Raven's Watch Souärr

She crouches, listening to a fresh access of wind caught against the snow embankments, inhaling crystalline flakes and blowing free warm breath. With belly full and Faust keeping watch for black bears over their kill, it had been the first night she had some restful hours of sleep. Now her mouth thirsts and the pleasant trickle of snowmelt lures the huntress to the shimmering edge of a cornflower lake.
Ayovi regards the watershed for long moments. Her paws tense, remembering another self who would have basked freely in these cool waters. That version of her was buried with the Ashēer. Now she was wisened. She knew fear, and how all the world was an enemy to the lone wolf. The tensing of claws is only reflexive.
It is the squabbling of ravens which betray her senses, drawing her out along the banks before taking heed of what stranger lurks near.

she has not left to find the duck lake.

yet she had left the safety of the vale. left behind the promise of protection and a belly full. all in hopes of what? she did not know.

here is another lake. home to other birds. ravens. her gut rolls with a grand protest within her — and she is unsure if it comes from emotion or hunger. yet her throat is scorched by stomach acid all the same and her eyes are sunken again. a thin giantess come to pluck at meager things.

only someone else is here.

someone pale and befitting this place better.

there will always be someone who fits better than her. maybe that's what made it so easy to always leave things behind.

she licked her lips and chuffed lowly.

ty for joining <3

A voice. A gentle, deep call. She raises her head in skittery acknowledgment to see a long, dark figure part the snow. Her ears flatten– were all mountain wolves similarly favored? Not every giant was Wide Fang, but her eyes flick to the long, powerful legs then up into the face presenting a void and sets a healthy measure of doubt upon this encounter.
Still, the greeting is mild enough, and in an effort to avoid impudence Ayovi tries to raise her tail in wave– though she is too tense for such a casual gesture, and it makes her look briefly tremulous.
So in return she loosens her own croon; a quiet, dulcet address and cautiously lifts her nose to pull wolf-scent from the air.

her heart does something within her chest.

enough that she can almost feel the pulse beneath her own skin. it caused her mind to skitter and frazzle within itself. no words, she thought to herself. she would like to keep it that way. for herself more than anyone else.

her own sniffling is noisy and searching.

tentatively she took a step, two, closer. no more. she did not mean to push her welcome.

She might have taken the mountaineer as a transient voyager in the cut of a narrow frame if not for the traces of pack that spice the air. It aggregates the tension in her stance which shrinks into ritualized submission as those long steps draw closer.
But this wolf waits, holding themself with something which resembles understanding. It emboldens the passerine who in turn chances a single forward step while her nose works to identify– the woman.
Still she stands a healthy distance away, but with a tail swaying, the gentle presence having awakened a thrilling tone.