Otatso Wetlands There once was a bittersweet man

She answers with a polite greeting of her own, then asks his name. His lips twitch into a faint smile as he paces a few steps closer, just to make conversation easier. He stops several yards away, mindful of her personal space.

"Vermouth," says the dark wolf. "What's yours?"

His thoughts intrude again. The paler the fur, the more ideal; it means a wolf is of superior blood and breeding. This belief was ingrained in him since the day he was born and given the name Vámr for his loathsome black pelt. But because of the treatment by his family -- the rest of them boasting pallid fur, of course, and shunning his inexplicably dark one -- part of him resents anyone of blanched complexion.

His eyes burn with old pain, though he blinks it away again. He's spent the last several years trying to severe himself from those old -- those terribly anachronistic -- beliefs. Though he can't shake them off completely, Vermouth prefers to believe himself in control of them by now. If not of them, then at the very least he's in control of himself.