Dawnlark Plains the sun on my head is my crown

for @Jasny! please let jasny respond first & consider this private until the pair are at the borders. technically takes place first in herbalist's cache.

it is quiet in morningside, lately. there is not as much food is she is used to, although she is faring just fine. she is a child after all. but ah, this child has a roaming itch that cannot be contained just inside the territory anymore.  she is nearly four months old now, and already she is growing into her rounded, panther-like features. a spray of orange now rings her throat (like her mother, oh yes, she is like momma!)  the sun trickles in from the tangled foliage above and dapples the child as she rests beneath a tree, reflecting.

Jasny edges along the scentline. She smells a strong pack smell, thick on the nose, not entirely pleasant, on the occasional bramble and bush. Though she is not close enough to warrant an attack on her, she is close enough so that the faint wind carries the musk of many wolves, and close enough so she can see foottrails leading out of the territory where wolves upon wolves upon wolves have traveled.

She cuts out a tenacious figure, one that is compact and low-lying, but phlegmatic all the same. Jasny hesitates as she sees the figure of a pup, a young girl, at the foot of a tree. She approaches with a slower and quieter pace, the wild determination in her eyes softened into something more two-dimensional. "Is this your home?" she asks, in lieu of hello. Jasny had never been good with children.

she might have drifted off to sleep beneath the gnarled roots that surrounded her, but as she dozed (entirely catlike) in and out of slumber she heard a voice.  for a moment she thought it might be pema, and her eyes flash in worry of being caught outside the borders.

but it isn't.  maybe, she says, trying to be intentionally sly (although she is unpracticed and a child).  who wants to know?

Maybe. Who wants to know?

Jasny is amused, and it shows in her wry grin. She drags out a long hmmm and tilts her head all the way back to the sky, where she sees the sparse amount of sky versus the teeming branches and the leaves that fringe them like fur. "Jasny wants to know," she says matter-of-factly. "I'm searching for a pack where I can stay awhile." (Really, it was a bit more complicated than that, but it was a kid she was talking to.)

"Who wants to know who wants to know?" In retrospect, asking that was probably not the brightest of ideas.

Jasny's name kind of sounded like her own, in a way.  Jasny and Kasatka.  She wondered if they had similar origins.  As the stranger looks up to the sky the child disappears behind the brush, lending only her voice to the woman now.

Kasatka, of Morningside.  She begins to walk towards home.  We could use some hunters.