Otter Creek dancing with demons.

Hello! I’m keeping this sort of vague since I’ve got two other threads going that aren’t done yet. Also, no need to match my length. I keep getting carried away with this character.

Red had been up and down The Sunspire Mountains for at least a week and a half now, and she was sure she had seen all there was to see. Her half-coyote blood told her it was time to move on, though the other half of her - her wolf blood - told her it was time to start making a choice about where she wanted to live. It was strange and confusing warring with her two halves all the time. She wasn’t sure which instinct was stronger: the Coyote’s instinct to move and and run free as a nomad, or the Wolf’s instinct to find a pack, settle down, and defend its borders with her life. However, she found that the simple act of moving was sometimes enough to clear her mind so that she could think properly. And so, she moved.

She moved so quickly, in fact, that she found herself outside of the boundaries of the mountain range in a day, and an entirely new area lay before her, just waiting to be explored. She knew she would take it slowly, though, despite her coyote need to go everywhere. A combination of the fear of wolves and the instincts of one told her that she needed to be cautious and take it easy instead of flinging herself into the Great Unknown. She needed to figure out what her skills were. And she already knew what skill would probably save her the most in a place full of her larger and scarier half-cousins: charisma. Even if she only gained a smidgen of it, she still needed enough of it to have the courage to approach other wolves. Without it, she would never be able to join a pack, or the protection of one.

She decided to start small. Why throw herself at a pack’s borders - especially when that could get you killed - when you could instead go somewhere far away from a pack and hope that you stumbled upon someone? In the back of her mind, Red knew she was taking the coward’s way out, but her instinct to survive was stronger than her personal desire to make friends. Besides, wolves and coyotes didn’t usually get along. Of course, that wasn’t always the case. She herself, being a coywolf, was testament enough to that. But those instances were normally few and far between. Normally, wolves killed coyotes. But she had her father’s blood on her side. If she could get a wolf to see that just because she was half-coyote that didn’t make her a threat, then that would be good enough for her.

She scouted out the surrounding area, looking for a good place to start her search, and spotted a creek nearby that began somewhere above her head, in the Sunspire Mountains, which she had so recently left. She made her way toward the place, and as she neared it, began hearing strange sounds. She had never seen an otter, so she had no name to put to the sounds they were making. So fascinated was she by the furry, slippery little things when she reached the creek that she did not even notice the wolf nearby. The smell of the potential prey animals drowned her scent glands as she dropped into a crouch to watch her prospective meal flounder around in the creek…