Frostfire Ridge she wears the smell of blood and death like perfume

December had come to the forest––to the meadows, to the trees, to the frost-capped hilltop she plucked along to get here thinking the path she took was winding her towards "home". The day following her encounter with Taggarik, Lusca lost her way as she often did––her inner dialogue prated, walk until you can taste the salt blown off the beach on your lips but had failed to come through for her and the longer she gadded about, the longer, more perplexed her strides grew. 

Evening came around and cardinals huddled closely amongst themselves in the day's last masts of light, backed by a wine-stained sky––cheeks stippled crimson, that's how you know you've had too much to drink––as fat clouds stumbled drunkenly over the mountains. She slipped from the open space of the ridge and stashed herself in the woodland where dusk came much quicker, no longer preoccupied with the pipe-dream of food and rather eager to find her way back to something familiar. 

She negotiated the gelid countryside terrain without much difficulty–light as a thistle she was, and her paws flitted over icebound groundcover as if she were a young doe. Amidst her kibitzing around,  Lusca heard a faint crashing, and she peeled her eyes in all directions before resting on the soughing heap of wolf in the distance, skulking on the boundary of a ledge and looking somewhat blanched. 

Plowing through the snow–which thickened as she pranced away from the woods–Lusca was not shy about her entrance, coming up on the sable girl suddenly and brazenly from on high. "I see your problem." She announced matter-of-factly, a puckish smile souring her lips but vanishing just as fast. Peering down, she almost offered her assistance, knowing that there was hardly a way for the other girl to get to her elevation, but instead opted for a childish alternative: "you're supposed to walk around the edge, not plunge over it."