Stone Circle Sweater weather

For leadership! @Tauris

The rain had started an hour ago, sprinkling, barely there. He thought he could endure it as he crossed the greenbelt. By the time he neared the edge of a claim the weather had tilted from light pecking drops to freezing drizzle.
He sought shelter beneath a big old tree, but it's empty branches (much like the bony hands of an old man, palms up) barely helped. A flash overhead coincided with a shiver through his narrow shoulders, and then a rumble groaned through the plump clouds, bellies full.
Snuffling, the rain dribbled off his chin and flipped off the edges of his ears as he loosed a spritely sneeze.

She carves a tired path in the glade around the stones. Monotonous. Repeating. She’d been spreading herself everywhere, as if just an ounce more diligence would solve everything.

She ached for Gunnar’s family. When she dreamed it was for freedom and that guilt sawed at her. Dreams were not bargains, she knew they settled nothing.

She’d been rounding a nineteenth time when the storm grew in earnest, and a twentieth when the wolf scent rose raw and wild to her senses. The winds were scouring but she found the lone girl drowned and sniveling along their cusp.

She could be sick. She should be turned away. Too many mouths.

“What are you doing out here?” The Nornir calls instead, the storm eating her breath.

His tongue snakes out and across his nose. He stands awkwardly and shakes the rain from his shoulders and hips, pointlessly, but cannot help but try and dry off to fix the discomfort. When a voice calls through the rain, he shrinks back and down again; tail tucked to his belly, he scoots himself in to a tight bundle.

The stranger looks particularly dark given the saturation of the rain. A blackened face with focused eyes, which is unnerving. Willow opens his mouth to answer and blinks quickly, feeling raindrops against the whiskers on his brow.

Looking for shelter, comes the answer.

I'm sorry — is this your t-tree? His teeth were chattering slightly. His tongue ran across them and touched at gums, tasting the rain. I'll — I promise to go once the rain has, h-has stopped.

She feels the pull of opposing forces- on one end the customary ambivalence she always held for strangers that who showed up along the fringes. On the other was a biting regret that she could not leave this girl out in the storm- not when Kvarsheim had unoccupied warrens in which she could take cover. The girl in her soaked, submissive huddle, she was no danger to the pack.

“This is the border of Kvarsheim,” Tauris fights over the wind, making the decision to cover the ground which separates them, careful to step with slow purpose so as not to spook her. But the crash of thunder overhead was enough to see Tauris on edge, too.

“We have shelter- come with me.”

It was hard to hear her over the rain, but from what he could understand this was indeed a home to someone - many, he would assume. As he was about to reiterate that he'd go (and even got shaking to his feet again) the woman bade he follow, instead.

He gave a cursory look at the tree, then at her, then at the rain, as he ducked out of cover and made to follow cautiously behind. It was in his nature to be wary but Willow wasn't about to question this charity.