Redhawk Caldera it's harder and harder to get you to listen

for @Praimfaya

the girl stretches out across the rock, tongue lolling as she waits for her breath to even out. a mornings hunt wasted when she'd missed the hare at the last moment, an all too familiar ending to her hunt. she'll continue again soon, she knows, but she'd like nothing more than to fall asleep where she lays. no, that's wrong; she'd much rather have something fresh in her jaws. 

her breath billows before her, twin columns of mist that exist only a moment before falling away. pushing out her forelimbs, she settles her muzzle on her forelimbs, scanning the rock scattered all around. it's a similar picture to what she'd seen often in the mountains to the north, some result of the quakes that had (rather ominously) disappeared.

the excursion to easthollow notwithstanding, praimfaya doesn't venture too far from roangeda, not usually, at least. not with the status of where they stand with both moonspear and nightwalkers still uncertain and with the rusalkan crone still presumably prowling around. praimfaya does not doubt that her klikalida would disapprove of her venturing outside of the fen without him or aleks at her side, at least. but there are times when she wants to take a walk alone, to mourn the loss of her parents in private without being watched by the wolves that would, one day, call her wanheda.

for them, she tries to keep a brave face. tries not to appear weak. but inside her heart aches from the fissures left behind by the deaths of her parents. today, her trip takes her to the caldera, braving the biting chill in the air to venture a bit further than she normally tends to go. she tells herself it's in search for signs of large herds — which was entirely a lie — but mostly its because she wants a few hours where she does not have to reflect on what she's sacrificed for what she has.

on the herd front, praimfaya is unsurprisingly disappointed and pushes down the idle fear that the herds may never return. a figure, sprawled out upon the rock draws her frostbound gaze and at first praimfaya fails to recognize the other girl and plans to sneak past, hoping that she hasn't already been spotted. but then she looks again and a perplexed look crosses her face as vague familiarity begins to sink in. moonshine? praimfaya asks, hoping that was not about to suffer the embarrassment of mistaking the stranger for a girl she met once upon a time.

nanowrimo: 298