Firestone Hot Springs these are the pros and cons of hitchhiking

AW but tagging traveling buddies @Coelacanth @Reigi @Moorhen. dated one day from now.

The heated pools were as new to her as the sea had been, upon first arriving at the coast. The steam rising was alien, the feel of the water on her paws a novelty. She submerged herself up to her hackles, relaxing with a sigh. It was a comfort, on her aching limbs. Blue left her shoulder with a flurry of wings and settled at the edge of the pool, looking at her with cocked head.

There was so much unknown ahead, both good and bad. Like everything else in her life, Maegi would tackle it, albeit reluctantly. But for now, it existed in front of her, a shapeless blur. It was terrifying, in a way. Exciting, too. But a girl designed for the status quo saw change in a negative light; the return to Blackfeather Woods would do her good.

Wouldn't it?

Still feeling a bit weary from her trip around the territores bordering Black Deer Plateu to the north, Rue had decided to keep her next excursion closer to home. The steam rising from the parts was visible from a distance and had piqued the young woman's curiosity. As she neared the hot spring, the powerful odor of rotting eggs met her senses, making her eyes water. There was something ominous about that smell. Pushing forward, the steam clouds envelped the young traveler and obscured her view, setting the cautious woman even more on edge. She was contemplating turning around when she spied a ghostly figure in the fog. Rue froze, alarmed and yet captivated. 

Cameo! You can ignore Moorhen. She's out of the way and isn't going to intrude unless she thinks Maegi is being threatened.

Leaving the safety of the island made her anxious. Having Coelacanth away from the island made her anxious. Being so far from the pups made her anxious. The weird hot water in the pools around them made her anxious. Even so, she found herself tentatively optimistic about the trip. It was kind of nice to stretch her legs again, and maybe she'd see Poet around once more? She missed Poet more than any of the others, although she also thought of Rheia and Hella with some frequency.

Her family on the island were more important, though. Maegi was important.

Moorhen didn't pretend to understand why she was leaving, but she kept her disapproval to herself as best she could. Sometimes, you just had to go. The best she could do was keep the pale girl safe on her travels, and hope that her new family would do the same if Maegi ever wanted to come back. Which is why Moorhen was watching carefully from a few dozen yards away, hidden under the bush she'd chosen for her night's resting place. The fur along her spine was bristling already, but she laid in wait, not wanting to act prematurely.

Since Coelacanth has a relatively minor role in this thread, please feel free to skip her and please TAG HER if and when you interact directly with her. Thank you! ♥

The changes in Coelacanth’s demeanor and bearing were few, and so subtle that only those who knew her intimately would take note of them. She felt it, a new brittleness in her bones, sapped of warm, rich marrow — an old, familiar tension in her fluid musculature that had her shoulders riding high now and again. Every sense was tuned to its finest pitch, and sometimes, she turned too sharply to regard new stimuli, a personalized brand of hyperesthesia that she worked hard to hide. She regarded her surroundings with an odd sort of familiarity, retracing steps she’d never thought to take, and with that familiarity came foreboding. The sulfurous scent of the hot springs was abhorrent to her, not because of how it burned her sensitive nares, but because it too easily masked other smells. Seelie didn’t like feeling noseblind.

The approach of an unfamiliar wolf, larger than Coelacanth (but then, most canids were!) and painted in spectral shades of cream, tan, and pepperings of silver, dropped like an anvil on a pulley to raise the sheepdog’s guard. She lingered in a pocket of smoke — a Neptune-eyed shadow that was all too easy to ignore, a trickle of ink betwixt the clefts of stone — but she did not advance. She merely breathed a soft and lilting sigh of a whine for Maegi’s ears alone, offering her support should the Melonii girl require it, and offering privacy if she wanted it.

It was hard to smell much over the stench of sulfur, but the sound of approaching pawsteps did catch her attention, and the pale figure that emerged from the steam even more so. Maegi lifted her head with some alarm, fixing her mismatched gaze on the stranger. She knew Moorhen must be nearby, and-- Her ears turned as she heard Coelacanth's small whine; her lips lifted in a smile, knowing that at least she would not face danger alone, if this woman was indeed a threat.

"Who are you?" she asked, voice treading the line between demanding and curious. The steam had created small droplets of water on her muzzle; they dripped into the pool as she spoke, sending little ripples out to dance round her legs. "Do you live here, or something?"

The apparition was not a ghost, or a figment of Rue's imagination, as she had more or less assumed. This revelation only made the stranger more frightening for Rue. For every step that the pale yearling took forward, Rue shrank backward. Her ears flattened in bewildered dismay with the other wolf's slightly demanding tone. Was Rue in the wrong here? Had she missed some sort of claiming scent marker that this wolf had put down? It was entirely possible; with the sulferic stench hanging over the area, Rue's sense of smell was more than a little off. 

"No one, sorry," Rue piped a quick answer, still shrinking away as she mentally panicked. What if this yearling had friends around, or family? Had Rue unwittingly stumbled into pack territory? What kind of masochistic pack would choose to settle in such a hellhole? 

The yearling's next question calmed Rue just a bit. If she was asking whether Rue lived here, then obviously the other wolf didn't live here herself. "Here? No, God, no," she insisted, still feeling flustered. A beat later, Rue was wondering if her words had been too rude. Perhaps the other young woman actually enjoyed it here. "Sorry," Rue offered another apology. She was a moment away from turning tail and fleeing and would do so immediately if there was any hint of this interaction turning hostile. 

What was wrong with her? Maegi was simply trying to engage in conversation, and yet here this woman was, backing up and apologizing. Blue bristled, tilting his head and looking warily at the stranger before taking wing, landing on Maegi's shoulder and fixing the woman with a gimlet stare. For her part, the girl did much the same, brows raised in puzzlement.

"Why are you sorry?" she asked. "I don't live here, either." Kind of weird. Her gaze darted to Moorhen and then Coelacanth, their dark pelts barely visible amid the steam. If this woman decided to do anything untoward, at least she had backup. Though from the looks of her. . .

"Wait, no one?" Maegi added, perplexed. "What's your name, I mean?"

The girl sounded confused, not aggressive. The realization calmed Rue, but now instead of being frightened she was embarassed. Her eyes followed the grackle as it lit upon the pale girl's shouder. The bird clearly trusted his canine companion, but Rue was hesitant to follow its example. She had been burned too many times trusting strangers during her brief stint as a lone wolf. 

Why was Rue sorry? "I thought..." Rue began to answer, voice barely above a whisper. Her words were drowned out by the girl's continued speech. That was fine. Rue had no idea how she would have finished that sentance anyway. 

"Oh," she said simply to the other's admission that she didn't live here. 

"Ruenna," the woman replied, relieved to be able to give an appropriate answer that she didn't have to think about. Since the incident with Sjorn, when Rue was frightened she turned completely stupid, and it took some time before she could recover enough to talk like an actual person.  "..from Blacktail Deer Plateau," she added, with a look over her shoulder to indicate the direction of the plateau. It never hurt to let a stranger know she had a pack behind her, should the interaction go south. 

The girl still seemed confused with Rue, and Rue couldn't really blame her. "Sorry," she almost said again, but she caught herself. Instead she offered an excuse. "I'm.. not used to being startled." It was true, Rue was usually so hypervigilant that very little caught her off guard. "I- I just feel weird, like someone's watching us," she admitted, hoping that was explaination enough for her odd behavior.  

More fragments. Maegi was thinking of stepping out of the water and moving to a different pool, to shut down this awkward interaction, when finally some pertinent information was shared. Ruenna, from Blacktail Deer Plateau. She stood through the explanation, listening to the woman speak with a cool expression painting her face.

"Well, there is," she said, her voice slightly sardonic. "My friends are nearby. But we don't mean any harm," she added, shaking her head. Blue began to relax once again, shifting idly from foot to foot on her back. "We're just passing through."

The girl lifted her chin, staring at the stranger, who now at least had a name to go with the face. "I'm Maegi," she introduced herself. "I've never heard of Blacktail Deer Plateau. What's it like?" She was surprised this woman had so readily given away her home. For how wary she seemed now, danger must not lurk behind every tree in her territory, for her to be so candid.

What?! She had friends who were watching them, right now?!  Rue's eyes widened, and her gaze flicked all round, searching for any sign of a wolfish figure in the steam. If the watchers were the girl's friends, why weren't they all together? Why would her friends simply watch without showing themselves? This whole situation was really damn creepy, and Rue didn't like it one bit. 

"Me too," she confirmed, also meaning no harm and simply passing through.  It was the best answer she could formulate with her mind still nervously churning. It suddenly struck her that perhaps the girl was lying-- fabricating some friends after learning that Rue was a pack wolf. It was a smart tactic that Rue had employed herself several times when she had been a loner. 

With that explaination she was able to relax a little more. Maegi introduced herself, and Rue nodded. "It's beautiful," she offered. "..and the deer are plentiful. Blacktail Deer Plateau is thriving." Perhaps Rue would see Maegi again sometime, if she remembered this conversation later and chose to do some hunting near the plateau. It also wouldn't hurt for her to know that Rue's pack was strong and prosperous. 

"Where are you and your friends headed?" she asked her question conversationally, eyes sweeping her surroundings once more. She hadn't forgotten Maegi's "friends." Perhaps Maegi was bluffing, perhaps not. Perhaps all her "friends" were actually birds, and the girl was talking around this fact in order to make her and her allies seem more threatening. 

Her eyes showed mild interest in the territory's description; perhaps she'd pay it a visit, someday. It couldn't be far from here, if Ruenna was just passing through. The woman then asked a similar question of Maegi, and her face became impassive.

"That way," she said succinctly, jerking her chin toward the direction they were heading (at least, the direction she thought they were headed). "To my old home." She said nothing else, not knowing how Ruenna felt about Blackfeather Woods. She had no way of knowing if their notorious reputation had proliferated, in the moons following the war.

Even if it had, how could one tell who was friend and who was enemy? Ruenna was as far from the reserved warriors of her former--and future?--pack as you could get. That didn't, however, mean that they were necessarily at odds. Perhaps the Woods' tack had changed under Kove's leadership.

Visiting her old home, huh? That must be nice, to be on good terms and close enough to drop in occasionally. If Rue tried to go bakck to visit her family Red Fern Grove, she would be run out with teeth on her heels. 

Rue nodded. "I've heard of a pack that way, in a forest." The mention brought back the memory of her experience several weeks ago, when she overheard that alabaster male recruiting a very naive-sounding silver female. She had wondered about the silver female several times in passing, hoping that she was faring well in her new pack. Sadly, she had seemed like the sort of woman who could be easily taken advantage of-- the kind of woman Rue had been herself, once upon a time. Rue worried for the girl and had been more than a little suspicious of the alabaster male's intentions. 

"I've been meaning to visit there too," she added. "There's someone there I'd like to check in with." If this girl was indeed talking about the same pack from which the alabaster male hailed, at least Rue knew now that the pack wasn't made-up. That made it less likely that the poor silver woman had been lured into some nefarious trap with the promise of pack membership. 

Maegi gave a nod, her countenance still blank as it was before. "Yeah, there's lots of forests that way," she remarked casually. "Many more than by the sea." If indeed this woman did know about Blackfeather Woods, she wasn't about to connect herself there just yet. After all, Ruenna could just as well hate the woods and its inhabitants; this was not an all-clear sign.

And the girl was growing tired, anyway, and the heat was too much all of a sudden. She stepped out of the pool, legs dripping, the bird holding on for dear life as her muscles lurched. Maegi flashed the smallest of smiles at the other, trying to transition out of this conversation as gracefully as she could.

"I must get back to the others, now. Nice to meet you." She turned on her heels and was gone into the steam, vanishing in the haze.

The girl offered no more information about the homeland she was visiting, instead making a overly-casual attempt to disassociate herself and her destination with the pack Rue described. That was curious to Rue, but certainly not so much that she would press the girl when she clearly had no desire to pursue the subject. Rue would have welcomed any change in subject the pale girl offered, but it seemed the stranger was done with chit-chat. 

Rue's head tilted ever-so-slightly as the girl made to leave. She sure was quick to scramble away after Rue mentioned that pack, wasn't she? "I understand. Safe travels." Again, there came a reminder of the unseen "others." A small shiver traveled down Rue's spine as the girl vanished into the steam like a ghostly apparition. Everything about this encounter had been creepy-- the fog, the bird, the invsible others, that ghastly scar on the girl's face... 

Thouroughly spooked, Rue also did not hesitate in making her exit.