Razorback Ridge and how they hold you like a gun

hope it is ok for me to drop in here!! :)

the long spine of the mountain is almost a comforting thing; his paws slip down and across the rock, a reminder of his suitability here like teeth to his throat, but as much as it poses a danger there is still something settling about it. there is nowhere to hide, here; there is nothing but the crumbling rock and beyond it there is the knife-sheer edges of the ridge, tumbling down into empty void.

with one misplaced step, he would tumble down the sides. perhaps his neck might snap against the stone; perhaps he might stay awake long enough to reach the plains below. he might bleed out there; he might starve. a single misstep and he would be gone. but if he has ever had any fear of heights, that has long since left him, and he walks the sides with a surety he would never feel if faced with the threat of another person.

for a long while, this is how he moves. past the rare tree clinging to the edge, and then nothing more than stone and sky. his breath echoes in his ears, legs aching from the steepness of the climb, but it is good. he feels safe. if this is hospitable to any other, cat or bear or wolf, caligula will see them in plenty of time.

so he does not startle when he sees the white figure moving ahead of him. a first, certainly.

he does stop, though. as much as the heights do not bother him, he is keenly aware of his own mortality in such a situation, and that of someone else. he does not wish to scare whoever it is who walks ahead of him, and more than that, he is not quite sure what it is. the figure is smaller than a wolf, with ears like tufts of grass, moving insistently forward and over the ridge.

caligula was once good at judging a threat. he led legions of bristling fur and gleaming white teeth into battle, with an eye for weakness, for anything they might exploit; now everything he faces may as well be a step into the waiting arms of a bear. but – and it might be the ridge itself, the heights at which he is perched – this figure does not worry him as, perhaps, it should.

his limbs unfreeze. he continues ahead, draws up a fraction closer before he speaks, though the distance between them is still considerable, as he prefers to keep it. “hello?”