Dawnlark Plains 'cause you're my present, my future, my lesson, my teacher

*big eyes emoji*

despite the hope that her estrus cycle would just sputter out before it began like the sparks of a fire that would not set — she'd been lucky her first year as a mature adult — her hopes were in vain. she knows the moment she goes into heat, feels the shift in her body. smells it on herself. worse yet, she feels the marrow deep instinct to seek out the males of drageda. she ignores it and sticks to the plan she'd constructed when the shift in hormones had first begun: she would isolate herself. head into the taiga — where last she knew it was not very populated — and wait out it's duration.

it starts out fairly good. as she moves towards drageda's southern border she checks over her shoulder periodically to make sure that she wasn't being trailed. by male and female alike. the thought of another woman approaching her during her estrus cycle sparks aggression in her — not exactly an unfamiliar emotion for her — and she's afraid if she's approached by one of her male comrades she might not resist them. worse yet she might entice them. she sends up a short howl to announce that she'll be out of territory on a scouting trip and slips out of the territory.

the snows of dawnlark plains give blodreina the impression that it's barren and she welcomes to drab sight, letting the chill seep through her fur, letting it cool off the physical heat that simmers beneath her pelage. she's been traveling for a few hours and is so focused on the itch seething restlessly beneath her skin and how much she is resenting it that she doesn't notice the sky turning grey and ominous ...nor that she was, driven by primal instinct flooding her brain with pheromones, that she was seeking out the scent of a male she'd caught briefly on the wind. it doesn't register until she spots his shadowy figure in the closing distance through the fog.

skrish. the trigedaselng explicit slips from betwixt her lips and she tries to divert her course, tries to make her legs take her in a different direction but they do not oblige to her will. she is lured helplessly in his direction like a moth to a flame ( likely not how it was supposed to go, but she's never been normal, yolo ). her eyes the color of blue-green sea glass studies him in as she lets out a chuff to announce her presence, haunching her shoulders against a particularly frigid gust of wind. he is tall, dark and handsome ...even covered in the scars. perhaps the scars add to his appeal. it tells blodreina he is a warrior, a fighter; or if he isn't that he's at least a survivor and she appreciates each ragged cicatrix that marks his flesh. and maybe she's just a little jealous that he has more than her.

it's only after she studies him and casts a brief, forlorn glimpse is cast to the darkening sky overhead that she notices her kill. but she isn't hungry. she wants but not in a way she's ever known before ( and it's definitely not food she wants ). she should keep moving, she tells herself. just keep walking. except her steps slow to a cease a few feet away. i didn't realize it looked so ominous. she admits to the stranger. would it have stopped her from trekking through the plains even if she had? probably not. the more distance she could put between her and any male she personally knew the better.