Firefly Glen The more I see I understand

It was difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when the back of her neck had begun to prickle with the pull of awareness that someone, somewhere, was drawing nearer. Her nerves took a heady spike as some sort of awkward social anxiety came over her, tilting her radar ears to locate the source of her discomfort so as not to look so obvious about it. She had thought the encroacher could have been Shrike, but that was such an unreasonable suspicion to her mind that she felt a fool for thinking it. A stranger, then. Except this wolf… there was something about this wolf… why was that scent so increasingly familiar?

Whomever she thought it might have been, it certainly wasn’t, and there was not a shred of her being that was prepared for the kind of confrontation this particular wolf had brought with him. Social anxiety was quickly replaced by returned hostility as she skittered away, only to turn and face him head-on at a distance she felt marginally better about. She drew herself up to level her gaze with his, and while she didn’t curl her lip or even make a sound, her guard-hairs etched inky jagged lines as they stood on end. It took her a few seconds to process what the freckled male had spat at her because her eyes had drifted to the earnest-looking child with him. She was dark as the night sky, and after a moment seemed less certain of the situation. If not for the uncanny eyes the two shared, Sassafras might have wondered who she belonged to.

Her emotions flailed and for a split second she thought she might not be able to keep her questionable cool. She clenched her jaw to steady a slight tremble that threatened to give her away, but she found the hate she’d had for the words he’d hurled that day to be missing from the place she’d left it. Whether because of his young daughter or any one of a dozen other reasons, Sassafras wanted to turn and be on her way. It was only instinct that stopped her.

“I’ve kept my distance,” she corrected icily, “and if you’d like to go your way, I’ll continue on mine.” She reeked of false diplomacy, but she couldn’t imagine finding the strength to turn her back in his presence regardless of anything else that might happen.