Heron Lake Plateau I guess I keep a-gamblin'

Rapidly had Raleska grown, these last several weeks. In a matter of days it seemed she shot up, not unlike some raw shoot from a prolific plant. Gone were the hard lines of travel from her eyes, and eradicated were the signs of subtle starvation ravaging her features. No - now Raleska was in the hale court of youth, well-fed and well-kept. She would always be smaller than perhaps she should have been, in light of the harsh crucible presented in her early months, yet even the memories of such hardship seemed to recede from the girl's waking life.

While her body seemed to triplicate, her persona remained largely unchanged. There was little bloom to be had in her demeanor, which seemed even now as solemn as a bleak winter. Occasionally the girl would entertain @Svalinn in his vociferous demands for play, and while the heart-pain of losing her siblings and father was slowly ebbing, Raleska still seemed churlish in comparison to her sunny half-sibling.

Prone to inspecting whatever camp her mother dictated, Raleska was presently shuffling between a felled beech and the rot that transpired under it. She could hear somewhere in the trunk's hollow a scratching - faint but quite evident when she placed a long ear lengthwise against the bough. Frustrated by her inability to access whatever lurked under the pale tree's hide, she struck the tree's surface and listened as the faint buzzing suddenly stopped.

Cinder often patrolled around his home, greatly curious about The Outside, but not quite having the bravery required to explore beyond the familiar borders just yet. He did not doubt that his sibling had likely already been to investigate, but the smaller boy was not at that stage presently - he'd never in a million years admit to it, though. One day he'd make it out there and show the world that he was the bravest of the brave! Cinder the brave, that would be his name. Not really, but...

His gaze travelled the horizon until he spotted a figure in the distance. From here, he could distinguish that they smelled of home, but he was certain he'd never encountered them before, so with an inquisitive tilt of his head he set off toward her. Once the distance between them was mostly closed, his pawsteps slowed until he was standing still a few metres away, warm smile on his face. "Hullo?"

Raleska's head remained pressed to the rough bough, her expression fixed in attentiveness. Whatever denizen existed beneath the aegis of the tree's surface had been silenced. The girl's face scrunched up in an expression of confusion, but before she had time to shake the tree or dig in its hollows further she caught a flash of silver in her peripherals.

Straightening up rather abruptly, her ears swept back and she returned the boy's warm smile with a suspicious scowl. He was not Illidan or Ephraim or Rhakios or even Svalinn; Raleska held little warmth in her heart for strangers, given how coldly they had treated her. She still remembered being turned callously away, and still recalled how disconsolate despair had settled deep in the expression of her stalwart parents to be turned away from Easthollow.

She felt her fur prickle and her tail rise and did not stop it. With a mighty scowl leveled in poor Cinder's direction, Raleska asked accusingly: "who you?"

The girl straightened abrubtly and cast her gaze in his direction, though it was not warm as he had both expected and hoped. Instead, it held a glimmer of untrusting coldness, her features crumbling into a scowl. Seeing her tail raise, the young Blackthorn lowered himself to the ground and rolled onto his back, a series of whines releasing from his maw as he awaited her reaction - he wanted her to like him, of course! That, and he'd rather not have a tumble with her like Tywyll, who'd bared his teeth when Cinder got cocky and thought he could have a chance at being boss. He wasn't a natural leader, that much was clear.

"I'm Cinder! Who're you?"

Raleska's attitude, poor as it was, was not intended to cow the puppy before her: it was a protective measure, a barricade -- a defense mechanism learned by her short months fighting for survival. When she saw the effect her cold demeanor had on the puppy, her scowl crumbled into something much more manageable and she felt a sting of guilt to have worried him.

Cinder's show of submission was enough to melt the last fringe of iciness in her veins; Raleska gave him a healthy dose of side-eye before she suddenly dropped to the ground in a playbow and borked "I'm Raleska!"

The young Blackthorn was immensely pleased to witness the last hints of the girl's scowl evaporate, and a rush of exhileration flooded his veins when she dropped to the ground in a playbow - his excitement only augmented as she returned her name, and his tail beat enthusiastically at his rear. The boy's own body of grey crouched in a similar gesture to her own, wriggling and eyeballing her with hightened interest. "D'you know what I found out the other day? That a cinder is actually a thing, not just a name! Does your name mean anything? It sounds cool!"

A smile, unusual and light, curled the corners of Raleska's lips as she watched Cinder reciprocate more warm-fuzzies. His tail was going a mile a minute and -- wait a minute, Raleska's was too! She felt the sway of her tail as it hit each side of her hips, but she didn't stop it.

When Cinder mentioned his name meaning something she straightened up, a brief glimpse of her seriousness returning. "No." She murmured, her brow wrinkled in confusion. "What's a cinder?"

He watched her expression with youthful curiousity, gaze glittering with obvious excitement as she responded to his words (despite the hints of seriousness returning). "They're hot and bright... and uhm..." The young Blackthorn's brows furrowed as he struggled to recount Ceara's words, her attempt at explaining the meaning of his name. "They're orange. 'Parently they don't look like me, I look like ash, but my eyes are orange so maybe that's why that's my name!" That's right! He saw them once, peering into a puddle of fallen rain - amongst the ripples he had glimpsed orbs of a burnished bronze, a dimmed orange to compliment his pelt of smoky grey. Raleska's own eyes were that of a predatory yellow - wild and intruiging, despite the scowl that frequented her features.

Raleska had never seen cinders or ash; for that matter, she had never seen fire. Its ravaging capabilities were lost on the girl, who simply regarded this new piece of information as something useless. Dribble to think back on during a rainy day.

Perhaps later on in life, if she was woefully unlucky, she might stare fire in the face and realize its raw power; its absolute, overwhelming fury. It was a good thing she was a babe and had not witnessed the ruin fire was capable of yet - it was likely she would not be able to handle it.

Cinder remained unaffected by her moodiness, either unaware or choosing to ignore it. Raleska frowned, wondering what ash was - to her, he looked like the color of a tired old tree, or maybe the color of the rocks she had seen when they first left her home. Thinking of home made her suddenly cold and lonely -- if she had been unwelcoming before, she was downright frigid now. "Cinder's a stupid name." Raleska mumbled, subjecting poor, sweet Cinder to her mulishly unkind side. She knew as soon as she said it her anger was misdirected, but it was too late to turn back so she stared at him in a daring, almost challenging way.

Cinder's a stupid name.

He felt a little pool of dismay at her response, that gathered in his stomach like a stone; he did not let it show on his face for more than a second though, maintaining his smile as best he could. That sounded like something Tywyll would say, but it was usually a joke, or he was just teasing. She must teasing too, right? The Blackthorn was half tempted to conjure up an insult to cast back, but he knew he wasn't very good at doing that, so instead he attempted to shift the mood to something else.

"What's your favourite thing to do?" His lips were still quirked upward in a half grin, and he hoped she would play along.

Raleska's gaze was unflinching as she watched her words take effect. There was the thing about words, once spoken - they tended to course down a person, trickling through the way water finds a current -- and then, they pooled: either that pool turned stagnant and bitter, or it found its own course and eventually, passed clear.

Cinder was not to be deflated - at least not visibly. He redirected her misdirected aggression with tact that not even most adults possessed - Raleska felt impressed, and she was quick to quell the fanning fingers of quiet admiration that threatened to take ahold of her.

She considered his question with all the compunction (and equal reservation) of a child and then blurted: "I like swimming." Then, she realized she had opened up herself to be ridiculed for the things she did like -- if her brothers were still alive, they would sink their claws into such an opening, and torment her mercilessly; she half expected Cinder to be the same, and again challenge seemed to snake into her gaze, laced with fragments of distrust.

He was greatly pleased that his words had redirected the conversation back to a safer course, and allowed little twinkles of curiousity to glimmer in his bright copper eyes - that was the thing about children; they were so terribly curious, and Cinder was, of course, no exception. He had wondered many things, he always wondered.

She liked swimming. It wasn't what he had anticipated, and it caused his silvery ears to tip forward from his crown, observing Raleska with interest. "Swimming..." He murmered, lips parted slightly in thought. "I never tried to swim b'fore... not... properly, at least." His conclusion came after a few moments of contemplation, for his memory wasn't the greatest, but he did not recall trying to swim before. The young Blackthorn peered back up to meet her gaze but noted the challenge in her eyes - had he done something to upset her? His head quirked, but he did not mention it in hopes that the tension would calm. "Maybe you could teach me sometime?"

His sweetness mystified Raleska, who had been raised by much harsher hands: where was the hidden motive, the obscured manipulation? If she was standing in front of Svalinn he might have trusted her to the ground, or issued some kind of battle-cry the moment their eyes met. Cinder had no such fire-power, and Raleska was simply flummoxed by the lack of clear confrontation in those soft eyes.

She was too disciplined by her family's ways to unravel her misgivings in one day: it would take Cinder much longer than that to tap her hardened shell and coax her out from its spiny back. For every nice wolf she had come across, she had come across twice as many cruel ones - Raleska still thought of the stern-faced wolves at that stony summit, that had turned her family away to starve.

Her gaze flickered from the kind boy, to the pond in the center of their home. Caiaphas had never forbidden them from entering its depths - likely because swimming was in their blood -- shifting upright, Raleska knew what she had to do.

"Race you to the water, then." She challenged, but didn't wait for an answer. Already the little sprite was hustling to the banks with a stupid-wide and smug smirk on her face.