Duskfire Glacier Trouble in the Stepstones

In great lumbering strides did the bear of a wolf come, dirt stains clinging up to her forelimbs and helter skelter elsewhere upon her furs. Halfway into her dig, Tikigâk determined she was not satisfied with this location—she would scout out another, after a patrol to stretch her legs. The wildworn woman did not get very fall before the call of her mate rang—and Tikigâk answered swiftly with a long, low one of her own. 

She descended toward the crowd slowly, picking her way expertly as she moved the way in which only one born upon such heights would ever be capable of—with a deft sort of ease that revealed as much. Her gaze nakedly dressed down the two she did not know—one man as gigantic as herself and her mate covered in the hue of moonless nights and old bloodspill, and he had found the missing moon in the she-wolf alongside him. Silverstone and craterdark, her smaller stature (in comparison to those around her) did not deceive Tikigâk who noted well the lean muscle, the sharp strength they carried. The scars were noted, and Tikigâk wondered if those on her hindquarters had gone down deep to muscle to effect movement. 

Proudly did Tikigâk move toward the wolves, now on level ground, her head and tail held aloft in a show of her place. Her gaze did not leave them as she stepped alongside her mate, pressing her own shoulder solidly against his own for a moment before she stepped toward the two strangers to exchange scents with them in the way of the wolf. 

If these were enemies, there would already be blood. But who stood upon Darukaal soil? They smelled unfamiliar to her. One ear back turned toward her mate, the other remained alternated its position upon the others and the wilderness, listening.