Moonspear hunger.

Where Tehama's form was petite and soft, her personality tending towards gentleness and warmth, this Desdemona was tall, full of angles and lines, and came across as silent, cool.  What others might have taken for aloofness, however, added to the dark woman's mystique for Te.  The stillness of her demeanor, her sharp edges made her as intriguing as the mountain of Moonspear itself had been.  Moonspear's great peak had beckoned to the traveling female across the wilds, and bade her settle here for the winter, or for longer if they'd have her.  Just the same way, Tehama was not repelled by the dark lady's affect, but drawn closer by it, challenged by it.

"A pleasure to meet you, Desdemona."  Tehama felt the name on her tongue as she softly uttered her response.  She was not a stranger to uncommon epithets and took care to pronounce the name correctly as it had been given.  

For a moment, she considered answering the other woman's question with a platitude, some simple explanation of a traveler seeking shelter and companionship for the cold season, but quickly discarded that possibility.  This female would expect no less than honesty, and did not seem the type for small talk of any variety.  "I was raised on a mountain as breathtaking as Moonspear.  We never knew it was a dormant volcano.  When it awoke, the earth shook. Ash and fire rained down on us.  Our home was ruined, and three wolves died.  We fled to our neighboring pack, but... it was difficult for me to make a life there in the meadows and lowlands.  Always my paws sought to bring me back to a mountainside."

There was the reason why Moonspear, the mountain, attracted her.  But the question, Te sensed, ran deeper, and so she added why Moonspear, the wolf pack, earned her allegiance.  "When I came, I could see right away the pack was strong, in numbers and in leadership.  Nothing I have seen since has dissuaded me of that idea."  She thought of Dirge who was her example of leadership, Sialuq who was her vision of the pack's future, and the prosperity she herself had witnessed as Firefly Glen formed, an extension of the power of Moonspear.  Loyalty and pride rang in her clear voice.