Noctisardor Bypass my throat is a beehive pitched in the river

Even with the beginning of spring, the weather still cool, it doesn’t match the burly winters Florence is used to. With the added bonus of the sea nearby, a constant wind ripping from the ocean, the mild weather of the teekon is far from comfortable. Her tongue hands from the side of her mouth as she moves and periodically she stops to try and cool down. Her coat had yet to fully shed for spring, generations building it up for harsh conditions.

The waft of fresh water catches her attention with a gust, ruffling her fur. Florence stands on tired paws, taking a moment to feel the breeze whisper through her coat. 

Florence shakes and stumbles a few steps forward, the water materializing in the distance that gives her a new, sudden burst of energy. Something between a skip and a gallop, the white girl rushes forward until her feet slide in the mud and she’s nearly up to her elbows in cool water. Her head drops, tongue lapping water before she eventually settles herself down into chilly mud.

@Harlyn.

She had dreamed of him last night. He was standing in a clearing, just as tall and strong and handsome as he'd been the last time she saw him. Harlyn had gone to him with joy in her heart - joy that turned to dread as he faced her and his eyes gleamed yellow and slit like a cat's. The clearing in the forest changed then to that clearing in the meadow where she'd left Ilya, and Luke disappeared entirely - replaced by the demon cougar that had stolen his light. The cat leaped, and Harlyn awoke gasping and panting before dawn.

She needed to find him. Harlyn was absolutely certain that's what her dream had meant; she had to find Luke and bring him home.

She had left early with hardly an explanation to Mordecai who was growing more distant by the day, but that was of lesser consequence to the Druid now than her God-given mission. She kept on as the landscape changed around her and all of it lacking any sign of her friend. She was tired from her troubled sleep, and her stomach rumbled its discontent at having not been fed in a couple of days, but she ignored all the complaints of her physical form. Her soul was in charge, and the spirits that guided her.

Luck seemed not to be on her side that day, but when she came upon the river, Harlyn felt certain her luck had changed. If there was anywhere Luke was likely to be found, it was near water. She quickened her pace to jog as she ran along the river's edge, her eyes scanning the terrain while her heart held tight to the hope that he was only a little further, just a little further, just past this  bend, or the next, or the next...

"Luke!" Harlyn called out when finally her faith was rewarded with the sight of his snowy white frame bent low over the water. Her heart burst with excitement and joy as she sped up, sprinting over the last few yards before she reached him and swept herself up into his embrace, crooning into his chest as she pressed against him. "Finally, finally..."

The water soaks through the layers of her thick coat, logging her fur and making her feel heavier as she stands. Still elbow-deep, she takes a few more laps of water. In short waves, the water wipes out against her legs and cool bite to her limbs is enough to remind her of home. Backing out of the water and shaking it off is an easy fix, compared to being surrounded for miles with snow. 

Florence barely looks up when there’s a shout, quickly overwhelmed with a swift force moving across her chest. She struggles to keep her footing, hooking her nose around the strange wolf’s neck. The affection is strangely welcoming and her light-colored eyes close, swimming in the new smell beneath her nose. Something sweet and new and Florence isn’t entirely sure how to describe but it keeps her close.

She gives the warm embrace a moment before she finally snakes back, slipping from the strange woman’s grasp. It gives her a chance to search her features, trying to find anything familiar about her when her nose had failed to flag any recognition. Florence swallows the lump, heavy in her throat at the sudden shame that warms her cheeks. Her head drops low with a weak attempt at hiding her misplaced guilt.

For one blissful moment, Harlyn was full to burst with happiness. She breathed in deeply, her nostrils tickled with white fur. She had missed this fur, had missed this scent. In that moment, she felt certain tha t she would do whatever she had to in order to bring him home, to keep him with her. Somehow it would work. Somehow they'd find a way.

Harlyn felt him pulling away and the movement made her ache physically. She lifted her gaze to his, hurt and confused, until the moment when she finally realized something was wrong with what her senses had been trying to tell her from the beginning. The eyes were too blue, the muzzle too slender. The frame blanketed in porcelain was too small, too willowy and soft. And the nose that sat upon the too feminine face was like a lump of coal upon a snowman and not a blueberry seated in cream.

"Oh my goodness..." Harlyn gasped as her nose gave her the final truth: this wasn't Luke, "I'm.. I'm so sorry, I thought you were someone else. Oh my... I can't believe I did that. I'm so, so sorry." The Druid shook her head as heat flooded her cheeks. What was wrong with her?

awkward florence is... awkward?

It takes a moment for the woman to realize the mistake, hoarding all the blame even though she’d let the embrace go on a little longer than she should. Florence shakes her head, trying to ward away the words being spoken too fast. Even if embarrassment takes place on her features, she can’t help but to see something else there. Disappointment, maybe, or the absence of the hope she’d noted before she’d been crashed into.

“I could—” Florence fights the new lump forming in her throat. The idea flew to her lips well before she’d been able to process it and she only strains a smile to lighten up the situation. As if she could brush it off as no big deal and shed the embarrassment she figured they both felt: “I could pretend, if you wanted?”

The suggestion confuses the girl and why it graced the tip of her tongue, why she offered to be someone else for a stranger. A joke? Her brows knit together before she shakes her head, an awkward chuckle trying to break the new apprehension Florence puts between them.

The woman seemed uncomfortable and nervous, and Harlyn couldn't blame her. Some complete stranger running up to you hugging you and crying into your fur? Who wouldn't be freaked out. The Druid wanted to run for the hills and away from this humiliating situation, but before she could so much as turn away, she heard the girl's voice breaking the awkward silence that had stretched between them.

Harlyn canted her head slightly, wondering at the woman's words. She could pretend? There was some sincerity in the offer that threw her but only momentarily. She was jesting, lightening the mood, and Harlyn gave a thankful laugh at the humor.

"You're very kind," the alpha replied with a smile, "I'm still sorry for startling you. You look so like a friend of mine that I've been searching for. I got carried away, thinking I'd found him." She sighed with a shake of her head.

Sorry for the delay. :/

The woman responds and offers a smile but Florence doesn’t seem much effort behind it. Disappointment. Her jaws tighten and her head dips, frowning even with the compliment. She shakes her head, trying to ward off the apology, and for some reason she can’t figure out why she feels the sting that she couldn’t be whoever the woman thought she was. The sadness in her features draw her and she shifts her weight awkwardly, pawing at the ground absently.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” she offers and tries to smile but only half her muscles work and she smoothes out her expression quickly to hide the attempt. “I’m Florence, by the way,” she finally introduces. Maybe the woman doesn’t want to know since she’s not who she thought she was but she gives the information away anyway.

Harlyn's smile faltered very briefly when the woman expressed her sympathy for the missing Luke. It was hard sometimes to feel hopeful that she would locate him. She couldn't even remember how long it had been since he'd left. And though she was still quite certain that all it would take to bring him back was to find him and let him know that all was okay and forgiven, that she wanted him to come back home, and he'd be there. She just needed to find him and tell him she loved him, and that she needed him to be home with her again.

The woman's voice broke her out of her reverie. She canted her head and the sincerity returned to her smile. "Florence," Harlyn replied thoughtfully, "What a beautiful name." The alpha paused then to actually look at the girl before her. Instead of looking at her as the wolf who was not Luke, she began to appreciate the wolf who was Florence instead. She was rather quite as beautiful as her name.  "I'm Harlyn Ostrega," she said, her gaze lingering a bit obviously on her pale features, "Alpha of Lost Creek Hollow."

"What brings you to these parts, Florence?" the druid asked with a cant of her head, truly interested.

The conversation moved easily and freely from there, and for a time, Harlyn was comforted by this stranger who looked so like the one she longed for but was not. She left the woman's side with peace in her heart that would drift to longing from time to time. It would pass to mere fond memory, but always the druid would keep an eye out for the next pale beauty without such a narrow-minded hope that it would be only one, knowing that the other would be just as welcome a sight.