other way around. Probably, she was both. It did not matter now. The only way she knew to stop the ghosts of her past was to prove them wrong. She, a coyote, would be accepted into the fold of a wolf pack—or she would be torn to shreds trying. She steeled herself at the border of this forest and released a yipping, yapping coyote howl, fierce and wild. Come to meet me, if you dare.

She would find no authority figure in the cur who answered her call -- and perhaps she would be disappointed in this, that Imaq could not grant the access she desired -- but the buttered merle simply could not help herself. It was not so often that the Angakkoq got an opportunity to meet one so different, one that was at all like herself.  The curious yowls of the woman's harsh cry drew the wolfdog from the Woods with an investigative gleam in her tropical gaze.

"Hello," the shaman lilted in a foreign, heavy rasp as she trotted up to the borders and stopped in front of the coyote -- who was surprisingly even smaller than the tiny halfbreed. "Home?" she asked, not as an offer but as a means of clarification, her gilded crown tilting aside curiously. "Speak, Rowan?" 

The piebald allowed a kindly smile to unfurl upon her soft features, a gesture of welcome -- knowing that her friend desired the protection of all those who needed it in his forest. She was sure the canid was nervous enough, given how some wolves felt about other subspecies -- as Imaq had experienced herself far too many times.

Zaaba curiously watched the creature who approached her. She had seen dogs before in her ventures to human cities, but never had she seen a dog out in the wilderness. Well. Perhaps this was fortuitous. If the ranks of this pack were accepting of dogs, then surely they’d let a coyote in, no?

Hello, said the dog.

“Hello,” Zaaba replied, her tail set to a friendly wag.

Home? the dog asked. Speak, Rowan?

Zaaba tilted her head, trying to understand. “Zaaba does not know a Rowan,” she told the dog. “As for home, she is hoping that this will become so. Tell Zaaba, do you think she would be let in? After all, they let you in, yes? Are the wolves here… kind?”

Imaq's golden diadem canted aside, the string of sentences too much, too complex for her comprehension -- even with Rowan helping teach her the common tongue in his free time. She manages to catch a few select snippets: something about homes, and not knowing Rowan, kindness, and Imaq herself. 

"Rowan, good. Nice," the shaman answers wholeheartedly, quick to reassure the coyote on the nature of her friend. "Ehm...Taikon. Not," the wolfdog did her best to warn the smaller canid, a hint of concern in her tropical gaze. If Taikon reacted so negatively to the sight of a wolfdog in their ranks, what would he think if Rowan took in a creature who had no wolf's blood whatsoever?

"Imaq call Rowan?" she asked, wondering if her response might determine the brave coyote from attempting to join Ivory Rose's ranks -- assuming that was what she was here for.