Great Bear Wilderness I can feel your butterflies

@Bragi You know how weird it is to roleplay with a character who has your old character's name. O:

Ptarmigan woke on the edge of a grand pine forest. She didn't know it, but her choice to hide within the roots of a grand conifer tree had possibly saved her hide from being mauled by the wolves of a pack that lingered very close by. The wind hadn't favoured her in the evening, so she hadn't noticed, though she set off in a wave of panic when the first thing she smelled on the morning breeze was urine.

The direction she chose to travel in was, unbeknownst to her, uncharted. There were no known territories in that direction, though as she walked she found herself in a wide, sprawling prairie that ended in a black line of trees on the horizon. She travelled north west, undeterred by the openness of the plain nor the way her coat stood out starkly against the sharp green of the background.

Actually I do, aha. I played on this site for a little while after WWS closed where someone had a character named Aether, and in my thread with Finley I keep thinking of my Finley, lol. :P

Without realizing it Bragi was intentionally finding reasons to travel outside of Stavanger Bay’s borders. He claimed easily that he was just exploring, learning the layout of the lands for the Outrider apprenticeship which wasn’t exactly a lie but the underlying reasons pressed against his state of denial with a force akin to Thor striking Mjölnir. Stavanger Bay made him a little uncomfortable though he did well to hide it in the presence of it’s wolves, the looks, the comments of his father being the Jarl. Bragi did not know if there was any truth to these assumptions, wasn’t even really sure his own mother knew, but, instead liked her fabricated story of his father being the God Heimdall. Perhaps his insistence of it was nothing short of childish but he couldn’t bring himself to care because he was a child still. A capable child, certainly, that didn’t really look quite the part as the softness of childhood began to ebb away as if it were stone beneath a chisel. His growth was no longer rapid as it had been but even now he was not full size. Gaining closer to it with each passing month certainly but at the end of the day he was what he was: just a boy.

His no-destination in mind exploring had led him further than the last time, through a carnivorous forest where he did not linger long for the strong scents of urine made it clear the land was claimed, before the land yawned before him in a stretch of grasslands. Heather grasses grew wild and tall here, none of them he recognized though he couldn’t help the small coy smirk that tugged at the corners of his platinum silver lips at the thought that Floki would have had a field day in this particular territory. And would be able to name the grasses and if they had any medical uses to boot. Such words had only seemed to go into one ear and pass out the other proving Bragi’s inability to retain things that, frankly, didn’t interest him. He continued forth, ears lowering to rest at half mast, twitching when a cricket let out a loud chirp noise that was instantly answered by several others. The Viking boy paused wondering if that was their way of signaling to one another to avoid being squashed by still slightly over-sized paws. A rustling noise that sounded much larger than a cricket caused the boy to give another pause, knowing it had not been him that had made the noise to peer up from the ground to catch sight of the ebony canine he had missed earlier with his nose and eyes to the earthen floor.

She wasn’t too far off and bravely the boy altered his course and let out a chuff of greeting as he approached figuring that he was allowed to indulge his own curiosity. Whether she decided to speak with him or ignore him and keep going was her decision.

As she wandered, she breathed in the heady aroma of summer grasses and wildflowers. She couldn't name any of them, and scarcely understood the art of healing wounds and disease with them. When offered plants, she often refused unless for some reason she needed a good puke.

Still, she appreciated them as a piece of nature nonetheless, and so she was wrapped up in her enjoyment of them when the silvery youth appeared. He chuffed instantly to get her attention, but already her eyes were fixed critically on him. She took a few steps forward, tentative as always that he would summon his pack for back up, but something about his wide blue eyes was so disarming that in short order she was standing right in front of him.

Before introducing herself, Ptarmigan sought to establish understanding of their respective reputations by shifting her ears forward and rigidly waving her tail through the air.

There was a swell of longing within Bragi’s chest cavity that as he took in the stretch of wild grasses, brought to the surface by the simple though rational consideration that Floki would be resolutely giddy in this particular stretch of flatlands. The trickster had always been a little strange and while Bragi had never found it off putting the young rekkr understood how it could have been to others who didn’t, necessarily understand him. He missed Odinn’s Cove, Bragi realized with the same helplessness that someone missed a deceased loved one. He could not go back, would never disobey Sveið so directly despite that her behavior had made him uneasy on their journey to these Wilds. She had something planned, of that he had never had any semblance of a doubt; abruptly Bragi shut off those thoughts not wanting to examine too closely what he expected she had intended to do and the potential result of it.

He wasn’t ready to come to terms with that any more than he was ready to consider Ragnar his father. Both were untouchable subjects, as forbidden as Odinn’s throne was to anyone but the All-Father himself and on occasion his wife, Frigg.

The woman he had chuffed too approached, and surprised though he had made the initial move, Bragi had stopped his own approach allowing her to come to him. Her green gaze was fixed upon him, he saw, her eyes almost a pretty contrast to the darkness of her jet black coat. It was only as she drew nearer that he noticed the splattering of silver that broke the solidity of ebony. Bragi failed to notice her silver toes if only because he wasn’t looking down at her toes. Instead, he kept glimpsing at her eyes, stuck with the resolution that he found them almost captivating in their chartreuse green coloration, coming from a world where there was no shortage of wolves with blue eyes of all hues. It was a nice change of pace, Bragi decided mentally, for even Ragnar’s wife had had blue eyes.

Bragi responded to her posture with neutrality. He wasn’t going to submit to a wolf he didn’t even know but was not so proud or foolish to think himself as anything close to dominant. Not out here, at least. Not in neutral lands where pack and rank meant next to nothing. “Hello,” He spoke to her after a moment, boyish voice soft and accented though he, himself did not hear it having been desensitized to it.

A quick scan of his body type, combined with the scent of an immature male that seemed prevalent around him, confirmed that he was a younger wolf. Much younger than her own four years. It was therefore difficult for Ptarmigan to imagine what he might want to talk about, or what he might have gotten her attention for in the first place. She had approached him, but she had done so wordlessly, whereas he had signalled her. She therefore assumed he needed something, and had already decided to give him that something for a price.

“Hi,” she said back flatly, having expected Bragi to get to the point. It never did occur to the Endore female that he might only want some company in this wide, neverending field. “You need something?” she wondered aloud, thinking to herself that it was obvious that he did, even though it wasn't obvious at all.

The woman’s returned greeting was jarringly flat to the young rekkr who recoiled some, the velveteen fur of his brows furrowing slightly at the unexpectedness of it. Bragi could not shake the feeling that something was expected of him in this situation but he was at a loss for what it was. It had never occurred to Bragi that she was under the misunderstanding that he wanted something from her other than her company as to which he didn’t. He was left grasping at vast confusion which felt very similar to trying to grasp smoke betwixt his jaws. He could find no purchase on the writhing, evaporating substance and never would. This confusion felt elusive like smoke did.

Or at least that was how it felt until she asked him if he needed something and slowly the puzzle pieces began to fall together in his mind painting a rudimentary picture of understanding. It made sense, instantly and within the next few seconds sparked the wonder that maybe this was one of those cultural barriers he had heard the more seasoned travelers speak of back in Odinn’s Cove and Freya’s Moors. Perhaps where she came from one did not stop and socialize with strangers just to socialize. It wasn’t like Bragi had anything else to compare it too. This was the first time he was outside of his own culture. Mixing and mingling the Norse ways and tongue with the ways and tongues of all these strangers. Even Stavanger’s Bay wasn’t made up entirely of Vikings. It felt a little bit like home but the wolves were still too different to offer the young, lonely teen any comfort.

“No,” Bragi responded honestly after a soft ‘ahhh’ hung in his throat as he reached the apex of his conclusion. “I only wanted to speak…—” He paused and gave her a boyish little grin. “— or just some company.” But of course he wouldn’t and couldn’t force her into anything she didn’t want to do. His tail flicked amicably against his haunches, his ears twitching as a honey bee buzzed past his ear on it’s way back to it’s hive or to a flower to pollinate. Besides the twitch of his ear Bragi paid it little mind. “I am Bragi.” He introduced himself freely, shrugging his broadening shoulders as if to tell her that it didn’t matter to him if she wished to indulge him or not.

Where Ptarmigan came from, it was polite to engage others in conversation. Unfortunately, being the only cub of her litter and being born to inexperienced parents, she hadn't quite refined the rough edges of herself, and being a vagabond had hardly cured her of crude behaviours. There was an occasional yearning for company, but a lot of the time, the Endore assumed others wanted something from her. She was a lone wolf, and in her experience, pack wolves wanted little and less to do with her.

It seemed that Bragi was more forgiving than many pack wolves, for he seemed to want nothing more than company. Perhaps she ought to have been flattered and thanked him with a fluttery, oh, sir, you wish to speak to little old me, but Ptarmigan simply said, “all right then.” The bee that scurried past him on the air waves earned a visible flinch from the Endore, who sidestepped rapidly in a circle around him until she was as far away from the bee (which was long gone) as possible.

“I'm famished,” she joked, not grasping from Bragi's accent that he might not be 100% an English-speaking wolf and might actually assume that was her real name. “You live here?” Boy, wouldn't it piss off someone if she had waltzed right into his pack's territory?

She seemed to accept his wanting of just conversation, or if not conversation then at least a little company. Bragi was slowly growing accustomed to being on his own, of having his own den, of having to hunt and take care of himself. Maybe it was stupid teenage boy pride that pushed and fought against the desire to lower himself to asking for help — not that he’d had any situation in which he required it yet — especially not from Ragnar or his bitchy wife. Bragi had never had the displeasure of coming across a woman he didn’t like but he supposed that old saying ‘there’s a first for everything’ seemed to hold some semblance of truth to it. Bragi was self sufficient, either way, and had even contemplated leaving Stavanger Bay and finding a home in one of the other packs to get away from Thistle and Ragnar who gave him a sense of disorientation every time Bragi so much as looked at him. It was disorienting to look at another wolf and feel like you were staring in a mirror that had scarred you and aged you; besides that it brought with it the uncomfortable consideration that Thistle had been right in her accusation that Ragnar was Bragi’s father and as it stood Bragi did not like being told something he believed for the majority of his six months of life was inherently wrong.

He twisted in on himself slightly to scratch behind his right ear with his back claws as he watched her make a circle around him as the bee buzzed past. He had missed the initial flinch she had given but did not call her out on it, no matter how weird he found it as he settled upon his haunches after scratching, flattening the heather and wild flowers that had the misfortunate of being beneath him in the process. She stated that she was ‘famished’ and not knowing any different for the Norse to English translation in his mind was not so complex enough to include famished to mean ‘hungry’. “Nice to meet you,” Though it sounded like an odd name to him, his tone was sincere enough to convey that he had thought it was her actual name. In truth, all non-Norse names were strange sounding to him so it didn’t even click in his mind her joke having went way over his head. “No,” Bragi glimpsed around wondering how anyone could live here. It was so far from the ocean, and there were nothing that he could see but grasses and flowers but he understood that just because that everyone had their own personal preferences. “I live on the coast, in a pack called Stavanger Bay, not too far from here.” For now because he hadn’t ruled out relocating. “Do you live around here?” He returned the question, having assumed she didn’t actually live on this particular territory since she had asked him if he had.

On the coast, he said, earning a puzzled look from the steppes native. The name of the pack slipped out of her mind almost as quickly as he said it, leaving with the impression that his home was called Staff Grr Bay. As if that wasn't weird enough, the juvenile pointed out that it was nearby, which caused Ptarmigan to grow even more nervous. Her eyes began to hop around, looking for border guards... And any hint of the Big Water that she had thought was hundreds of miles away when it was, in fact, much closer than that.

“Why would anyone live there?” she blurted, unable to contain her mixed curiosity and distaste about the giant lake. “The ground's slippery and it smells.” She didn't even worry about whether or not he would be offended by her comments, so intent was Ptarmigan on understanding other wolves' fascination with the huge lake. As an afterthought, she dismissed his final question with a simple, “nope,” without elaborating much more than that. If he asked where she did live, she'd tell him everywhere and nowhere, because she had no permanent home. Not yet, anyway.

His companion, until she corrected him, known as Famished seemed to be confused as to why anyone would want to live by the ocean. On the opposite side of her opinion Bragi had a hard time wondering why everyone didn't live close to it. It was the perfect spot if it wasn't for Ragnar, aka his older, scarred mirror image, and his bitchy wife. The location, otherwise, was perfect and reminiscent very much of Odinn's Cove which Bragi suspected was why Ragnar had chosen it in the first place. No it isn't, Bragi responded not to be rude and not in the way that a teenager usually fancied arguing. He had little intentions of striking an argument with her over it because he had grown up on the coast and he had never known the land to be 'slippery'. The large rocks that sometimes could be climbed that stuck out from the shallows of were but the sand itself wasn't what he would call slippery. Beaches aren't slippery. He corrected her, amused. While Bragi could not particularly deny that the ocean had a particular smell to it, he was rather desensitized to the scent of salty tepid waters. To him, it was the smell of home and in that it was a comfort. After she responded to his question he fell silent if only because he did not intend to ask for further specifications of where she lived. Bragi figured if she wanted him to have that kind of information she would have given it initially. The furthering silence left the young rekkr with the feeling of awkwardness and he wondered if she could feel it too or if, and it was likely, it was just him.

For all of Bragi's good intentions, his denial that the ground was slippery incensed some argumentative part of Ptarmigan, who found his claim as ridiculous as he surely found hers. To a wolf who grew up on the beach, such as himself, the ground was likely just flexible and nice... But to a wolf who grew up on stone and grass, such as herself, the beach was dangerous and difficult to traverse.

Although it had been clear from his tone he had no intention of arguing, she picked up the "conflict" with a haughty, “it is so!” Her interest in him waned almost the second that he denied her the satisfaction of insulting the sea shore. It seemed his interest in her was waning as well, for aside from a clarification, he didn't say anything further.

“You can keep your dumb beach,” she immaturely muttered, turning around and throwing her ears up as thought she was somehow better for pitching a fit than he was. Very likely, he was amused with her antics, for she was being even more a child in behaviour than he was in age. “I'll keep my solid ground, thank you much.” And without so much as another word, she began to strut away.