Dawnlark Plains adulthood is hell

The plains is covered in a sheet of snow and the dawn is frigid. Lorcan had been sure to bulk up before he’d departed his natal pack: gaining weight that he knows he will shed during his time as a lone wolf. There is no definable time-table as to how long he will remain a lone wolf: the extra meat on his bones that took his build from natural mesomorph to endomorph will only last for so long. His footfalls are heavier, his tai-roan pelage thick, heavy and coarse to insulate during the glacial winter winds. The wind that breezed through the plains this morning was definitely glacial but it not truly surprising. He had passed around a glacier that had glowed like a beacon in the moonlight during the night.

Lorcan’s steps are heavy, the loose, compact snow crunching beneath his large paws. Stealth was once his forte but he’s forsaken it in the desire to keep himself alive …or at the very least give himself a fighting chance at surviving the winter with or without a pack. These Wilds are foreign to him: he knows nothing about their packs; for all he knows there are no packs. What he’s explored of the taiga so far has told him that it is uninhabited by packs but there is still much to explore yet. He draws his salmon tongue across his jowls and swipes it over his cold, leathery nose. He moves towards the heart of the plains, pausing as he steps down and sends a flock of quail begrudgingly to the sky though their flight is low and they swoop back down to the thick and tall grasses partially bowed by weight of the snow that blankets them.

Lorcan lowers to use the tall grasses to his own advantage, peering over them to see the tall grasses ahead shiver and hear the plop of snow as it falls to the earth. They are alerted to him now and he is like a bull in a china shop: makes too much noise and struggles to accumulate to his extra bulk. He isn’t sure how many chance he’ll get before they scatter and lose him. He can outrun them easily and their reluctance to fly could be a pro for him. One quail will hardly sate his appetite but he knows better than to be greedy. One at a time, he tells himself as his muscles tense and he lunges through the dry grasses towards what he thinks is quail.

There was no reason for Müninn to be here — no reason for her to have returned, especially not as alone as she was — but it was to be so. She crept back to the lands she had visited previously, albeit briefly; and in fact the banshee didn’t actually remember actually having been here before, as Hüginn usually did the tracking and the hunting and her brain moved much too fast to accurately process and retain information such as this. Müninn didn’t exactly plan things, but had she recognized the familiarity of her surroundings, she might have started to believe in coincidences. However, instead of the warmth of summer, it was cold of winter; and instead of safe at Hüginn’s side, the raven felt vulnerable and uncertain and flighty.

She slunk about without aim, from one warm place to another, though such places were fewer and fewer by the day. She fed when she wanted and took from the earth without remorse, pulling small rodents from their beds [in the nascence of their winter slumber] and delighting at the ease with which she procured a meal. It was this she was doing that early morning’s dawn, being pulled across the plain at the behest of her sensitive nose, her pallid form obscured by the tall, toasted grasses and the winter’s dusty snows. and this was how she hunted for mice. 

At what must have only been a few feet starboard, several fowl burst forth and took a short, noisy flight. Müninn was, for a moment, shocked and her faculties snapped to sudden attention  — eyes alert, ears alert, every part of her body down the very hairs that rippled across her shoulder crest down her spine, alert. Then it was all silent, but only for another moment; Müninn heard the man before she saw him, crashing about and throwing himself amongst the sea of grasses towards his feathered prey. Such activity and sudden commotion were, at the very least, unwelcome in Müninn’s mind and the only reaction she felt could appropriately encompass the true displeasure she felt was a sharp hiss and a snarl which rattled across her tongue and danced upon her lips. Her mind’s eye flashed red with sudden frustration and she, like a lightning strike, lashed forwards towards them, intent in causing some sort of disruption for the man’s hunt. He had disrupted hers, after all.