Broken Antler Fen there's no place like home

Skwol's breath hitched in his throat as he spied the inky figure. His paw hung in the air in suspended animation and his ears pitched forward. Gold eyes, wide, stared with abandon — afraid to blink the apparition away. He knew it was not her. He knew that with utmost certainty, but he could not neither draw his eyes away nor move and his heart thumped against his ribs in spite of his efforts to shake it off.

He thought he might come undone when her scent swept through the trees and wreathed his nose. There was a faint smell that clung to her that he could not mistake and could not miss. It lent an element of enchantment to this encounter that made him doubt, if only for a moment, that he was awake.

Skwol felt a tremble crawl along his sturdy limbs. There was only way to ground himself. To prove that he was not imprisoned in some nightmare and to rid himself of these unbidden feelings. Of the doubt, and the hope, that this was anything more than he knew it to be: a stranger who looked like her, and who had maybe encountered the same devils he had.

The white wolf set his jaw and forced himself to relax, to hide the stirrings in his chest and the maddening swirl of recollections in his head. Tail swaying calmly behind him, and posture nonchalant, he woofed gently to her, hoping that she might come to him while he was still too rattled to approach himself.