Deepwood Weald you waiting at ho[m]e for me saying what time do you call this?

I had ideas for this post but it feels really clunky. ;-;

The weald just south of Donnelaith was warmly familiar to Lotte, who delighted in its sepulchral abundance of shadow. More and more, she found the press of Donnelaith’s sequoias to be stifling, and even the prospect of visiting the Blackrock warband held little interest for her. She missed her twin, but whenever she set out to visit him, the feeling that she should wait stayed her impatient paws. It was infuriating to remain in one place when she did her best thinking on her feet, but the soot-stockinged rogue had good reason to trust her intuition.

On this day in particular, Lotte’s restlessness grew to such magnitude it threatened to shake the sequoias from their century-old roots — her broad paws ached to pit themselves against wolves in battle or roughhewn planes of mountain ice. After doing her part to freshen the territory borders and adding a fat rabbit to the pack’s reserves, she dove into the weald with a sigh of contentment. Light flowed through the canopy at odd, haphazard angles, the entirety of the place cast in a miasma of ash-colored fog, and Lotte melted into it like a living eidolon. Her coloring was perfectly suited for weaving between the spindly trunks, and the plush, matte nature of her pelage drank in light and darkness with equal vigor rather than reflecting it with a glossy sheen. It was purely by chance that she caught the Ceannasach’s scent, and when she did, her youth and inexperience were quick to explain away the quickening of her heart and the heady way her blood rushed to her cheeks by attributing these symptoms to mere playfulness and excitement. Her thoughts toward the masked coywolf remained utterly chaste, for she did not yet know the pleasures of the flesh. What she did know was that she wanted to be chased by him — a recurring theme, it seemed, given their previous meeting.

Throwing her voice with the effortless ease of a practiced bard, she sang: “turo-luro-luro — ” and slipped away on soundless paws. She rubbed herself against the tree trunks, her rich alto warm and inviting as she offered him a melody to follow:

“My sweetheart, come along!
Don’t you hear the fond song,
the sweet notes of the nightingale flow?”

That she was singing for Arturo alone was unmistakable — his nickname, combined with the impromptu moniker he’d given her, made it unreservedly clear. Still, the smoke-and-shadow rogue moved as swiftly and silently as possible; she could, if she wished, make the game easier by deliberately cracking twigs or rustling ferns, but there was a great part of her that fed upon the anticipation of waiting to be found.