[I.C.J] precious and fragile things

The resounding crack of a bone shattering, splitting evenly in half like a twig snapped in the wind, echoed arcoss the gray stone. The top half fell away from his white jaws as his rough, pink tongue lapped the fatty marrow from the tibia's core. The remains of the small mountain goat lay scattered around the ledge that jutted out over snow covered pines and rocky outcrops. It was a small embankment on Porcupine Ridge, a shelter from stinging winds with it's face turned away from the north. Dovev had no problem laying abreast in the elements, his thick white coat exposed to the biting winter winds. He was born for it.

Tufts of ivory fur, matted flat against his skin, clung to a rather slackened frame as the male slowly rose to his paws. He had expected easier pickings this winter, but it had not been easy. Often, he was forced to leave the confines of the ridge to descend into the edges of the Vale, and that itself was not hindered by silence. Twice Dovev had paced higher ground in the pine forests, scouring the lower ground and stoney outcrops below him. He had remembered the last time that far down, he had spied a white wolf of definative arctic blood prowling along the icy run-off of the snowcaps. Dovev had bit back the urge to chase off the intruder who strayed too ignorantly close to his ridge. Porcupine Ridge was his refuge, albiet a sparse one.

The sun had set long past, and Dovev's silken and thinned body stalked along the pine forests below the gray ridge. His iced pools were of little use in the freezing pitch black of the darkness, but wolves were more than adept at moving with their usual grace when there was no light above. He relied perhaps, most heavily, on his nostrils, which twitched with their own life at every microcosm of aroma. Birds, grass, animals hibernating under the snow. Fox. A stray chamois from the higher mountains. Oak leaves, water, wolf.. Wolf. Dovev's head swiveled around as he stopped. He had reached the edge of the pine forest, the small copse that seperated the wide valley from the rugged terrain of the mountains. Someone had been here recently, and left a scent mark. In usual cicrumstances, Dovev would have marked over the brazen sign and returned to his lair, but as his icy breath pooled about his muzzle, he lingered. Faintly, in the slope of the snowed in land, a cacophony of howls rose in the air and his bowled ears cupped the sound. Unbeknownst to him, a pack had formed in this neighboring territory.

He stepped back from the weak yet present invisible line, retreating a few body lengths into the tree line. As he stretched his massive frame to rest, snow seeped into the canid's pelt like roots taking hold in freshly tilled soil. The cold was a welcome presence to the monochromed beast, a familiar embrace, a lover's touch. From his prone position, the solitary creature tilted his muzzle back to the star-speckled sky and responded the chorus with his own solitary call.