Bramblepoint Tōboe

hope you don't mind me snagging this! <3

With her children halfway to reaching their first year, the mother dove was afforded the ability to range beyond their borders more frequently. She hoped to find evidence of returning plant life though it was still too cold for such things and to determine how the prey near their village had been affected by the plague. With Sivullik becoming a mother, she would need to help provide for the pack as they had when she fell on hard times the season before. 

A light snow fell as she loped across the plains, dusting the cloudberry woman in a spackling of ivory. The she-wolf slowed as neared the tangle of the bramblewood, breath puffing from her lungs in a white cloud of vapor. Peridots flitted across the trees, the forest dormant and still beneath a blanket of white. The artist sniffed at the tracks of a young goat, head dipping earthwards as she determined it had passed through recently. 

The smell of an unfamiliar man accompanied the scent of goat, causing her to hesitate -- feet shifting uncertainly as she cast a wary glance around. 

Squaring her slim shoulders, second wife tugged the deer hide closer around her for warmth as she plowed onwards -- determined that not all strangers, not all men, could be necessarily bad. Aiolos, Inutsuk, Foxfur. They were all good, honorable men. Perhaps this one was too. 

Following the trail, Lótë felt her heart jump into her throat in spite of her bravado when she finally happened upon the pale figure. For a moment, she halted in her tracks. The ruby of his gaze was a comfort however, causing her to take a few more hesitant steps before she stopped a respectable distance from the he-wolf's kill -- not wanting the stranger to think she was here to scavenge. 

"I greet you, hunter," the Nuiruk dipped her head in a slight nod. "I am..Aiwë," she dallied only a moment, not certain she should give him the name Moonglow knew her as. 

"I'm sorry to trouble you," she continued with a small, apologetic smile, "but I came to the forest to see how the game fared with the sickness that has swept the land. Do you happen to know if any of the large grazers on the steppes have been afflicted?" 

The herbalist did not yet realize the man was mute as her own daughter was, waiting patiently for a reply with her ears cocked forward.