Emberwood hellbender

As Masque cautiously ventured closer, they began to make out additional details. His fur wasn’t a solid shade of black but peppered with silver along his back. The tip of his tail was the same bleached shade as the aspen trunks surrounding them. Glowing orange eyes stood out in stark contrast to dark features, marred on one side by a scar.

Even without scent to aid them, they would’ve recognized a wolf with more years behind him than ahead of him. They remembered meeting an elder in the woods, though Masque’s collections of that encounter were vague due to their head space at the time. Their mentality was entirely different today.

Howdy, they echoed, vaguely curious and entertained by the strange greeting. Were you out here hunting too? Masquerade wondered, eyes glimmering as they tried neither to stare at his missing leg nor make any assumptions about what it meant for him.