The Sentinels birds flying high

@Lærke ♥

The velvet-voiced rogue loped steadily along, unhurried and untroubled, her large paws drumming rhythmically against the healing earth in a rollicking two-beat cadence. Her long, soot-stockinged legs devoured the distance even as her argent eyes eagerly drank in the surrounding scenery; she would remember each step and she would relive her travels through song — all the better if she could find herself some willing listeners — or, better yet, dancers — to share in the singing of it. It did not concern the mercury-eyed yearling that she had arrived late to the party — that Lærke, that loveable, big-bellied thorn in her side, had gone on without her simply because she’d gotten distracted by a traveling bard on the lookout for his niece and nephew — that there might not be room for two Ansbjørns in one pack. If she had to, she would take up residence elsewhere — provided it was within pummeling distance of her silver-eyed, silver-tongued brother.

Lotte followed her brother’s scent until she could follow no longer — thwarted by territory borders! — and her black-masked face made a moue mutine as she dropped rather gracelessly to her haunches in the dust. Flicking her coal-furred tail and tossing it about her hips with a flourish — there was little room in Lotte’s great heart for demure timidity — she dipped her sloping muzzle to the thick cowl of ash-colored fur that ringed her neck and gave her ample bosom the appearance of a rabbit’s dewlap, hurriedly plucking any stray twigs and leaflitter from her person. Then, giving her predominantly smoke pelt a good shake where she sat, she assumed a position of relaxed neutrality and pointed her broad muzzle skyward. Her low, husky voice smoothed out, billowing to new heights as she sang an aria to the woods — it must be confessed that she quite forgot herself for a moment, fitting lyrics to her searching call:

“Rakeet, o keepers of the wood
where many wolves in judgment stood!
In judgment mayhaps too shall stand
this smoking Ansbjørn firebrand,
for in your ranks, a chocolate bear —
rotund of torso, thick of hair —
has found his place and made his home,
no longer these wilds to roam.”

She continued to hum, striving for as much discretion as she could muster, not wishing Lærke’s burgeoning reputation to be sullied — yet — by the countless embarrassing stories she could tell about him, but a husky, rich laugh spilled cheerfully from her jaws merely at the thought of them. Lotte’s greatest gift was her voice; she could force it into an evil crone’s shriek or whittle it to a honeyed ingénue’s lilt; she could drop it to masculine depths if she so wished. Her own comfort level, however, was smack dab in the middle of the vocal register at a melodic alto, and that was what she used now as, “Rotund of torso,” she repeated to herself with another rowdy laugh at her own genius.