Red continued to stare ahead of her at the vast body of water she didn’t know was called an ocean. She had never seen a body of water this big. She had seen plenty of huge lakes before, but never one so big that she couldn’t see the land on the other side. And she had never seen one whose shores moved back and forth, crashing into the sand. She was entranced. The nighttime wasn’t helping her awe, either, since it was keeping her from seeing all that she could have, which lent this place a mysteriousness about it. She was so mesmerized, in fact, that the silvery-white wolf’s chuff of greeting nearly made her jump out of her skin.
She yelped and got up and turned to face the potential threat in less than three seconds, her hackles raised in alarm. But when she studied the male for a moment, she realized that he didn’t seem to be wanting to harm her, so she settled back down. She gave a chuff right back, ears going forward in curiosity to ask, Who’re you?
She hadn’t expected to find anyone out here, but now that she had, her natural curiosity quickly took over. That and her Outrider instincts, which pushed her to learn all she could about others. It was something she had learned to live with long ago. Sometimes it made her friends, and sometimes it made her enemies. Either way, at least she learned who to stay away from and who she could trust. Hopefully this rugged looking he-wolf wouldn’t mind.