Hoshor Plains god is a city overflowing with fists

The last time Shivali stepped across these borders, she found herself in trouble. The monster still haunts her most nights, reminding her of his crimes but she can make the most of it during the day. She checks the borders often, knowing she puts herself at risk of him finding her—he knows where she lives, after all—and the other pack knows they’ve returned to their land. Hopefully they have no interest in trying again, for their numbers are too small to defend anything and the newborns will be at risk. But Kove does not take them somewhere safer. Perhaps if he knew what had happened to her and the dangers that linger outside their forest but the words are far from coming to the surface.
 
This day, she is restless and itching to be… anywhere else. She does her best not to worry about Iliksis, or the Redhawks, and travels to the lake where she’d met a Sunspire wolf. It is a risk, finding another pack wolf, but she continues on until she locates Bison on the other side of the lake.
 
For the next several hours, into the late afternoon, Shivali follows them into an open plain.
 
She keeps her distance from them, doing her best to blend into her background of snow, but the day warmed enough for foliage to pop through and her disguise is broken in place. One spots her but does not do anything more than a huff, so she keeps her distance and moves further back, hunkering down into the snow to wait on their next move.

vague vague whats a timeline

how easy it is to slip into old habits, donning his melancholic aura like a cloak as he flees his emotions at the vale. only last time it hadn't been his fault at all and now it's all on him, the failed leader. the great shirker. he's not equipped for any of this! he's not, but. 

but.

outside of the vale he can breathe a little easier. he misses the sweep, close enough to tindome that he could disappear into it without feeling as if he's abandoned the pack. the mountain range is bigger, more traitorous. (he thinks bitterly: they don't really need him though, do they.)

delight's pace slows as he realises abruptly he's not alone, the creeping sorrow of his thoughts abruptly, momentarily vanished. the bison he'd been ignoring (or rather, hadn't particularly noticed). the woman stalking them, though... for a moment the morwinyon thinks about turning back to tindome, not wanting to be in company. but then again, it reminds him of the sweep and his chance encounters, and so he lowers himself slightly and creeps closer. "you can't take one down on your own, y'know," delight says skeptically by way of greeting, his gaze flicking back over to the unruffled herd animals.

Her right ear falls back the moment something shifts in the air, the crunching of snow difficult to disguise. They aren’t urgent steps, careless and unaware, and for the moment she remains hidden and dark blue eyes focused on the bison ahead. When the stranger’s footfalls change, then shift, both ears fall back against her head and she tenses. By scent alone, it is not Iliksis, but she won’t feel comfortable until she puts her eyes on him but something keeps her from glancing back over her shoulder.
 
She flinches when he speaks and she turns, looking at him. The words don’t mean much to her but his skepticism doesn’t go ignored.
 
“Track,” she says, squinting, hoping it is the right word. She turns her head back and shifts but she doesn’t necessarily find discomfort in his presence. Even Kove wasn’t always welcome close before today but a foreign itch comes along to disrupt her routine. Following the bison has given her an outlet for the extra energy but the new presence adds a strange weight she isn’t prepared for.

ooc: phone posttt

unsure how to take her -- not even an answer, just a statement, delight squints. track? tracking the bison? why? 'is your pack nearby or something?' he asks, scanning the area in case he's accidentally interrupted some pack hunt he didn't know about.

he hopes he's wrong though. the last thing they need is more neighbors.

She gets the same confused reaction she often does with anyone else. Maybe she’s mistaken in his tone, or purpose, but he seems to ask about her pack. Shivali takes a deep, frustrated breath, wishing to get out of the conversation but the pull of his proximity keeps her rooted.
 
Licking her lips, she turns her head back to the bison and watches as they begin to meander in the opposite direction. They aren’t going fast enough for her to be concerned and she can still see them in the afternoon light. “South the mountain,” she says, glancing back at him to see if they have better luck understanding this time.

she seems weirdly put off by talking to him, but she hasn't exactly shooed him away. maybe it's just the communication barrier, or something else unrelated to him. either way he takes a step back, ready to leave her alone until she answers his question. south of the mountain... he runs through his mental roster and hazards a guess: "redhawk caldera?"

not-so-secretly he hopes he's wrong: his expression twists slightly in pre-emptive disdain. there are other packs in the area, surely, but ugh it would be his luck to run into someone from the caldera when he's already feeling down.

Her eyes narrow as he asks her a question, repeating the name of the enemies to Blackfeather Woods. Their recent arrival on their borders doesn’t sit well and his accusing look gives her mixed information but what does that mean for him? Is there something wrong with the caldera, or is his face just… like that? Shivali licks her lips, deciding she doesn’t like it, and shifts her weight a little to be able to spring away if she needs to, but ultimately answers anyway: “no.”
 
Not knowing where the caldera is, really, other than the wolves had come from the western border, she glances over to the mountain range behind them, repeating herself. “South,” she tries to better enunciate so he’d understand. “Mountain,” she adds with a points south east, hopefully away from the caldera.

oh. well. good. he nods, pretending to follow her vague directions for a moment before sighing. he has no idea what south of the mountain means. out loud he says, "i've never been there," hoping that will explain his confusion/ignorance. when delight was younger he wanted to roam, and that wanderlust is still there, latent, in the way his treacherous paws carry him from the borders in times of stress.

but he can't quite commit to it yet. "so why track the bison?" delight asks, changing the subject (sorta), his gaze flicking back to the slow moving beasts. he knows she isn't going to answer him properly, but he fills the silence with questions anyway. "are you gonna like, herd 'em back that way? or bring someone else from your pack over to get 'em? there's a couple other claims around here, they may not like that."

He admits to never being where she points and she doesn’t elaborate. She doesn’t know fully what’s down there and she doesn’t want to unnecessarily invite him somewhere that may reveal her and others and the lies she’s created. For the safety of Blackfeather, at least—for her, for the children—she’ll keep it up. And thankfully he doesn’t remain on the information for long. No, instead he goes on to speak about the bison again follows it up with a series of fast paced questions that cause her eyes to widen a little, trying to absorb what he’s saying.
 
And in frustration, she blurts: “slow.” She blinks a few times, and shakes her head, hoping to elaborate. “Not my tongue.”

delight's mind is generally fast-paced (frantic, one might say unkindly) -- the downfall of being a smart introvert, he's not the best at pacing himself and he lacks the patience to try. she manages to shut him up though, earning a surprised look that slides into comprehension quickly. a language barrier. he wishes he spoke more than one language -- he'd tried to learn a little of mato's, the druid language tindome's based on, but beyond grasping enough to say the ranks correctly he could never quite get his head around it.

"sorry," the morwinyon says sheepishly, scratching his ear. he pauses and then rewords: "um. are you... bringing the bison to your pack?"

He understands that, thankfully, and apologizes for his previous attempt. Shivali brushes it off as best she can, but he still asks another question. Considering asking him to shut up entirely still remains on the table but this time she keeps her mouth shut and focuses on the bison. What is she going to do with them? She doesn’t know in that moment but keeping tabs seems significant, a good hunt may do them well, and something as big as bison would feed all of them. And it may help the restless itch she can’t quite shake.
 
“I want to,” she says through a thick accent. There’s no other answer. The obvious situation is presented to the both of them and she wouldn’t ask for help to drive them back, even if she thought they could be successful. “They go north, though,” she points out with an indifferent shrug.

he cannot fathom why she has given herself such a difficult task. is there not food down in the south? why on earth is she all the way up here trying to herd bison? especially given, as she's aptly pointed out, they're more inclined to go the opposite way. the obvious solution is not so immediately obvious to the morwinyon, who's physicality often manifests in laziness even if he's lead a few pack hunts in his time.

"hm," he says absently, "shame." he doesn't mean to be callous, really, he's just got a lot going on right now. instead of being helpful, he asks, "why? er, why do you want to herd them," curious what her m.o. is.

Thankfully he slows down and keeps it that way but he still has questions and she frowns, staring out across the dark plains. She doesn’t think she can herd the bison back to the woods but it’s a nice thought and now this wolf has come along to ruin her work and slow her down. She’s distracted because he’s here and now frustrated that they keep traveling north, away. 

”They closer before,” she says, shifting her restless legs and begins to stand. The changes in her body are subtle but she’s clearly not receptive, preferring to get away from the dainty male than to stick around. ”I go now,” she says and begins to trot off, the faintest hint of sweet left behind.