Shadewood come in from the cold

Cailean’s form was bulkier than some; if he was going to go down on the ice, he would go down hard. He couldn’t afford to lose his footing, so it was with minute attention to what every muscle was doing that he moved through the snow-laden trees. Some of the boughs were bent as if trying shrug off the weight of the cold powder; others had snapped away from their anchorage completely. It was far from a simple path the male would have to weave in his search for shelter.

He had been reduced to thinking in terms of the next moment, the next heartbeat – never any further ahead than a day or a night. Moving from place to place had rapidly shifted to moving from shelter to shelter with the sudden onset of icy squalls. And it was all in an effort to ensure that the next heartbeat thumped in his chest. He had no goals beyond survival.

But when he heard the stir of footsteps and caught the agouti form of another in his peripheral vision, some part of him which had been half buried by snow and ice reared its head: curiousity. It was something which had once been a driving force in Cailean, and one of the few things he could still take note of beyond the frigid temperatures and the chaos strewn about. His head swung up, eyes slightly widened as they regarded the stranger.

She had a coat of russet agouti and a smattering of scars like the male himself, and she spoke politely. Cailean dipped his broad head in response, ears splaying and tail lowering.

“Hello there.”