Whitefish River she fears I'll be a servant to my history

her winding trail takes her once more beyond the borders. it can not be helped; the robin she's trailing is a flighty thing, moving ever further away. when finally it flutters further away than she can hope to follow it, she takes stock of her surroundings; distantly, perhaps over that ridge, the river rushes on. it is a quite glen she finds herself in now; that is, for this fleeting moment at least, lit by careful rays of sunlight filtering boldly through the cloud cover. the girl blinks, stepping toward a sprig of green that appears too fresh, too new, to belong to any of the previous summer's life. 

@Zephyr (?)

*invades*

Quell loved the coast and would've been happy romping along the shores the rest of her days. But she had been sent forth from Seabolt with a mission: see if there was large game elsewhere. The leaders were loath to move from the pack's island fortress, yet they had been slowly going hungry these last few months. Ever since the flood, the herds had vanished from both the island and the nearest mainland. Although Q couldn't participate in big game hunts, they knew she had a knack for tracking. If she did come across any prey, she would report directly back home with her findings, then the leadership could decide whether to uproot and relocate the pack.

With this in mind, the youth ventured inland, looking for any signs of ungulate habitation. With respect to Frolic's needs, Q stayed near a river, trotting southeast through a thick woodland and threading through a small mountain pass. Beyond that, the land opened up into a sweeping plain. Still following the river, the she-wolf vigilantly scanned the wintry grasslands, aware that these would be ideal feeding grounds for herds. Somewhere along the way, Frolic slithered down from her shoulder and began to bounce alongside her.

But when he saw something ahead, the young otter darted in between her forelegs without warning. "Fuck's sake, Fro," Q muttered as she nearly tripped over his lithe body, though she squinted ahead and saw the source of his uneasiness. There was a wolf further upriver, albeit a distance from the water's edge. Quell pulled a series of faces as Frolic forcibly scaled her leg and shoulder, his claws pinching her skin, but said nothing as she studied the stranger from afar.

"Hold onto your butts," she said to Frolic before breaking into a canter, the river falling away behind them as they approached a she-wolf who looked about the same age as Quell. She slowed as she neared her, ignoring Frolic's quiet titters just behind her head as she shouted a greeting: "Hey, you, with the face!"

she presses a paw to the sprigs, gently pushing them down only to watch them spring up again. they're alive, then, at at the tips of the emerald stalks, something is beginning to bloom. she extends her muzzle towards it, giving the plant a cautious sniff as she considers talking a stalk home to show her mother. no, it'd only—

she starts, badly, at the voice. twisting, she managed to step on one of the tiny sprigs of green; crushing it into the snow. her heart drops, expression morphing into despair. it is as if she's crushed something animate and undeserving; her gaze grows alarming watery. one of the very first signs of life, and she's killed it. she's a murder. 

she springs back, and so does the feeble flower; albeit rather crookedly, and only managing a forty-five-degree angle. but even more pressing than her newly discovered murderous tendencies is the arrival of a stranger, to which she offers a wavering, "me?" nothing else nearby seems to have a face, however, and so shortly follows a "hello." 

The stranger's tremulous "Me?" earned an amused snort from Q as she dug her heels into the cold earth to brake fully to a stop. It was so tempting to rib her about it, maybe make some joke about how she was actually talking to that crumpled flower under the girl's foot. Instead, Quell simply gave a breathless, "Yeah, you. Hi."

She paused a moment to catch her breath, her pale eyes traversing the other adolescent's face and figure as her flanks rose and fell in a quieting rhythm. She licked the foam from the corners of her mouth then and spoke, saying, "My name's Quellcrist and I'm looking for some deers. Would you happen to know where they're all hiding?"

the girl announces her intent, and clementine shakes her head in soft no. "I don't know. I haven't seen any in, um, months." tongue darts out over her lips, rather disappointed with herself. she'd never long considered where they'd gone, in truth, only that they'd gone away. away was an abstract place she'd never truly questioned. 

eager to provide some sort of information, and rather proud of the little flowers, she takes a step back, motioning down. "I, um, found these. They're very nice." she offers, realizing rather quickly that it sounds entirely shallow. "it could be a good sign. things are growing—maybe, um, the deer'll come back and eat them." she offers, rambling somewhat in an attempt to be useful.

Her ears flicked backward in displeasure at the news, though it didn't particularly surprise her. "Well, damn," Quell muttered under her breath. She was saved from feeling crestfallen for too long, as the stranger drew her attention to that wilted flower and mentioned how the growths might be the first sign that the herds would return.

It made logical sense, though Q wasn't entirely certain. Most plant life went dormant over the winter, yet the herds weren't adversely affected, at least according to her leadership. Their disappearance this year was highly unusual. They all intuited it had something to do with the flood and the quake that had caused it but nobody could really say why. Maybe Quell was young and naive, though often she wondered if the herds had simply been frightened away and would eventually creep back when they decided the coast was clear.

"I hope you're right," she answered before asking, "You got a name or should I keep calling you 'hey, you, with the face'?" Despite the pointed nature of the joke, she grinned and waved her tail, hoping to put the other girl's obvious nerves to rest. There was something else that might help with that too. "And this is my homeboy, Frolic," Q introduced, turning broadside to reveal the otter seated between her scapulae.

the stranger doesn't move to inspect the flower as she'd hoped, but she seems to accept her hypothesis about the deer easily enough. her question has a small 'o' appear on her lips, warming of her cheeks. "i'm clementine. you can call me cleo." the word comes hastily, a sheepish smile lingering on her muzzle a moment thereafter. 

what she'd taken to be some odd extension of the girl is revealed, then, to be a separate, living thing. she blinks, her maw once again falling open. the sheer oddness of it (and the brief bit of wanting she tries to ignore) has her usually guarded fron vanish entirely. "what's a homeboy? where'd you get him?" she queries, tail wagging softly as she smiles at the creature, sharply intrigued.

Cleo? she repeated in her head. Why not Clem? Maybe it was too obvious. Quell didn't make the joke out loud, having no particular desire to make Cleo uncomfortable. She could be rather in-your-face and high-spirited to a fault, with a filthy, dirty mouth... but she liked to think she was still nice, under all that.

Perhaps she was wrong, though, because she burst into laughter at Cleo's question, realizing she mistook the word "homeboy" to be his species. Q really wanted to run with the joke, though she could barely breathe, let alone riff. She laughed heartily for a moment before it tapered off into chuckles and gave her enough breath to spare for speech.

"He's an otter," she explained, prepared to tell the same (true!) story she'd told Phox when her inner mischief-maker struck after all. "They grow on trees. I just picked him right off a branch one day. Wait, you've never seen an otter tree?" Q told herself it was a good-natured joke, Cleo just seemed so irresistibly innocent and gullible.

her ears flatten at the first riotous laugh, though as the girl continues to chuckle, her tail begins to wag as she relaxes. she doesn't quite get the joke—perhaps the answer is obvious, and she's just oblivious. she thinks she's missed out on rather a lot, having been absent from her home for so long. 

an otter, she reveals, and though she's still not clear on what a homeboy is, she is hardly the type to press anything. at the latter information, her eyes widen. "what?" she's never seen anything like that, but then again, she's never seen an otter, either. she thinks. "no—really?" her auds press forward, even as she blinks in surprise. "where do they grow?" 

Frolic did not speak the common tongue, for reasons Quell didn't know, though he understood perfectly. For her fib, she earned a nip to the ear and a low, chastising chrrr. He then balled his little fist and punched her in the back of the head, for good measure.

"Hey now!" Quell yelled, turning partially and shaking a fist threateningly at the otter, who now made a burbling noise similar to a giggle. "Do you want to give me even more brain damage, you four-legged dick?" There was no real heat in her voice, though she did give him a look. She didn't need one of her headaches to start right now, she'd just had one yesterday.

Facing Cleo again, Q played back the other young woman's question and was forced to admit, "Nah, I was pulling your leg. Otters are aquatic and they hatch out of eggs." This time, she actually thought she was telling the truth and didn't anticipate the flick to her ear lobe which prompted her to indignantly scream, "That wasn't even a lie!"

the homeboy shifts, making a low sound as he seems to batter the back of quellcrest's head. the girl's anger, no matter how dilute, unsettles her, even more so when she reveals that otters did not, in fact, grow on trees. her cheeks grow hot, gaze fluttering to the ground. she's stupid, so stupid. she's upset, too, but hardly willing or able to act on that. "oh," she mumbles as the girl yells at the homeboy again, offering a laugh that's just a little too forced. 

"I, um, I should go. my sister, um, I told my sister I would—I should go." she takes a step back, forcing a smile. "it was nice meeting you, Quellcrest! and your, um, homeboy." and then she's turning tightly, hurrying back the way she'd come as her brow furrows, chest tightens. she's sure to add this encounter to the fun montage that plays every time she tries to sleep.

"Look what you did!" Q exclaimed when Cleo hastily excused herself and ran way. She shook her head, watching until the other girl disappeared into the distance. "Hasta la vista, Cleo!" she thought to shout only belatedly, wondering whether Cleo would even hear.

"So you're telling me," Quell said in the next breath, pivoting on a black heel and striding back toward the river, "you didn't hatch from an egg?" She snorted as if that was absurd, Frolic tittering lowly in her ear as he loosened his grasp and shimmied down her leg even as she walked. He bounded ahead to the water's edge and dove headfirst onto the ice, sliding across it before abruptly disappearing into a hole.

As soon as she hit the shoreline, the adolescent made a perpendicular turn and began to trot further south, keeping her senses peeled once more for any signs of large game. Phox had said they were returning and Cleo had corroborated his story, yet Quell needed to see with her own two eyes.