Blacktail Deer Plateau hey mr no name kid

A queer nighttime silence was settling over the horizon like a hand over a sun-lit forehead, and Feline was in the middle of it all, as quiet as her namesake. Or she is until she hears a muffled crash. The change in her is instant— one ear perks out like a hand with splayed fingers, and she tenses, her lips tight over a tapered face.

She steps forwards (and even that small movement is vicious, her heel digging into the soil), her eyes blue slits below strained eyebrows. As her nostrils flare, the change in her is instant, again, although this time it is different, more complicated. "Max?" she says, feeling extremely apart from her physical body. Her heartbeat beats a matter-of-fact tempo into her skull. "That you?"

Feline knows that she didn't need to ask. That pale face, the particular pattern of brown and white: she would recognize them from a league away, maybe more. Her teeth hurt, until she figures out that she's been clenching her jaws the whole time, like some military veteran finding a colleague he presumed MIA (missing in action). And maybe that comparison wasn't so inappropriate.