Duck Lake dirty little secret

For @Taylor.

 

It had taken the little sprite quite the time to navigate around the disgusting and smelly marshes and wetlands as she moved southward along the chain of mountains. Her nose had been wrinkled up all the while and finally, as sunset came she was pleasantly gifted by a much better view - the Lake. A picturesque place, filled with newly blossoming wildflowers, cover of old and wise aspen and of course the vast, crystal blue waters before her. 

After a heavy breath, she smiles. Finally a place worth resting those tired, old (though no one could tell it) bones for the night. Alight and a beautifully brilliant sky of pink, yellow and gold, reflecting off the waters as she neared it for a drink. Pulling away and licking her dainty muzzle, she peers at her reflection. Oh no! She gasps. Though still favorably young looking, she worn and tired looking, her coating dirty and matted from her extensive travels. This just wouldnt do! And so she began to move into the cool waters for a bath.

Ever since joining Ursus, Taylor had gotten himself into the habit of collecting scars.
These were different, though— these scars he'd got from his own actions and his own volition. It felt good to not be powerless under a massive gloved hand and a microscope lens. It felt good to know that his brother wasn't there to test the newest experiment of the day on him.
He's still sore and bruised from his last fight, but has cleaned himself up since then. Only his torn ear displayed any remnant of violence. Still, his ear maintained a dead radio silence. 
The sun was just setting when he came across the lake. He wasn't alone. He hangs back along the trees, unsure and shy. Spring was here, and the earliest ducks were scattered around the lakeshore, though they were beginning to edge away at the presence of two wolves.

She cooed, a shiver moving down her spine as the waters moved up along her sides and over her back. Creamy head remaining up out of the water as she kept to the shallows. Her toes splayed, she moved along the lake's bed slowly, watching as the ducks arced out of her reach and away. The water was cold though it was refreshing. 

After soaking herself she would turn around back towards the lakeside. She takes note then of the stranger watching her cautiously and yet curiously from the tree line. Hello there, pretty boy. She greets, moving to the edge of the lake and laid down where the water just barely lifted up her sides. Come to watch a woman bathe? She asks and goes on to groom and preen at her creamy white furs.

No, he answers, his voice metallic. I need a bath myself. The first step in the water is markedly more difficult than the second. He gasps despite himself as the coldness of it slips past his legs and to his chest, as it laps at his neck. The world turns dark and blurred as he dunks his head under the water. When he comes back up, the drops pull at his eyelashes and he blinks them away.
Taylor looks terribly skinny and much more boyish with all the hair slicked back. The last remnants of the poultice and dried blood are finally off of him and so is the grime between his toes, stuck in the fold of his neck. Here for business? Or just passing by?
He licks his lips, assumes the proper inquisitive tilt of his head. Water drips out of his ears, runs in rivulets down his shoulders, wondering blearily if he had needed a bath at all, or if it was Evien's emphasis on hygiene that was rubbing off on him.

No. He spoke, his words flat and seemingly uncaring. She keeps her face from wrinkling up at it and watches only as the man comes nearer to slip past and into the waters. She turns as she lays on the lake bed, arcing her head to watch him clean off the mud, blood and grime. Now, that was better. 

Her eyes roam his thin, still growing form of a youth. Young, scrappy, blonde haired and blue eyed. She licks her maw as well. Business, here at this lake? She tilts her head ever slightly to match his own tilt, those bright blue eyes scanning the area before falling once more on the golden boy. Not at all. She rolls her shoulders, stretching out over the earth. I've only come to find a means of passing time. She had been drawn here, really, to these knew lands by the smell of spring and coming of new blood. But she simply couldnt reveal that. I imagine I'll pass by many places, for I've none to call my own. Unless he could help with that? Unless he had ways to help her pass the time?

She's either very old or very young— this discrepancy unsettles him. He pulls himself up out of the water too, shakes the water off of himself before approaching her. A sort of intense friendliness surrounds him, with nothing behind the eyes. Well, he remarks, a hand on his chin, would you like one?
He sizes her up out the corner of his gaze. She's small and pale, and she dances over the uncanny valley like it's nothing. She could very well be a student or a grown woman and Taylor can't put his finger on what evades him, whether its those bright blue eyes or the clear skin. More and more, Taylor sighs, It's hard to come by a home. But I can give you one. He never finishes his sentences.
Another hand comes to wipe his wet brow. It lingers over the mole on his cheek, before returning to his lap. With interactions between strangers and Taylor, it was inevitable that they found something odd about him. He wonders how long it would take for the woman to see it and toss him by the wayside as something inherently malfunctioning.

He lifts from the lake and shakes his pelt, moving out and onto the bedside of the lake as she did, allowing yet still the shallows trickle along her sides as she lay. He lifts a paw to his chin, a ponder. Oh? She first goes on with his first set of words. He had a home of his own, did he now? Well that made things a bit more difficult. It meant of he were to go missing others would come out of the woodwork looking for him. 

He acted almost taunting, teasing, dangling the idea of a home just out of the loner's reach. Yes, a home. Did she need one? No. Did she want one? No. But would having a safe place to hide when the villagers came with their fire and pitchforks be good for her? Yes. She just needed to know if those she shacked with were as damned as she was. 

You have a home for me, do you? She shifts in her placement next to him, rolling around onto her backside, soft belly revealing as she keeps her forelegs curled to her chest. Are there others there, young and beautiful as you? Were they as devious and devilish? As manipulative and malicious?

Young and beautiful and fucked up, he smiles. Her attention, rapt and charming, tickled at his confidence. It stretches and opens up. His smile is nothing but a baring of teeth. No connotation or denotation to it.
The symmetrical face, the bright features— simple biology tells him that she is beautiful. She slides into some golden ratio, snug and perfect, and the fur on her stomach is impossibly white. He thinks, vaguely, how soft it would be. Where do you come from? A single eyebrow arches neatly.
Then, laughing, self-deprecating, he adds, My name is Fields. It's bold of him. He had never been good with people, even himself. But Ursus, Evien, and now this stranger...he was getting used to the heat of the spotlight on the back of his neck. If his brother were to find him now, perhaps he wouldn't even be able to recognise him, this blooming version of himself. A poisonous flower was still a flower.

Her bright eyes widen to his words, grinning ear to ear. How splended! She gasps, flopping back over onto her belly, her tail swishing in the shallow waters. How lucky of her, to have come across both beauty and danger all in one and all so quickly, even. Though she could not possibly allow her guard to be down (especially when she met these others the golden boy mentioned) she could not help but hold a sense of excitement. Perhaps this land would be as plentiful as she hoped for! 

Ah... She coos to his question, back arching as she stares deep into those impressively blue eyes. Darker then her own, yet just as bright. Maybe he is fueled by the same stuff as she? Anywhere, everywhere... but no where in paticular. She was a gypsy woman, fluttering and fleeting here and there wherever and whenever was best suited for her and her desires. Fields... She breathes the name with a certain and obvious hunger. I'm Rosina. There isnt any lies for him when giving he name, not this time. He was devilish and handsome, with a certain peculiar theme about him. She figures she might catch this one better with a bit of honesty. They would be living mates now, wouldnt they be? 

She lifts up then, moving in closer to him. Impressively tall, perhaps even oddly so like a wolf upon golden stilts. To her, so slight and assuming delicate, he seems even more so as she looks up to him, batting those big eyes. You wouldn't mind me having a little taste of what's it store, would you? It isnt often she asks. Normally, she strikes without leaving one with much a thought. But she is testing the waters here with this 'honesty', isnt she? And why not a harmless sample if she were to be bound by his coven?

Every word she says, every motion she takes, comes from an enigma that Taylor cannot crack through. Perhaps this is why he learns forwards, a detective with a pencil notched in his ear and a notepad in hand, eager and hungry. He watches her hand flutter up to her collarbone like a white bird. Her eyes glint and bat. The languid back and forth of her tail in the water.
Her answer is just as opaque as the rest of her. In any other situation he would've been annoyed— but the porcelain dish of her face gleams in the light, and any frustration is quickly wiped away. Rosina. As she approaches, he realises just how small she is.
Something thrills up his spine. Yes, he replies, with a voice that is more breath than intonation. He raises his hand to just in front of that tasteful white face. Here you are, fräulein.

She does not understand the word in which he calls her, his tongue rolling and turning with a vocabulary foreign to her. The exotic growl of word perks her interest, as so noticed by the perking of her ears and she watches with utmost glee and seduction as he lifts his paw to her will and that 'yes' rings in her ear like an echo. 

With a smile, the innocence of it pulling away like a veil to leave a more sinister, hungry expression, she dies her muzzle down to lick at his wet paw. For a moment it were as though she meant to groom the hairs after having had his bath. However, a sharp and quick bite and short jerk at just above his ankle would tell otherwise. If he did not dismiss her, she would groom again, tasting, eye lids fluttering closed as she did so and she would pause, as though reading him somehow by the taste of his blood.