Honeyed Pasture great scott

@Alya <3

despite his grandiose ideas, lionel had only gotten to the seacliffs formerly known as drageda before looking back along his shoulder and deciding he was actually bored again. bored by the endless new things to see and wolves to meet, which weren't many along what felt a desolate stretch of coastline. bored because things were new and exhausting and therefore harder. not fun.
and so he went back, the wolf's-pace that swallows the miles, and when the bristled burnt place came into view, lionel veered away from it into the nearby plain. from here the ocean was still comfortably visible, but his attention was focused completely upon a sharp-cornered and massive mammal moving through the grassland. a grizzly, fatted with the bounty of summer, stuffing itself with the last of what could be found in the same way someone might eat cake over a sink at 542am while thinking about their life.
he stared at it, becoming completely oblivious to all else.

Tag for reference!

Escorting @Huojin to the coast was one of the easier missions she'd been sent on, but after her talk with Hydra and Lyra, she was filled with nervous energy. At times, she asked Huojin to scout ahead in order to give herself time to settle down — not far enough that a howl couldn't reach between them, but far enough that she could veer off the beaten trail for a time and skulk in the tall grass. Currently, she was watching the grizzly gorge itself, remembering all the bears and all the stories of bears that'd come to her on Moonspear.

None of these stories encouraged her to approach, but at least it wasn't a mountain lion. She'd have to turn tail in a most unmannerly fashion, if that were the case.

Since the bear seemed absorbed in its meal, Alya stood to depart and catch up to her cohort, only to find that another was just as absorbed in the feast — from afar, of course. The male did not seem much older to her than Huojin — all wolves younger or as young as Hydra's first litter seemed like children to her. But this one was undeniably handsome, and out on his own, after all.

Have you seen one before? she asked him, swinging wide, wide around the bear to speak in a voice low enough not to disturb it. Doubtlessly, it knew it had nothing to fear from them.

from this distance, the mayfair was safe to imagine the way the bear could crush him into the ground as if he were nothing? he wondered, idly, if your chest breaking hurt, or if you suddenly couldn't breathe and —
head snapped around with an instinctive wariness at being approached, but the bear was suddenly swiftly forgotten. 
a tall amazonian creature, obsidian; her scent was the inside edge of rock faces, and she wore a pair of lapis eyes that were, somehow, focused upon him.
lionel wasn't sure he had ever seen hips so rounded and beckoning before; they spoke shakira-lore to the intrinsic male places of himself and managed also to sever the connection between mind and mouth. "one what?"

Half an eye was kept on the bear — she didn't expect it to bother with them, but she certainly wasn't going to be taking chances. The rest of her attention, however, had settled on the golden young stranger.

A bear, she reminded him, her voice gently teasing — my, but it was nice to be looked at like this. It won the young man a world of favor, even though she had once not thought twice about turning heads. The dark shewolf slunk closer, feeling rather like a cat let into the hen house as she did. Clearly, she thought, flattered and bemused, that's not all you haven't seen before.

Where did you come from? she asked, hoping quite dearly he wasn't from one of the packs they were aligned with — or even worse, one of the packs that had set themselves against Moonspear. His name was only a secondary interest; he was merely a pretty face to her, in that moment.

"oh, uh. right. yeah. have i seen one before?" buying himself time and another glance into the azure gaze that lit above her mouth. her ears, small-formed and one notched, which gave her an edge to an already intriguing palette. "warsaw islands," lionel managed to dig out from the end of his failing tongue. "and i saw one, once. but it wasn't that big." 
the stag, who had just moments ago been wondering after death by ursine, now turned his thoughts to where she might have appeared from. her fragrance was tinged with the backdrop of others, suggesting a pack. "and, uh, you?" there had been three little bands within the sentinels, but since leaving he had met none. and it would not have mattered to lionel, where she came from. only that she had come closer, and he felt his mouth dry with a sudden nervousness he tried to veil behind a cheeky grin.

Dark ears picked up in incredulity as the male continued to be flustered. She felt almost guilty for eliciting such a reaction — she was a married woman, after all, even if she was planning on returning to her adulterous ways soon enough. But despite the guilt, the rush she felt from holding this power over others was undeniable.

Warsaw Islands, she repeated, mulling over the word. The only island terribly close was Yuelong, and this golden youth was not one of theirs. That seemed plenty far enough for Alya — far enough, at least, for her to take an interest.

I'm sure it was no match for you, she told him, but as he couldn't be more than two, she wasn't sure she believed it. He was, however, tall and strapping enough he might give a black bear a run for its money now.

It would probably still be a match, though.

What should I call you? she asked, the question near an order. For the moment, she ignored his own query, closing the distance between them to help distract him from this fact. His own scent — pleasant enough, beneath the salt — washed over her, and she took note of a few companion scents that sat alongside his own.

This close to Moonspear, she was a little concerned about being overtly flirtatious — but no one else would see if she lowered her lashes to pin Lionel with her best come hither eyes.

no woman had spoken this long to lionel that he could recollect. and if they had, it was not in this way. he found himself happy to be mired in the sound of her voice. "lionel mayfair," the stag chirruped obediently, rote, automatic. she had given no title but he was too transfixed to care.
and her flattery swelled his heart. vague wishing that he had some sort of retort. the inkling left in his mind brought to him one of his mother's stories: pretty monsters rising from the water to swallow men whole, and they completely unaware until the last moment.
selkies, deirdre had solemnly told him in boyhood,
but the sudden heat within this she-wolf's bluestone gaze burned the last trickle of blood out of lionel's brain into more southern climes. a blink; the stag resisted the urge to look behind himself, for she meant him. and though he did not understand it, he was compelled to take a shaking step in her direction, buttercream muzzle seeking tentatively the edge of her jawline if she found it agreeable.

 

As much as she played the temptress, Alya could admit to herself that the boy's nearness was tantalizing in its own right. What she was doing was wrong — even if her sisters said otherwise — and it felt so very right to backslide after playing the good wife for so long.

Well met, Lionel, she breathed into his ear, enduring his touch like a king extending his ring to be kissed. His nearness would be much more tantalizing after a bath, she thought, and tried to focus on the rangy scent of young man buried beneath all the brine.

She withdrew, taking a deep, secretired breath of fresh air. I have business to attend to, she said, a merry twinkle in her blue eyes. It had only been a brief, chance encounter, but this youth was already a contender, in her mind. But, if you would like to meet again... you should make yourself easily found.

She had to hurry and track down Huojin, before the boy ran into trouble..

Until next time, she said, casting him one last, wistful glance over her shoulder before atempting to exit stage right.

*owen wilson voice* wow

eyes closed; she had not only allowed his closeness, she purred against it, catlike against a backdrop of his own breath. which he scarcely forgot to do; his body irritatedly shifted to manual and his voice skittered in his throat. worshipful, wanting nothing more than to follow the guiding desires of his body and trail his lips to her shoulder —
oh. oh, she was leaving; business to attend grinding lionel up out of his tumnescent stupor and into reality once more. "uh. right," he stumbled ineloquently. there was laughter in her eyes, this — what was she? didn't matter — inviting him to see her again? 
tail stirred at his hips, unbidden, but his throat was still recovering, and so lionel only watched her go, curvaceous and vital against the backdrop of the flatland, storm cloud fading and taking some piece of him with her.