The Sunspire Listening is an Art [IC Joining]

Tagging @Ferdie Von Pelt and/or @Jace but anyone else from SS is also welcome! ^_^ No need to match the length.

Akita was listening. She was listening with her whole body, which took a lot of energy. She sat at the base of a mountain, around fifty feet back from the scent markers that became the invisible borders of the pack lands. She was young, only around eight months of age, but sometimes she felt much older. And other times, she felt like a newborn. Right then, she wasn't sure how old she was in her mind. She knew only these things:

Today it was slightly colder than one would expect during the summer, but because of the high humidity, it felt warmer than it was. The sun was being blocked by layers of rolling white clouds that moved in the gentle breeze, along with the leaves, though the wind was not strong enough to move branches. Birds chirped, and brush skittered on the ground. She was thinking that maybe they would let her in and let her be part of their pack. She was thinking maybe they wouldn't, and she'd have to continue traveling.

Her mind wandered to places strange and far-away. She kept her eyes closed as images of her past played on the inside of her eyelids, helped along by the light filtering through them. Blobs of color appeared to her in the dark as a hawk called overhead and the scent of mountain flowers filled her nose, and the blobs rearranged themselves into recognizable shapes. A tree, a wolf, a fish, a bird. Hers was the mind of an artist, and she never tried to filter her thoughts, so that they flowed from one place to another like water being dragged along by a current. But even so, she listened. She took in all around her and rearranged the information in her mind so that she would never forget.

Without really realizing she was doing it, she tilted her head back and let out a howl, calling for a member of the mountain pack, whose name she did not know. All around her the breeze blew new scents and sounds in her direction, and her nose and ears took it all in. She felt each individual hair on her body that was ruffled by the breeze, and it made her skin beneath tingle. She felt alive...