Blacktail Deer Plateau sincerely in light

-- All welcome.

Akhlut stood at the plateau's edge, where rolling foothills began their change into rocky outcropping. His posture was as stiff as the great stone slab that was the Plateau itself. This much further inland, a thin blanket of snow lay flawlessly where once tall grasses had flourished under the summer sun, and against that ivory backdrop, the Alpha of Horizon Ridge cut an imposing figure of ebony.

The clipped howl issued moments before faded into the cold air of a winter morning, bearing with it the tones that would set the atmosphere for this meeting. He had requested the Alpha's presence, announcing himself the leader of a pack in his own right, and declaring their relations neutral, and at this point, terse. Brevity and directness were not due to any ill will to the Plateau pack; they were simply a natural and expected necessity when the all around behavior of this pack was unknown and their attitude towards outsiders unassessed. It was, frankly, good business to err on the side of caution.

Akhlut spared a moment, while he waited stoically, to wonder where he had gained that insight from. Certainly his parents had never sat him down and expressly trained him for leadership. It seemed to come so naturally to both of his mothers that he supposed they had never even considered that it might be something they could teach. Yet he found himself thinking of these things, like establishing communication with their nearest neighbors, practically as common sense. He supposed that so long as his common sense and luck held out, he might be able to do this leadership business after all.