Whitewater Gorge Fire and Water

By now Mal was of the opinion that Okeanos had probably abandoned him. Hypocrite.  Liar.  Why did Mal even begin to trust him?  He was just as unreliable and stupid as the rest of the Elysium scum that was somewhere past the mountains.  He probably found his peabrained sister and she probably wept and said how mean Mal was for not letting her act like a princess and flounce about all over him.  Good riddance.  He had a forest, and now certainly no obligation to deal with either of them.

Regardless of his inner turmoil giving him a sharp expression, his current puzzle was trying to figure out where the new crossing point was for the gorge.  Some low clouds had rolled in and limited his field of vision so he couldn't just see from far away if there was now a big gaping hole where there used to be a narrow spot, nor did he necessarily trust the edges of the "I can probably make that jump" sections just in case something gave way.  He was being smart, cautious, but it didn't mean that this jaunt of his was going to end up anywhere but him giving up and going back to the forest.  His forest.  And those idiots were gonna be sorry they missed out on how awesome his pack was gonna be -- he was thinking up some ideas, you see.

It had taken a lot of thought, but she'd eventually decided that while she was Moorhen on the shores, she was still Sif while further inland. Besides, there was something about a name with a single syllable that appealed to her. Probably the fact that, no matter how hard she tried, she could not pronounce Moorhen smoothly in her clipped accent, even if she had become far more eloquent in the native tongue of these lands.

Regardless, as she wandered along the edges of the forest, forging further and further from the coast, her thoughts were much simpler. Having seen much calamity in her relatively short life, the quakes and the flooding did not alarm her quite as much as they would have in earlier years. Rather, she was most concerned with getting her next meal, but not actually all that concerned at all.

Unconcerned enough that her hunting halted for a moment while she examined the scent markers at the edge of the wood. Her tail flicked in a friendly way as she lifted her head to look up and into the dense trees. It looked to her like a friendly sort of place, even if it was a lonely one. She continued on, not quite hunting anymore as she swept along the edge of the gorge, travelling still in a southerly direction. The mist folded back step by step, so that by the time she was able to see Mal, she was actually quite close to him.

Sif stopped short, apparently rather stunned by his sudden appearance.

"Hello," she ventured, her tail quivering uncertainly as she prepared to be either very friendly, or very fast.

If he'd been looking away from the edge and more towards what was ahead, he probably would have noticed the shadow emerging faster than she noticed him -- he was, after all, much paler in color -- but hey, he was angry and wrapped up in convincing himself that he was tons better than the other wolves he knew and he didn't need them and all that jazz, so he wasn't thinking straight to start with.

She was marked strangely, but then again, Mal was a weirdly spotted freak so to him it was more like just enough difference for him to note it for a second.  She probably would be harder to forget than some others just by that (but Mal was pretty good at forgetting people).  Unfortunately, those earlier thoughts also made him a little sharper than he otherwise would have been, so his question to her was a kind of blunt, Hi.  Who're you?  She didn't smell like any pack he'd run into or found hints of -- so, loner, right?  He kind of needed to drag himself back to reality instead of his pity party just a wee tad bit.

While the male found her markings strange, Sif could not help but stare at the black mask around the boy's eyes. It was rather striking, and it reminded her somewhat of Thresher and Stockholm's black muzzles. Her tail gave another hopeful swish as this thought occurred to her, but stilled in the next moment when the boy asked a rather abrupt question.

"Sif," she replied, after taking a beat to feel wrong-footed and uncertain. Mainly, she wondered if she'd imagined his tone after all, since he'd used it to ask a very valid question. "Whourr you?" she returned, attempting to copy the way the boy slammed his words together rather than pronouncing each one with care, the way that she'd learned from Coelacanth. The result, she thought, was quite pleasing, and she decided to try more of it when she had the chance.

Okay so maybe she was a little weird?  But then again, this was Mal, his sense of normal was probably skewed so he wasn't entirely sure any more if he was the weird one or the people talking a little odd were the weird ones.  He'd met a surprising number of wolves with different accents or just plain talked weird (AKA that chick he bit in the face).  Either way, he wasn't gonna comment, just answer, I'm Mal.

Beat.  He was still very not good at actually holding a conversation but awkwardly standing there waiting for her to say something would also be awkward, so he fished for something to say.  Uh.  What're you doing out here?  If you're gonna keep going you should be careful up ahead and stuff.  Some of the cliffs are iffy.  Or at least, that's what he'd discerned.  But since he didn't have an obvious subject to ask about, his brain wasn't allowing him to entirely shut up and was eager to fill the gaps with more nonsense, And there's not much out there.  I'm gonna head home soon I think.  Yep.  He stood there like an awkward, weird, socially inept turtle of a wolf.