Sequoia Coast born into cruelty and crooked form

She did not flee nor approach him, and this interested him. There had been many who had done either, though the wolves here seemed almost too curious for their own good. It was one way that they had amassed a follower or two, however temporary, but inevitably in the end that number would always dwindle back down to two—himself, and Stjornuati.

He turned an ear questioning, wondering what it was that held her in place. Was it the curiosity of him? Fear? His head tilted to appraise her then, the silence between them comfortable in his eyes (and perhaps only his eyes). She was not a meek creature by any means, her own face carved out of a deep displeasure that seemed to radiate now from her very being. Solpallur did not discern if it was his presence that caused this and deigned not to care; she could see herself off if she didn’t like him.

The intensity of his gaze held her like a fly trapped in amber.

“Rusalka,” he called to her finally, his voice ever a snagged and snared thing. He recognized her scent now, or rather the essence in the commonality of it. He recalled the wolf on the ridge, though he hadn’t the faintest clue who he was just in the way he did not know her. Was this another psuedo-interrogation about to begin, only in a language he could speak? And then he remembered little Miwa and her words about the coast—was she a lost babe from their home?

He did not know all the words to ask, so he waited.