Qeya River over the hills and far away

Her greeting made him laugh aloud before he even knew who it was; no one had called him "young man" in quite a long time. He was aged on his best day, and now, with the famine, his bony frame made him look one or two years older than that. Grinning, Shale turned around to face a cream-pelted woman, her dark eyes glittering like pebbles under the surface of a fast-flowing stream.

"Hello, miss," he responded, the cheeky emphasis on the second word impossible to, well, miss. "Just out for a hunt," he added, as if it were a casual stroll in the woods. "What about yourself? I've not seen you around here before."

Okay, so he hadn't been the most observant wolf lately, being either tied to the den or hunting down prey. Chances were, they had crossed paths and he simply hadn't noticed. That wasn't, however, anything that needed to be brought up in a polite conversation. Especially not with a pretty young woman like this.