she's got something in her throat

Marriage, it turned out, was more of an adjustment than Jinx had initially thought. Between being commanded to quit the Creek, tending her fledgling borders on the mountain, finding and collecting her scattered followers whose fates had mirrored her own, and settling comfortably into life on slopes, she found very little time for her old geezer husband. At first, the thought hadn't crossed her mind that they had spent little time together, and so she hadn't sought him out and hadn't noticed the shaman's lengthy departures from his hut, nor suspected the reason. Today marked a difference in Jinx, for with no immediate tasks to fulfil, she found herself craving his company.

Jinx was in luck that Lecter was on the mountain and not in the vale today, not that she would have known where he went anyway. She prowled along the alp's ample footpaths with her nose planted to the ground, seeking the old blood reek that clung even to the pads of his paws. His trails were fresh, yet frustration marred the Kesuk's brow as she alternately found and lost track of them. Living on a mountain was more of an adjustment than she thought, too.

By coincidence, his howl broke out over the peak of the mountain and summoned her attention. Swinging her ears about and pausing halfway through a hop to a lower path, she localized him to somewhere a little higher up and changed her course, and at long last found him. His dwelling was as macabre and horrific as ever, with a healthy boundary of blood and skulls arranged around it, but it reminded her so much of the sea witch's former hut in the Timber that she smiled when she saw it and let out some of her recent tension with a familiar sigh.

"It looks like home," she pointed out, swaying her tail as she stepped up near him and unabashedly set to nibbling the stiff fur on the side of his neck, totally oblivious to the gifts at his feet. "Just needs the seaweed," she added in a quiet croon.