Iktome Plains no snow here

Bouncing this to present day as discussed ♥ A bit before this thread.

Coelacanth, like Dagfinn, found the summer weather oppressive. Her impenetrable inky fur drew the heat inward, encouraging it to soak into her tender skin with suffocating invasiveness. Today her slender muzzle was curved gently around a collection of three beautiful shells — the last of Amoxtli’s great hoard — and she dared not part her lips to pant lest she choke or drop them. The pale pink scars that winged from the shadowed hollow of her throat and collarbone were invisible now, for her feathery fur concealed them completely — having regained her natural stride, she moved with sylphlike grace, but the recent wear upon her body would have been evident to those who knew her well. The smooth, supple lines of her compact frame were stuttered and angular in places, emphasizing the weight she’d lost in the weeks she’d found herself without appetite and unable to hunt. Now, though, she was learning to live for herself. Amoxtli, she knew, was not dead; their pas de deux had simply come to a temporary end.

The flatness of the territory she now found herself in made it easy for the Corten girl to spot the dark wolf whose stutter-stepped, staccato gait brought him from patch to patch of bunchgrass. She watched him quietly, her cerulean and turquoise eyes dimmed with the miasma of melancholy that so often claimed her these days; and a flicker of their innate brightness returned as a smile tipped the eloquent corners of her currently chipmunk-cheeked muzzle. Bending to place the shells at her paws, she lifted herself to her full height where she stood and called to the tall, tender-footed male with a beseeching whine that was all air, no tone. Lest he did not hear her, she punctuated her lonely cry with a soft whuff of air. If he steeped his paws in mud, they would not ache so much when he walked — and there was a river just west of where they stood that he could sink his aching paws into.