The Bracken Woods one

open but attn @Lorcan

The day was bitterly cold, but its bite did not reach past her thick winter furs. Tikigâk lumbered through the tall trees, traveling in from the far North. For some time, the only thing within eyesight was the open horizon and the creatures that existed in it. If she were not of the mountains herself, she might have believed the world was entirely flat. 

The forest was quiet, the winds here a quiet whisper in comparison to the howling ones of the tundra. Tikigâk sniffed at the earth for evidence of any others nearby, and then her nose lifted to the air as she sought the scent of an abandoned meal to scavenge. An ear rotated backward as snow fell from the bough of a tree onto the earth, but when no other sound accompanied it that same ear swiveled forward once again. 

She caught a whiff of old meat, and followed her nose toward it. Her movements were slow, cautious—aware that she might not be the only hungry animal seeking an easy meal.

lorcan moves like drifting smoke—there, then not, silent but never unseen. the cold gnaws at the world, but not at him.

he is of it, shadow-wrought and winter-worn.

the scent draws him, but it is not the kill he finds. pale against dark, a figure moves slow, careful. hunger, caution—he knows both well.

he halts, golden eyes burning low. the cold does not touch him but it lingers all the same—in the breath that curls from his lips, in the hush of the silent wood. he does not speak.

only watches. a presence, a whisper in the trees.

It does not take long for her to come upon the carcass. She lingers in the shadows long enough to discern that it has been abandoned. Unmarked, unclaimed—hers, for now. 

Many had already discovered the long dead moose, but there was enough for her there. She does not abandon her caution, sniffing to inspect the food she had found. Unspoiled, and it carried no poisons. No trick, only a rare stroke of fortune. Nature was rarely so kind. 

She circles halfway around her find before she hunkered down to begin to tear into what would fuel her journey for days to come. If she sensed the silent beast that watched in the distance, she provided no direct indication of it. Her attentions were divided, half of it upon the wilderness surrounding her even as she gorged.

a wanderer, like him. she does not startle easily, does not lift her head at the prickle of his stare. this, he finds interesting. or—does she not notice him yet?

he cannot exactly tell. the man tilts his head, staring at her, observing, before he twitches to life. lorcan moves to step from gloom, upon paws that do not seek to disturb earth. the twitch of muscle under a onyx-brown hide ever so subtle, as he arcs in a wide bout of the woman.

she feasts like a madwoman. lorcan's eyes twitch between her and the carcassed moose.

The woods are no longer still. One shadow emerged, and her eyes snap to him and follow his movement. Tikigâk lifts her head from her discovered meal and licks her chops, removing gristle from her muzzle as her tongue rolls over it. She is not discreet as she baldly assesses him, noting the way in which he moved with some measure of interest, looking for indicators that he meant trouble. He was wise enough to keep some distance between them. She sniffed at the wind, detecting no other but for him among their kind here now. 

Were she not satiated, she might have warned him away from the meat. But she had eaten her fill. This land was not her own, nor did she want for it to be. 

What might seem like kindness to some was only practicality to Tikigâk. It was time to move on. And so she stepped away from the carcass she had voraciously dug into, wordlessly allowing him room as she now created some space between them. Tikigâk stepped toward older tracks of his, keeping her distance, to sniff at them.