Whitebark Stream or bury a friend

for @Daylily

snow, snow, and more fucking snow. the heavy snow showers have forced salvatore to take shelter in his den — which still needed a lot of work that the cold made him feel like doing anything but — for the better part of the day. only now, when the snow has let up some does he venture outside his small slice of paradise for more than just food ( which had almost escaped him twice ). his dead eye doesn't make much easy but he grumbles lowly under his breath, stretching to relax his muscles made stiff from his lazy day.

it's the borders he seeks; near instinctually. though he doubts the snow would be able to make the entirety of whitebark's claim, salvatore figures patrolling them would bring no harm and would help to warm his winter weary bones.

Daylily was excited to really get into her life in Whitebark Stream. The members were active and she’d met a lot of them. In spring, she’d be able to be a bit more helpful and start fishing and hunting small game to fill the caches. For now, she looked for other ways to help. She had never done border patrols in Oakstead; she’d always been far too busy gardening, nature-watching, or learning more about her faith. And she’d been allowed to pursue what she wanted. So border patrol was something she had never even thought of. But now, here, it seemed important. So off she went.

Soon, she saw a male she hadn’t met yet moving through the trees. He was monochrome in color, something she didn’t see much of. Back in Oakstead, most wolves were cloaked in warm colors, like her: browns, reds, and creams. Many were also white, as they had come from far north, and she had seen full black-furred wolves occasionally. But she had never seen a wolf in an agouti pattern who had no color to him. It fascinated her, for she was young and had not seen much of the world or its people yet. 

“Hello,” she called out to him in a friendly tone. “We haven’t met yet. I’m Daylily. What’s your name?” Her tail wagged behind her as she waited for his answer.

hello.

a friendly voice calls out to him; soft, feminine. salvatore's steps cease and he turns then, emberglow eye first so he can keep her in his sight as he turns to face her in full. though he's not ashamed of his dead eye and scars he feels himself tilting it up and away slightly; as if to mask it, all the while ensuring she remains in his line of sight. ❝hey,❞ salvatore greets in return. emberglow gaze sweeps over her once as he establishes to himself that he hasn't met her before and does not recognize her from empyrean, thus assumes she was with whitebark stream from the get-go.

❝daylily, huh?❞ he inquires assuming that she's named after the flower. ❝salvatore. or sal for short. i uh, i joined with emyprean.❞ she doesn't and hadnt' asked but he tells her it all the same, figuring he'd clear the air in case it came up later.

Daylily noticed the scars and the dead eye, which flashed at her for a moment before Salvatore turned his head up and away, looking at her with his good eye. Such a sight shocked her for a moment, and she went silent, her mind scrambling for some way to rationalize it. She decided immediately—perhaps naïvely—that Salvatore must have gotten his scars in some king of honorable fight. Protecting a friend, perhaps? Or a group of pups from an angry bear? It had to be something of that nature. Dawn would certainly never have accepted a criminal into her ranks. Still, fear of finding out the truth kept Daylily from asking. Well, that and good manners. 

Day nodded at Sal’s explanation. So, he had come with Bhediya’s group. It explained why she had not yet met him. “How do you like it here?” she asked, trying to come up with polite conversation. “Versus the mountains, I mean?”

how do you like it here?

a reasonable enough question, that salvatore contemplates for a moment before answering. ❝i like it well enough,❞ though it was still too soon to form any sort of real opinion about it. for a second, salvatore nearly considers saying that any place is better than the lair in which they left the corpse of bhe's ex-mate that had suffered from the white plague ...but that seemed tactless and he bites back the sardonic comment.

❝it was real nice to dawn to take us in.❞ he only hopes that it doesn't circle around to give dawn or the whitestream wolves a nasty surprise. all the same, he assumes that she already knew the risk prior to adding them to her ranks and rather assumes that supplying such information should fall to bhe as the leader of their ragtag group.

❝what about you?❞ salvatore switches the topic of conversation then, never very comfortable about delving too far into himself. ❝d'you like it here?❞

I am the absolute worst. I’ve been struggling with muse for quite some time. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting for so long. I see that Salvatore has since died (??) in my absence, so we can cut this short here if you wish?

Daylily listened to Salvatore politely, having gotten over her shock at his appearance rather quickly, or at least enough not to feel the urge to stare at him. She smiled when he said that it had been nice of Dawn to take them in. “Yes,” she agreed quietly. “Dawn is very kind. She took me in, as well, early on. Before Whitebark Stream was officially formed.” Daylily thought back to that time fondly, remembering her excitement at being able to help with the pack’s formation.

Daylily looked around when Salvatore asked his question. She smiled at the snow all around them, on the tree branches, covering the ground. She couldn’t wait for springtime, to see the trees surrounding the stream all green and bright, to see the water flowing fully, to see fish swimming in the stream. “I love it here,” she said simply. “I love… everything about it.” The skin beneath her fur grew hot in embarrassment at having said something so… emotional to a man she had just met. She glanced at him and then quickly looked away.

When he did not seem to respond to her at all, her embarrassed emotions got the better of her, and she quickly fled the scene.