Blackfoot Forest faith ain't no privilege

Nimbus stopped dead in his tracks, the sight of her stealing the breath from his chest like a punch to the ribs. She moved with a grace that defied the weight of the world, her paws skimming the snow as though the earth itself refused to hold her back. The moonlight caught her pale fur, painting her in shades of silver and frost, so striking that for a moment he thought she wasn’t real. 

But those eyes—orange and alive—anchored her firmly to the world, even as the air between them felt charged with something otherworldly. He swallowed hard, his heart stuttering as memories he’d tried to bury surged to the surface. She wasn’t her. She couldn’t be. 

Still, she stared at him, assessing, curious, her head tilting as if weighing his existence against some unseen measure. His chest tightened, and a faint, bitter laugh slipped past his lips. You’ve got to be shitting me, he muttered under his breath, his voice barely more than a rasp. 

She moved her head, and the motion was so achingly familiar that it cut him open in a way he hadn’t expected. A lifetime of quiet, unanswered longing pressed against his ribs, threatening to spill into the frozen silence between them. 

Nimbus took a step forward, his paws crunching softly in the snow, though his body was rigid, his muscles coiled with something he couldn’t name. A ghost, a stranger—what the hell was the difference when they both made him feel like this? He tried to tear his gaze away, but the way the moonlight framed her made it impossible. 

Nimbus. he muttered gruffly to the night, his voice cracking under the weight of his thoughts but also from months of hardly finding a will to speak.

Nimbus let the silence settle again, though it wasn’t quiet—not inside him. He stood there, caught between the past and the present, unsure which one would swallow him first. But silence was to not be at the sound of the others voice. From solitude to now an audience, Nimbus could feel the pang of longing from a lifetime ago, comradery from friends, a life once spent as part of a pack.

He turned his head to face the other, eyes seemingly glazed over as his scarred ear flickered, unsure if these strangers were a threat.