Firefly Ravine time to raise the dead

the ravine offered him respite from winter’s brutality.
well actually that was really fucking negotiable, truth be told. it was still cold and obnoxious, everything slicker than shit anywhere he looked, and he was still hungry. but a scavenger was he, the not-so-mighty lakhos, and fortune would perhaps smile on him today where it had spat in his face a few times before.
he worked along narrow ridges, his lightweight frame able to shimmy through crevices that offered further respite from the grueling winds. he found little prizes therein, maybe a morsel here and there that would tide him over until he found some easy prey to entertain himself with. or a handout, however unlikely.
but he didn’t linger long in the frosty, frozen cracks of the ravine either, nor did he venture too close to the stream that had cut through the divide. he could handle being damp for a spell, but he didn’t being wet or whetting his appetite on waters that looked like they betrayed their true depth and hazards.
but he could follow the stream.
and when he had gotten that far, his feet firmly back on terra firma as he knew it, he did exactly that. it worked out for him, the snow wasn’t so damn deep that he was buried up to his ass in it, but the drifts on either side of him certainly were built for swallowing tiny little meddling coywolves whole. this stretch along the ravine’s fancy amenity was very easily a polar bear’s popsicle station—did those live here? who knew, not him—and his gait suggested he had no intentions of becoming apart of the frozen foods section of this no nonsense business.

val had never experienced being caught in a snowstorm before. he had originally set along the borders after the tracks of a hare. he'd managed to follow it slightly south, and it was then great gusts of wind picked up and the steady fall of snow obscured his vision.

disoriented, valravn drifted further from sapphique until he came upon a stream. like any living thing, life tended to congregate at water sources -- between the veil of snow he spotted an obscured figure walking along the other bank.

the footing on lakhos' side seemed less steep. occasionally, val's form was swallowed whole as he fell through bits of snowdrift up to his chin. after one such collapse, val yelped -- disappearing almost entirely into the embankment.

he marched along, at least until he heard someone yelp.
his head whipped around fast enough to almost send him off balance, but there wasn’t a damn thing there. an echo off the ravine walls maybe? probably. he hadn’t forgotten about that scarred up goliath of a wolf he had found at the grotto but seriously doubted that he had followed him. at least he probably wouldn’t have followed him this far. right??
lakhos was paused, one foot held up out of the snow as he surveyed his surroundings. nothing. this was stupid, he decided, and turned back to the path ahead. whatever it was, yelp or not, it was best he didn’t go searching and find out. wherever it was—it could have been ahead of him just as easily as it could have been behind him, because the haze of heavy winter lingered here just as much as it did everywhere else.
and it was gross.

val temporarily forgot all about lakhos as he broke through the surface of the snow, his vision suddenly pulling dark.

the world above him droned on, muffled as snow collapsed mercilessly overhead. snow seeped everywhere from between his toes into the sensitive region of his inner ear. he was sightless, almost deaf, and suddenly suspended in blackness -- struggling as he worked himself deeper into the snow.

at last his feet found solid ground. val jettisoned himself upwards with a terrific effort, sunlight breaking over his back as he clambered from what would have been an icy grave if he was any smaller.

he blinked, stunned by the daylight. he was shaking from fear as he surveyed his surroundings in a stupefied trance, coming to land again on the svelte form of what appeared to be a coyote on the other side with one paw raised in search.

val tried to hail him, but he was too breathless from his near-death encounter to do anything more than whimper.

he was about to move on when the whimper reached his ears. okay, definitely someone still around... somewhere close...
his swung his gaze around him slowly, finally setting on the boy who was evidently trailing him. or at least that was the presumption that he made because he was pretty sure he hadn't been there a few seconds ago when he had bothered to look.
eyes narrowed, he squinted at him like he couldn't quite see him which may have been partially true. snow-covered and specter-like, the dark-haired wolf may as well have been an omen to witness.
which... if he really put stock into omens and the like, he would have probably seen a lot of them, and probably would have thought his days were numbered like some paranoid hermit. he would have never left home.
"can... i help you?" the boy was younger than he was if he had to guess, or else he was just really large and lakhos was really hoping he wouldn't fixate on him like a duckling finding a new mother.

if val had any life experience, he would peg this wolf (if it was a wolf? who knew) as flighty -- or as the kids say these days, sus. just something about the way lakhos observed him, eyes narrowed and legs held under him as if ready to run any moment.

maybe it was val that was sus. he'd just gotten swallowed whole by a snowdrift, and now was panting on the embankment in what could be classified as post survivor shock. he tried a few times to mumble something in answer to lakhos' question, glancing from his paws to the stranger helplessly.

at last his voice came to him, all but steady. "um.. n-no.. i fell." he motioned to the val-sized indentation behind him, where he'd nearly met his end.

"huh? oh, right," he said as he parsed the two things together. hole in the snow, snow-covered wolf. made sense, story checked out. he put his foot down finally, only to feel the cold come stinging back through his paw pad in what little bit of time it had gotten to warm up.
it may have stung because it had cracked open a time or two with the way he had gone rushing across frozen grounds. he ignored it. instead, he picked up where he had left off with nothing more than a beat of silence between them.
"yeah, the snow's pretty deep in places. be glad you didn't fall through a crack in the river, i guess," because if he had, well, lakhos would have been none the wiser to someone drowning actively beneath a good layer of the unbreakable.
and then onward to more pressing things...
"so are you like following me or somethin'? you aren't out here to eat me, are you? i hear there's cannibals around and the hills have eyes." for the effect, he tried to be a little bit bug-eyed about it, even though it was pretty much a lie. better have been, anyway, though it would be his luck if the hills really did have eyes and there were cannibals up on the mountain.

val didn't catch the splits on his companion's feet -- his eyes had strayed to the river, which chugged along under a thin sheet of ice.

in a past life or two, val knew something might have happened in a river. it terrified him as much as the sea did -- for much the same reason.

his gaze strayed back to lakhos, wide-eyed and believing. "cannibals?" he piped up, ears falling flat to his skull. normally, val would be a polite little boy and he'd answer questions first before asking his own, but lakhos' theatrical delivery of the hills had eyes made val's fur stand on end. "hills with eyes? wait. no. i'm not following you. umm... what do you mean by eyes?"

the kid seemed a little perturbed, which may have been in his favor if it wasn't for the fact that he also felt a little perturbed that his questions had gone unanswered. he might have been spinning a tale but for a moment the thought of it being true did cross his mind.
but that was ridiculous. such things didn't exist, right??
"you know, eyes? the things you see with? i mean, the hills don't actually have literal eyes to see with, but the cannibals do. and they live in the hills, waiting to eat things like us." he spoke like he knew what he was talking about, but he wasn't quite done yet.
"so, why are you following me? you one of those things? i'll warn you by saying that i'm not very tasty." and he wouldn't go down without a fight either, but that seemed like a challenge more than anything. just in case.

val shifted, looking to the nearest hill. it was drab and shouldered in thin rags of snow -- and it earned way more side-eye from the boy than it deserved.

"cannibals?" val queried softly, ears airplaning to his skull. he didn't like that any more than he liked the idea of walking up a hill and seeing dozens of eyelids pop open beneath his feet. "i don't wanna eat you." he couldn't help but giggle, feeling this stranger was either very creative or very silly! he thought chacal might like him. "i wasn't following you, 'onest. i was .." how to explain he was an idiot who got caught in a snowstorm, without sounding so damning? "just going to get a drink of water!"

just going to get a drink of water.
that seemed suspect.
and lakhos made a face that said as much for a moment, though if he could have narrowed his eyes any more he would have been squinting himself blind. instead the coywolf puffed; the plume of hot breath in the frigid air was whisked away just as fast. but he didn't know enough about where he was to dispute it and decided for the kid's sake he would take it as genuine. for now.
what, you don't have somewhere to drink from wherever you came from? you gotta come out in a snowstorm and hope to find a hole in the ice? and if that was the case, the kid probably lived nearby. which meant more wolves... more cringe moments no doubt to follow him if he ended up coming face to face with any of them.
the thought alone made him want to groan.

ah, the jig was up. val was caught in a hamfisted lie. he shifted, unwilling to admit he was lost and caught in a snowstorm. sometimes his imagination got away from him and when he came back to, he was miles away from his home and totally disoriented.

"its salty." val sheepishly answered, smoothly rounding the corners of his fraggled lie. that was a good answer, right? they were near the coast, it was believable.

feeling caught out on the spot, val began to make his leave. he didn't like the idea of cannibals or hills with eyes, and the fact that this man knew of them made him think perhaps he was privy to some of their more shady dealings.

val slipped away after an awkward excuse, fumbling as he waded through snow to his way home.