Northstar Vale And pluck till time and times are done

All around the vale, the mountains rose like high walls to keep out the unwanted. Saena had lived in all manner of places: a broad plateau, a high mountainous home of hawks, a deep forest, and an even deeper forest. She'd never lived in a valley, however, and though she remembered naught about why her outlook on it was so tactical, she knew having an easily defensible place to live was important to her. The lingering echoes of a conflict that had threatened her very life deemed it so, though all the details remained foggy, and ever would.

Her ears turned up when a voice, heavily stressed on the S, pulled her attention from the ground to the canid possessing it. While his silver-and-soot coat bore an uncommon pattern, and his eyes were an exotic near-black, his shape was even moreso, and that drew her eye for a moment. The front half of him was built not unlike Warbone, though her counterpart was larger by comparison, but the back half of him was neat and trim. It was probably the weirdest figure she'd ever seen in her life, and it threw her for a moment.

Saena recovered in the next beat and narrowed her eyes whilst her figure drew high and imperial. This was her turf, after all. The niggling desire to attack him for daring to violate her borders, as she had done all her life, rose up like a tide in her chest, but instinct kept it down. Instinct knew that borders didn't work this way. The valley didn't work this way. "Saena," she answered curtly as she propped her ears over her brow. What was a name, truly? It could do her no harm for him to know hers. "You're in my territory," she pointed out, as though she expected something of him for coming into her vale. And she did, of course.