Ravensblood Forest your key won’t shine like this

@Wintersbane!

Saucy had wandered from the borders of Stormrift to the other areas of the coast that she’d been familiarizing herself with lately. The forest she’d chosen today was like the others, full of sequoias unmatched in height but bare as bone. Winter certainly made adventuring more boring, for everywhere looked the same; empty and barren. There weren’t as many smells or colors to see, just the good old white stuff that nipped coldly at your toes.

Saucy was ankle deep in it now, trotting through the forest and trying to stay in the sunnier patches, where she could absorb the warmth better.

there is a part of wintersbane — a part that grows ever stronger with the passing of each night that he spends west — that yearns to return to the taiga. to return to the hollow he intends to claim. recruitment and traveling to see it happen is all a necessary evil. packs don't build themselves and wintersbane has a feeling that it's success will depend largely upon the effort he is willing to put forth to see it to fruition. so he spends time away from the taiga where there is not a lot of foot-traffic, trusting those he has recruited and chose to not venture out in search of wolves to sway to their cause to hold down the fort in his absence. speaking of it to any and all that would listen whether they join or not. word of mouth was a powerful tool that the tundrian has learned over the years of his life to utilize to it's full and unbridled potential.

thus he treks through ravensblood forest once more; steps slowing to sniff curiously at the forest floor as he comes across a familiar scent. it is familiar...but also unfamiliar to the fact that there are a myriad of new and different scents laced so intricately with her own. it doesn't take him long to find her, and he recognizes her almost straight away. saucy. a low chuff presses from betwixt his teeth to announce his presence to her.

A low chuff caught the girl’s attention, her ears perked to it and her head turned to find him. The air smelled of the forest mostly, but she caught a wolf scent as well, a familiar one at that. She scanned the tree line with icy blue eyes for him, until at last she saw a smoky blue figure coming towards her. She recognized him immediately, his pelage was not easy to forget. A smirk came to her maw and her tail began to sway, her form shifting to face him with a boyish posture.

Eyy, stalker boy! Whaddup? she called to him with the nickname she’d decided upon at their first meeting. Hopefully he wouldn’t be offended or anything, all her friends had one, and somehow his wasn’t the worst.

eyy, stalker boy saucy greets him as she draws nearer with a smirk and a sway of her tail. wintersbane gives a theatrical roll of his eyes and a low snicker. i'm not your stalker boy — he grumbles half-heartedly. haven't even seen you in ages. ok, so maybe ages was a bit of an exaggeration but it's true they haven't spoken in some time. months, likely. pick any good fights lately? wintersbane asks her and then draws in her scent noting that it's no longer singular. other scents lay over her own now and he doesn't particularly recognize them. seems like you found a pack. he points out similar to her observation the first time they met with a smirk tugging at the edges of his lips.

Saucy have a playful psh in reply to his first comment, about having not seen her. Yeah I haven’t seen you in ages! You’ve probably probably seen me plenty of times, Stalker Boy, she replied with a tilt of her head. He’d been one of the first wolves she’d met in these Wilds, so though she would tease, Wintersbane held a special place in her heart. Her favorite stalker.

Pick any good fights lately, he asked, and Saucy replied with a grin, Hell yeah, I’m basically the best fighter on the coast ask anybody you meet. I promise they’ll start groveling when you say my name. This of course was an exaggeration, but a lot of Saucy’s charm was in her playful narcissism. She of course knew it to be fake, but she couldn’t sell herself short of a war goddess, it wasn’t in her nature to. 

Wintersbane next commented on her scent, that she was part of a pack now. She nodded, calming her jokes a little to talk about Stormrift, I have, we’re a strong group, Stormrift. We live that way, at this bay, she said, with a quick gesture towards her home. Then back to him with a smirk, See how I did that? Talked about my pack without having to be pretty much tortured for it? she was of course referring to his value of discretion, which Saucy had tried to word weave around the first time they met.

ack, goddamnit. wintersbane plays along with an overly, stretching-it-to-the-limits-of-exaggeration sigh. fine you caught me. can't seem to help myself. it's your charming personality. it just draws me in like a moth to a flame, y'know? the part about her charming personality? wasn't a lie. wintersbane openly enjoyed her company and found the fact that she was a firecracker to be a mixture of admirable and entertaining. groveling you say? wintersbane murmurs on a hum. groveling at my feet at the drop of your name would be nice. a wisecrack told with a sly and shiteating grin. i might just have to give it a try. a waggle of his brows is given followed by a low chuckle that rumbles good-naturedly in his chest.

ok, ok, wintersbane acquiesces. i get it, smartass. wintersbane mumbles under his breath with a very real roll of his eyes. he calls her 'smartass' in a similar fashion that she calls him 'stalker boy'. perhaps he's finally found a nickname for her. i had to be careful. there's a level of ...discretion that's required when trying to recruit for blackfeather woods and trust me it did not make it easy. confidentiality is kinda their thing. even now, severed from them as he chooses to be, there are things he cannot talk about borne from the blood-red pawprint marking on his shoulder — fading as it was — that keeps with it a lingering sense of loyalty.

Saucy smiled when Wintersbane played along, blinking as though bashful when he complimented her. Oh don't flatter me, please, she teased, batting her long lashes at him in a girlish manner. And then back to her usual stance, a low chuckle and a jaunty shake of her limbs. She grinned, Do it. I promise, scouts honor, she said, raising a paw in oath.

Her smirk broke into a few soft giggles, she did love messing with Wintersbane. A somehow now he felt more loose, less serious and straight. He was always fun, but now he was fully flinging himself into her humor, and she was throughly enjoying herself. Upon being called, smart-ass, Saucy's eyes widened. Aww! While some would be offended, Saucy took this as a compliment. It meant that her attempts at being said smartass were working.

The way he spoke of Blackfeather woods led her to believe that they were part of the past. She scraped a paw along the ground, You still doing assassin shit for them? she said.

oh, i will. i'm never one to shy away from an opportunity when i see one. wintersbane quips with a haughty quirk of his lips. though he says them in the line of their teasings of one another there is an undeniable truth to his words. the topic of blackfeather woods was inevitable — bound to come up whenever he chanced a run-in of anyone that'd met him during his time there. he kept the mark of the brotherhood and plans to keep it despite that he knows he won't be returning ( though it would come about later that there would be no blackfeather woods to return to anyway ). he uses it now for his own symbolism but also so that he does not forget relmyna and the daedra whose whispers have begun to fade and die. was he suffocating them from him? or were they dying with the woods? did it even work like that?

no, wintersbane finally answers drawing in a deep breath and letting out in a heavy expel. i left them. he admits. their numbers had been dwindling for some time and despite my best efforts at recruitment — ok, so maybe not his best. i recognize when it's time to jump ship. it was selfish not to cling to the fading heartbeat of the dark woods and hope that it might rejuvenate ...but then again selfish was what wintersbane did best.