Bitterroot Valley ✢ Pretty boy

Sega stood tall upon the lip of a low rise, shoulders broad and steady against the valley’s autumn chill. His pale coat caught the waning light, dusted with grit and travel, scars old and quiet upon his hide. Below him stretched the wide basin of the valley— a bowl of grass and stone hemmed in by mountains, the wind slipping in with a long, cold whistle.
And there, the herds. Caribou and elk moved in their slow tide, a living river of flank and antler. Sega’s eyes followed the current of them. Not as the aimless wanderer he had once been, but as hunter and strategist. His paws planted firm, every muscle quiet but alive as he read their shifts, their bunching, their stragglers. He had begun to push them, not with teeth, but with presence, the weight of his shadow at the ridge steering them toward narrow ground.
Behind him, somewhere in the stillness, Svana lingered— her scent a tether, familiar and warming. Further off, the darker shapes of Blackfell and Gjalla could not be ignored either, their eyes surely upon this same land. Yet here, in the silence between them, Sega was alone with the herds and the work of his body.

AW but can be for @Ezra or @Angel Oak