Neverwinter Forest and his throat burns from the screaming

she repeats his own name back at him in a similar manner than he'd done hers. a soft chuckle leaves the tundrian's lips as she muses on if his name suits him. he can't rightly say. the name, this time, wasn't expressly his choice alone. "my mother thought so." wintersbane feels himself admitting with a rueful smile. for a moment, lotte's grave flashes in his mind's eye and something painful seizes in his chest. he grieves her, as he grieved her when he realized he was kidnapped and the likelihood of ever seeing her again had been slim to none at all. perhaps, in some form or another, he will always mourn the nightingale queen and the mother-son relationship that had been untimely and unfairly ripped away from them. the tundrian doesn't contemplate children — at all — but he errantly thinks that one day, if he ever has a daughter, he would like to name her after lotte, to honor the queen taken too soon from the corporeal world. "but," he adds with a continued tone of light humor. "she also affectionately called me spleenbane so, who knows."

wintersbane watches with a small tilt of curiosity to the motion as she retreats beneath an evergreen. as she gets presumably comfortable, he relaxes enough to recline upon his haunches. obviously, neither of them are a threat to one another and wintersbane grows tired of being on constant edge all the time. he knows his reputation for creating enemies demands him to be so — if he lets his guard down he might find himself in an early grave beside his mother's own ( though he doubts he'd be buried near her or even at all; he'd likely be left for the scavengers to pick and squabble over ). yet, wintersbane chooses this lone life because his issues with authority make it extremely hard and undesirable to live in a pack settling for too long, for both parties involved.

"yeah," he draws with a low and soft snort, glimpsing over his shoulder. sticky sap has gelled the wispier tendrils of fur at his mane together and decorated them with minty green pine needles. he huffs — he's always been vain — but knows he won't reach the junction of his shoulders and knows he'll just have to deal with it until he can bathe. a few times, because he doubts a single dip in a lake or pond is going to be enough to loosen the sap. "at least it's better than sand." anything was better than sand in winterbane's mind, though.