Blackfeather Woods where order is wild

she parrots his greeting but follows it up with a question of who he was, followed by an assumption that he's new to the woods. ironic, because he assumed the same thing about her, not knowing her history with these woods. he's not new, not in truth, but he looks nothing like the cream puff cub that nyx had found and briefly taken beneath her wing ...and he'd left long before the girl before him had been born. but he wasn't privy to sharing that particular bit of information. no doubt 'kahlil' was named a traitor. it wasn't truly personal...wintersbane abandoned everything, eventually. it was his calling card. the only one he'd had any issue with was vaati and that's only because the other boy's superiority complex ground on wintersbane's nerves. but for the sake of appearances, he was kind of new. though the newness should surely be wearing off by now.

"i've been here about a month? i don't keep track." did it really matter?, he wonders. time was ...what it was. was someone's worth determined strictly by how long they remained in a place? he didn't think so. he hedges towards annoyance as he replays her question of what he's doing here and interprets it to be an accusation. next time someone told him he didn't belong they'd meet the sharp edges of his teeth. wintersbane grew tired of feeling like an outsider, of being treated like one. he belonged where ever he wanted to belong and that was that.

"i'm exploring." he answers her simply, judging her reaction. "i assume the same of you. i haven't seen you around before." he points out; and he's seen all of it's wolves at least once in passing. at least, the wolves that had been apart of the pack when he joined. of course that number has obviously grown a bit since that time.