Northstar Vale you and me and the devil makes three

Dated for the evening of February 4, 2017.

Nothing mattered but the wild churn of her blood as it coursed, hot and heady, through her veins.

Lotte emerged from the hot springs and broke east, her matte fur damp and smelling so potently of sulfur that even she had to wrinkle her nose at it. Weirdly enough, it was almost a relief to smell something other than smoke and ash — but when she was presented with an oasis of evergreens, she wasted no time in weaving herself between them until the last of the rotten egg scent had been scrubbed away. It seemed only the strongest of smells broke through her desensitized state: she couldn’t really appreciate the scent of the trees themselves; she simply guessed when the terrible eye-watering smell dissipated that she’d achieved her goal. She felt a strange pull toward the unfamiliar vale, and whether that was because of some subconscious connection to Dagfinn or an unfulfilled desire to explore and climb mountains, she couldn’t rightly say.

Frozen carcasses dotted the unclaimed territory, untouched, but it was evident to the aspiring scout that a pack had lived here once. In her travels she’d discovered several things: Silvertip Mountain — Day’s mountain — had been similarly vacated. There was a pack located about a day’s travel away from Teaghlaigh that, though it did not appear to pose a threat, boasted stronger numbers and a generous handful of young wolves. These were things she would be sure to mention to Arturo upon her return —

— oh! —

The mere thought of her suitor brought to mind their tryst in the weald south of Donnelaith, and she turned her head distractedly west as a pining whine tangled in her throat. Breathing a little easier after her impromptu nebulization treatment, the nightingale turned indecisively in a circle. The need that drummed restlessly through her blood was maddening, but the moon had already risen and it wasn’t likely she’d get home before morning. The sweet ambrosia that unwittingly spiced the air around her drifted southwest on a wandering wind as she turned her attention to a nearby carcass and set about satisfying her hunger. That was what she wanted — had to be. She tore into the partially frozen flesh with more ferocity than was required, spoiling for a fight and not altogether sure what for. You are clean and fed; you can walk; you can breathe; you are alive, she reminded herself tartly — and wondered why there was still such a lingering sense of dissatisfaction — of emptiness. Her thoughts wandered again to Arturo, and she rumbled discontentedly.

She was drawn to the night, to the darkness outside the Lair. With her growing size she enjoyed sneaking away from Mother and exploring the lands outside of her domain. The winter's crisp air filled her lungs as she successfully broke from Ryūjin's borders, feeling Zennyo ebb away slightly and something darker take over. The girl yipped with excitement as she ran through the moon-kissed snow fields of the mountains, her hardened pads overtaking the hard stone of the Sunspire with ease.

She did not know where this lust for the night came from. It seemed natural for her to move through the night, her inky, crow-like pelt blending into the shadows as she darted, stalking the immobile carcass she spots in the distance through the snow. Soshite ryū ga tobihaneru! She hissed to herself as she pounced into it, fangs tearing into flesh, beginning to drip with stale blood as she smiled. She didn't mind the taste. Soshite kanojo wa ōkami no senaka o kowasu! Shikashi, kare wa mada ikite iru She tosses it as best she can into the air, her indigo eyes following it intensely. The girl waited until it fell, where her paws slammed it farther into the layers of snow. She giggled gleefully.

Kanojo wa futatabi tobihaneru! Kare wa kono himatsubushi de kowasu! She imitates the noise of the wolf she is killing, remembering what she heard from her step-father's dead. The noise is gargling and pathetic, and she pretend stumbles to further invest herself in the moment. Kare! Wa! Shinde! Iru! She rears back on her hind legs, sending her forelimbs into the carcass' side, punctuating each word with a push. The body is too solid to break apart at her touch, but she tries nonetheless.

Airi is only paused by a strange smell. It is wolfish, but it is not blood. The girl's nose wriggles as she tries to interpret it. It smells feminine. Extremely so. Airi's frustration eventually leads her to investigate the sound herself. 

She is led to a woman, dark furred but not as dark as her. She is tearing open a carcass, more with a strange rage than with any kind of hunger. Airi barks to the woman, confused. What's wrong with you? You smell weird.

The child’s faraway cries were easily ignored by the soot-stockinged songbird; after all, Lotte was making a fair amount of noise herself. Fiercely protective of her meal — and put on edge by the hot rush of her blood — she whirled instinctively and dropped fluidly into a warrior’s waiting crouch, her moonbright eyes hard and piercing. Her lips peeled back from her fangs, hackles spiking along her spine and shoulders, but the warning snarl withered in her throat as she regarded the girl. Although she remained wary, she could afford to be magnanimous — she did smell weird, but the full implications of the darkling’s statement were presently beyond her understanding and her notice. “I was caught in a fire and got sick from the smoke,” she explained simply. “The treatment has a strange odor.” Stepping back from the carcass, she nodded toward it. “Are you hungry?” she asked, prepared to let the child feed if she wished.

Airi did not know what fire smelled like, having been fortunate enough to never been around the destructive material, nor did she know what its treatment would smell of. She didn't know what to believe from the woman, having always been skeptical of what adults said. They usually had a tendency to hide the truth from her, as if she couldn't handle it. And Airi got the same feeling from this woman, this stranger who smelled of salt and sand under the strange smell. She pouted, her eyes narrowing skeptically.

That's a really stupid idea, She spat, her dark indigo eyes telling the stranger condescending. I could smell you far, far away; why would you be walking around with that strong a smell? Are you trying to be found?

Lotte endured the child’s blistering condescension without batting an eyelash, the shrug of her athletic shoulders stating quite plainly, “Well, I’m hungry,” as she gnawed a hefty chunk from the frozen carcass. Turning to face the girl, she ground the tough meat between her back molars, thoroughly enjoying the subtle crunch of ice that accompanied every bite. “I am not afraid; I have no reason to hide,” she pointed out mildly, a playful smile tipping up the corners of her mouth, “and I would rather be alive and smelling of rotting fish than be dead and smelling of roses and mint.” Her coal-colored tail thumped the ground enthusiastically as she regarded the girl, the fire in her blood cooled to a faint simmer.

The singed songbird wondered briefly whether she had been so caustically outspoken as a child. It was a trait she instinctively wanted to encourage — because honesty was important in many circles — and mitigate — because Lotte, like Arturo, valued diplomacy. This girl, though, was not her child and therefore not her responsibility. “Are you far from home, pikku kipinä?” she asked gently instead.

She watched as the woman ate, feeling no physical hunger in her stomach. The woman's grinding of her teeth and crunching of bones did little to make the girl any hungry. She didn't fancy breaking her still young and still weak teeth just to get some meat, especially if her body didn't even want it. 

Her eyebrows raised at the woman's bold announcement. She thought the rest of them — all the wolves that were not her — despised being noticed by others. She only found such confidence within herself, and as such, she saw the woman's boldness as merely a bluff. She merely snorted. I think I'd like living and smelling of roses and mint over being dead and smelling of rotting fish, on top of my own rotting corpse smell?

The woman asked if she was far from home, to which Airi giggled. Aren't you? She asked the woman, leaping so her paws were on the corpse, pulling her body higher to meet the woman's eyes. You smell like fish and salt; no one on the mountains smells like that, Her voice was teasing but accusing now, wondering where exactly she was from.

Lotte chuckled warmly at the girl’s swift rejoinder. “That would be ideal,” she agreed, her tail continuing to sweep the frosty loam at her back. Her small, bearlike ears pressed attentively forward upon her skull, argent eyes crinkling mirthfully at the outer corners. “You are a perceptive wolf,” she praised. “I hail from a sequoia forest near the coast.” She glanced toward the mountain ranges in the distance. “Do you live on a mountain, then? I have always wanted to climb one.” She tore away another strip of meat, gnawing pleasurably at it before asking, “Is there something you wish to do, pikku peloton?”

Airi beams at the praise from the woman, even thought she was a stranger. It was more than she got at home anyway. The girl smirks, before her gaze became quizzical at an unfamiliar word. What's a sequoia? She asks. The woman says forest, which led her to believe it was a kind of tree, but she had never heard of that species before.

I live in one, I guess, She says, not sure how to describe the lair to someone who has never seen it before. It's a cave, but there's greenery inside. Truly a sight to behold, which made the girl all the more possessive over it.

The woman asks what she would like to do next, but before Airi can ask, another diminutive slips from her mouth. Auto frowns, again confused by this woman. What do you keep calling me?

Ravenous, Lotte continued eating, though her attention remained raptly upon the fiery little girl. “A sequoia is a tree — the biggest kind of tree I have ever seen — with fox red bark,” she exulted. “I grew up in the northern tundra — a very flat place where there was always an abundance of snow and little of anything else. I did not see my first tree until I was older than you!” She chuckled, remembering how enraptured she and Dagfinn had been. Naturally, the first thing her kaksonen had done was pee all over the trunk before she could. She’d made him pay for his insolence, though.

It was Lotte’s turn to look confused. “I have never heard of a wolf living inside a mountain,” she admitted, “but I know little of mountains. My daughter is keen to learn to climb them.”

The singed songbird grinned a little sheepishly at the girl’s closing query, having heard it more than once from the wolves she met. “My glib tongue runs away from me,” she murmured. “It is the language of my home. I called you ‘little spark’ and then ‘little fearless’. In this common tongue it sounds clumsy, but I meant no offense by it. It is a habit.” Her ears flattened in deference as she said, “I can try to stop it if it troubles you…” Her voice trailed off as she playfully caught the tip of her tongue between her incisors, as though demonstrating her willingness to do just that.

The woman continued to eat in front of her, but Airi paid the ravenous noises no mind as she absorbed the new information. Her eyebrows raised in confusion, wondering at just how big these trees were. She mentioned something about her life, but Airi ignored it. You just said they were big. How big are they, She reiterated her question, hoping she would actually listen now and explain it to her fully. 

She had a daughter apparently, but again, Airi paid the information no mind. Mountain climbing isn't all it's cracked up to be, She sniffed, thinking about how boring their lives must have been before. No trees? No mountains? Did such a place even exist?

The woman explained the strange words, and instead of insulting the young girl, she was proud of it. Airi smiled at the translations. No. I like it, She now encouraged the foreigner to use the words as much as possible. Mama had never called her anything like that before.

Lotte considered how to correctly answer the girl’s pointed query. “They seem to vary due to age and specie,” she intoned, “but the biggest I have seen stretched so high I could not see the tops of them clearly, and the trunk of one of them was several wolf lengths long! When you stand in the middle of a grove of them and tilt your head back, all the points seem to grow together — ai, it is enough to make you dizzy!” She chuckled at the young girl’s dismissive opinion of mountains and was rewarded with a smile. “Well, pikku kipinä, little spark, maybe that is so for you — but for my tytär it is all very new and exciting. I have seen some wolves go into a frenzy over snow, and even having lived my life surrounded by it, I share in that joy. What I do not understand is fear of the unknown. It is good that she and you have curiosity instead.” She smiled blithely at the spirited child.

“The world is so wide,” mused the singed songbird. “I think even if a wolf walked without sleeping or stopping her whole life, she would never see enough or learn enough. So many songs have found me since my arrival in these wilds — does your family share songs and stories, too?”

She blinked with surprise at the description. She knew wolves could be wild tale tellers, but this took the cake. Airi knew that she had to see the trees for herself to see if the story this strange-smelling foreigner was telling was true. Trees tall enough to make you dizzy from just looking up? What a sight they must be.

A childish giggle exited her mouth at the thought of wolves being excited over snow. It was such a prevalent part of her life that she never took the time to consider that there were other places that never saw snow. Such a thought was foreign to her. Were they like puppies then? She giggled at the thought of adults playing like children. 

The subject of stories sombered her, no, annoyed her. The stories told by her pack were largely uninteresting or downright pathetic compared to the tales this wolf spun. Nothing cool, She said, sudden ashamed that her own pack was so miniscule in imagination compared to this singular woman.

Lotte was quite taken by the bright-eyed spitfire in spite of — or perhaps because of — her ardent questioning. “Giant puppies,” she affirmed with a mischievous sparkle in her argent eyes. “They rolled onto their backs and chased one another, leaping and diving like a blitz of bluefish in the sea.” She made this reference somewhat ignorantly, for she still hadn’t actually seen a bluefish, but Rouge had warned her that they were dangerous — and in tale-telling, dangerous often meant thrilling and impressive, so she went with the simile. “Some wolves tried to eat it, but the cold was such a shock that their eyes rolled up and their teeth chattered like this.” She tipped her head back and mimed the symptom in question. “Adults can be quite silly — I can be quite silly, as you have seen.” She winked.

When Airi’s laughing face fell into somber, even irritated lines, Lotte’s brow furrowed in concern. Had she said something wrong? She was both relieved and sorrowful that the problem was not with something she’d said but something far less fixable: a distinct lack of excitement regarding her own family’s repertoire of stories and songs. Lotte couldn’t ever remember feeling discontented about her family in any capacity, and she vowed to fill Chusi’s life and the lives of her future children with Arturo with as much laughter and lore as she could stuff in. She fretted inwardly at her great distance from Dagfinn but kept her attention trained wholly on the young girl. “I could give you a story in a song,” she said, wanting to please her, “if you want one, pikku peloton. I will give it to you and show you how to change things as you see fit. That way you can have a new story whenever you like. My idea of a good story might be different from your idea, so you can do as you like with the bones of this one.”

Thank you for the thread.

Apologies for any unwanted assumptions.

Before the cub had time to respond, the songbird launched into her tale. “For a good story, pikku kipinä,” she began, “you need a hero, a foe, and a journey.” She made examples of a few of these. There was Grayday the Skyslayer, a mottled gray wolf who had singlehandedly used his cunning and his brawn to conquer a winding spire upon which giant ravens roosted, each of them taller than three wolves standing atop each other’s shoulders. There was Dagfinn the Adventurous and the demon bull who had chased him for five days and five nights — she’d embellished it since sharing it with Birk, because Dagfinn could have done it. She was sure of it. And she wasn’t lying if she was sure it was true, right? There were Deirdre and Emaleth — sisters as unlike one another as they could be, but two sides of the same coin — who had risen above the Donnelaith fire in the form of smoke and water, creating a deluge that washed the sequoias clean and renewed.

Lastly, Lotte created a story just for the girl before her, inviting her to fill in details as she saw fit. She asked the girl’s favorite time of day and used it, set the scene on a mountain, and told the story of a young wanderer with dark fur and bright eyes and a fiery temperament that belied her cool exterior. “If you do not like it,” she said when she’d finished, “you can choose your own monster, change the time of day, change the place you find yourself in.” She smiled invitingly. “It is your own story, and you have all the control, pikku peloton.” The restlessness came for her again then, and she rose. “I am for home, young hero,” she said, almost exactly as she’d said to the frostbitten wolf near the hot springs. “I wish you well. Should you have need of aid — outside of those you already know — you may look to the northern coast.”