The Heartwood forget you, and you, and you

For @Simmik but AW. Looking for fast-paced responses only.

Fresh air was exactly what he needed—the copse was a territory he could admire if he was into that sort of thing, but there was something refreshing about exploring the lands nearby. Liberating. Freeing, when all of the drama was left behind.

He skirted around the mountain slopes—Wraen wished him to keep a distance from Moonspear, and while he was unfamiliar with their land and pack, he had asked no questions and simply followed orders… for now. The silver Sovereign was one who had garnered his trust and respect—a rarity for the agouti Ostrega.

So as he pressed past various landscapes—another notion came to mind, considering a discussion he had within the past few months of the Firebirds regal. Leading. A pack of his own.

The years he spent running from others when getting to close, only to be pushed away when he actually tried… The only thing worthwhile returning to Firebirds was Meerkat—and even then, with the drama that shrouded over them, how would that hinder her well-being should he even stay? She was to never know he was her father… or, a very potential candidate. Her Uncle was to hold that title alone.

No matter the distance he put between them for now, it did little to appease his ire at the situation. Towhee had lied to him. She had shut him out. And she had walked away. Anything he had thought of her was eradicated in that very moment. Their friendship destroyed.

Much like the forest he came upon. Ash and grey cloaked the lands, and the lean wolf gave a low whistle, studying the carnage before him. “What happened to you?” He murmured quietly, giving pause in his travel.

@Hydra had sent him out once again for a savory morsel. Not out of the ordinary by any means, but he knew her time was close. She stayed close to the whelping den she had chosen and carved from the earth and all else had mostly been left to him. He knew she would make her demands of @Lyra and @Alya both too; a short jaunt outside of Moonspear's claim would not burden or trouble them either way.

Rather than forage through their usual hunting grounds of the glen, he ventured further out. A means of wasting time as much as it was a hope to evade any trouble lurking in the deep wood—he had gone alone. It would have been easy to pull @Antares or @Osiris along with him, and he had very nearly had @Vega in tow until he had convinced her to try and tease names from her mother instead. Another mystery not yet unlocked; his dark wife wanted to keep her secrets this year.

But he soon found in the timber that he was not alone. Tangible scents lingered there, distant calls of wandering beasts that he did not discern yet. There was a flash of gold through the terrain to distract him instead, a cold bolt shot through him in an instant. Nyx? It was there, then gone, and he wondered if in all the calculated chaos of the world if stress had not worn a hole in his mind. It would have been like the universe to taunt him, if not haunt him at the very least.

He followed it, that glimmer.

Over an ashen rise he soon discovered it again and without thinking, he barked sharply.

tags are for ref

As the days passed since Matty's death, grief had slowly formed a strong urge to wander from the forest. She would always return home but something about the new surroundings and the distraction she got just from moving made everything easier to deal with somehow. She wasn't actually sure it was safe to wander this far given the warning @Mal had given her about the dangerous wolves that might be lurking, and she felt kind of guilty for going against her promise that she would stay close. But she just wanted to get away for a little bit, and she thought Mal would probably understand anyway. 

She paused for a moment as the terrain beneath her snowy paws abruptly changed—or it seemed abrupt because she had been so lost in her thoughts that the details around her blended into the background. Regardless, she was immediately curious and drawn farther into the strange forest. She made her way through the singed trees, pausing again when she caught the fresh scent of a stranger. Against her better judgement, she decided to follow the trail and see who might be on the other end. Tracking turned out to be fairly difficult here, though, and it took her while to separate the scent she wanted from the strange scents around her. 

A bark made her freeze again. It came from somewhere close by, and she moved forward again, intrigued and even more curious. She saw the golden stranger first and slowed her steps until she stopped a respectable distance away. That was when the instantly recognizable scent of Moonspear filled her nose. Simmik tensed and scanned the area until she saw the culprit. She was immediately suspicious. This one hadn't been at the borders the last time she was at the mountain, but there was no denying his scent tagged him as part of the pack. Despite the relatively peaceful nature of the meeting she and Mal had with Moonspear, she still did not trust any of them. She hadn't even been directly involved with any disagreement before, but what Mal had told her had been enough. She fixed both strangers with a shrewd gaze but said nothing, unsure what to do next.

His tail gave an idle flick—his eyes scouring the barren lands before him. New growth would come, he was sure—but in his many travels, he hadn’t seen such wreckage before. His brief pause only gave him a moment to consider, and soon the agouti wolf was slipping through the Heartwood, nose crinkling in mild distaste to the state.

Only when the breeze drifted past him with the scent of something more than stale ash did his gaze sharply glance around, catching view of something golden flashing through the trees.

Bristling, he wasn’t sure what the antics of the other were—but the Ostrega was anything but trusting. He was about to call out to the other when a sharp bark rang out, the potential that the stranger wasn't playing cat and mouse with Pippin now becoming more plausible. "Marco," he tested the waters, his voice lifting in the still woods.

Only then did he notice the white she-wolf that had slunk out from... where? Where really had she come from? He tensed, his muzzle lifting as his nose tested the air.

The figure in the distance turned, spoke, and at once he knew that the glimmer of a ghost he saw was not his sister. Disappointment should have struck him, but he found that an emptiness welled within instead; there was little comfort in the revelation to follow. The features of him to be her were all wrong, and the emergence of a stark white figure soon detracted from it. Against the ravaged land here, she was a beacon.

He loosened from his vantage point with a roll of his shoulders, his body moving into action to close in the distance minutely. With all that went on and perhaps would yet occur, he too had a certain standoffishness to him. Even here, Dirge could not guarantee the safety found in the familiarity of the woodland, and there was no telling in who was who and where their morals aligned.

The scent of evergreens tickled at his nose however, and at least he felt one of them could be trustworthy. But the other? His gaze shifted to and from the she-wolf to the gold wolf, but he offered a thin smile in good faith.

"Seen any grouse loitering this far out?"

Marco. Her fiery gaze slid first to the golden stranger, and she wondered if the two men maybe knew each other. Was Marco the other man's name? Why else would he say that? 

She remained tense and suspicious even as the Moonspear wolf offered a small smile. She stared at him, face expressionless, as he spoke. She didn't think she had ever heard of a grouse, let alone seen one. She shook her head. I haven't seen anything here except you two.

She shifted, looking from one stranger to the other a few times before deciding to push the interaction a little further. Simmik, she offered with a curt nod. From Neverwinter Forest. She paused and waited, wondering if they would offer their own names in return.

There was a lingering tension as the three strangers finally came to a meeting point. Pippin weighed his options, more keen on observing the size and musculature of the agouti wolf, rather than the ivory female. Still, there was something unsettling about the tall girl, and the Ostrega maintained a neutral stance, his muscles coiled should either of them choose to shift to unfriendly fire.

“You’re the only living things I’ve seen in here,” he rumbled, bright amber eyes drifting between them both, one ear flickering in recognition to the girl’s name and pack. Neverwinter Forest—not Nightwalkers. The other kept his identity to himself, and so, in good faith, the scout gave an errant smile. “Pippin, from Firebirds.”

Neverwinter and Firebirds—he was aware of both of them, granted the former was certainly a more familiar prospect than the latter. What he did know of them was not particularly positive from the mouth of Hydra, but he had aligned it with more pleasant memory; Ceara, Tegan, and their ilk. A more carefree time instead of being wrought with one trip hazard after another, but even then it was all embellishment on his part.

Neverwinter was... well, Neverwinter.

Either way, they were only parts of the whole; he retained his pleasantries.

"That's a pity," he hummed, "I had hoped they'd come to till up the worms." Disappointment is there and gone, and he readily seized opportunity nevertheless. "But I'm Dirge, from Moonspear. Care to join me in a hunt? The ash only stretches so far and I'm willing to share any spoils. Three of us would make for a better fare in delicacies if we're fortunate."

Hydra wouldn't turn down whatever he offered, he thought, and it would do them well to curry favor.

This was the first time she had heard of Firebirds; she stored the information to share with Mal at some point after she returned home. She offered Pippen a stiff nod and then moved her attention to the other stranger as he began to speak. Dirge from Moonspear. She wondered if Mal was familiar with him? Another piece of information she would store away for later. 

She silently considered his proposal for a few moments. If they managed to catch something, then this trip would provide her more than just some information to bring home. With the famine not very far behind them, she thought it was unwise to turn down the opportunity to add something more substantial to their caches. And he was right, with the three of them, they were more likely to be successful given they actually found something out here. She finally nodded once. There is a herd of deer that comes this way sometimes, Simmik pointed out. Unless you had something else in mind? She directed this at both men, her fiery gaze moving from one to the other.