Bearclaw Valley rolling in and caught again

the preparation of @Merrick's altar complete (and the surprise yet to be revealed), astara busied herself now with making bearclaw valley her home.

for the last year, she had made a life being a vagrant. to come to the same den every day, to each daily -- it seemed a civilized life she was not used to.

but one she deserved.

squatting to mark along the perimeters (particularly where the crone had rested, her spirit fleeing her body - how astara wished that scent would fade!), astara left long gouges in her wake. clawmarks, riddled with scent -- to let all know she lived here.

it was to the fading reek of rot that merrick returned to grieve and to mope; he frowned at it, lowering one shoulder and then another to wallow in the last of caiaphas' scent.
astara had made no secret of how much she disliked the crone, but the boy would not let the old woman fade unnoticed. her legacy, then, would also be the valley, and hang it if the nightshade did not agree.
keeping away from his lover, for he did not wish to see the burn of jealousy in her haunting eyes, not now so soon after his would-be mother had passed, merrick wandered  to the western gate and began to hike his leg over various foliage.

over time her path intersected with merrick's. the scent fresh, the direction deliberately opposite. astara deduced this with a narrowing of her purple gaze, her lips pursed.

so, he was angry with her. let him nurse in his own foibles of attaching his worth to something living and breathing; astara knew her self-worth was implicitly her own to govern, and sniffed bitterly at the rift that had risen between them.

she dared not mark over merrick's scent, but she did not make her passing unnoticed either. for every mark he deposited, astara left her own alongside it -- entwining their scents in serpentine, over and over until the valley was riddled with evidence of their claim.

had merrick been older, he might have laid better plans for the dealings of those who followed him in the new season. he had little inkling of what was to come; it would be a great and angering distraction for the boy.
on he ranged, astara trailing at a distance, until he came to a frozen stream. there merrick hesitated, scenting around the bank with a frown.
crossing would be possible, but he did not wish to run the gamut of danger — subconsciously the young madman paused, awaiting the arrival of his shadow.

they came to a stream, yet merrick did not ford it.

delayed, astara lingered behind with her gaze roving the banks. they were rimed in thin sheets of ice -- the surface translucent and brittle along the stream's edge. astara dared not nimbly leap across: the gurgle of the rushwater told her the thin bridge of ice above it was but a veil -- she would no sooner waltz across its surface as if it were water.

a shared look to merrick, and she knew he thought the same.

she shrugged, nosed along the frozen reeds, and headed upstream for better vantage.

he turned as she led on; for a long moment, merrick felt only contentment as he strode across the bankway of iced mud alongside her. 
tail flagging at his hips, the young coywolf cast his gaze about for a suitable crossing place, but soon lost interest.
instead merrick stopped dead and paced in front of astara, seeking to pin her too with the flame leaping singular in his narrow face.

for a time, they walked alongside one another. astara was content in this - the silence between them filled by the rush of ice-cloyed water. she might have continued this path longer, did she not hear the turn of merrick's tread, and the shuffle of snow underfoot.

she turned sharply as he rounded her, expecting the burn of that singular eye upon her -- and reared, ready, with one paw raised to club roughly at his cheeks in playful counter.

astara rose to him in playfulness, and merrick, relieved by signs of what appeared to be the end to their cold war, leapt at her happily. jaws nipped gently at her limb; he swung his hip in an attempt to knock her off balance; he danced backward and cast himself down in a bow upon the icewrought ground.

her goal to ford the water was cast aside: now, her focus was merrick.

she followed his form, watching intently his maneuvers -- measuring his stride, his purpose, his ambitions.

he swung at her paws with light teeth, disturbing the iridescent black of her fur. he butted her with his hips, sending her sideways. as she fell back in the snow he pulled away in a playbow, and it was then she lunged like a black alligator for his extended paw, rolling in the snow with a playful growl.

lithe and glimmering. any lingering irritation fell away; he was fully hers once more, restored as her jaws clutched his paw a moment. laughing, collapsing opposite her in the misted powder, scuffling and breathless in this unadulterated show of bonding and wolven affection.
"i love you," he panted in a handful of moments, elated, ecstatic.

between the two of them, a primal focus came to life. in that moment astara forgot about the struggles of establishing their pack, of enforcing their claim -- even of fording the stream.

for in that moment she was beheld in merrick's glittering eye -- and in that eye, his world entire reflected back at her: dark and black with two pointy ears, and indigo gaze.

i love you, he breathed into her fur and she breathed back. with no tongue in which to answer she preened the goldspun fur of his neck, a growl of affirmation purling in her throat.

i love you also.