Haunted Wood there is no god

it is mid-morning when tursas steps into the blissful shadows of the haunted wood; the darkness of the woodland reaching out to welcome him like a eager lover. though the heat has not reached it's peak yet, he knows it is coming from the touch of the sun upon his feverkissed coat's back. he is eager to escape it before it settles into the tendrils of his fur. he is not used to his oppressive heat, thick and cloying. these lands are more green then tursas is used to seeing and in this he feels far from his home of stone and ice and sea.

still, he follows the smells of multiple woodland critters towards the heart of the wood; golden gaze searching for a place to rest his travel weary paws for a bit.

The Caldera was a mess. At one time Fennec might have enjoyed the chaos to a degree but right now it settled oddly for her. Thankfully it felt like she and Bronco had a sort of weird stability that was untouched by her mom's baby-daddy drama, but now Towhee and Tierra were both missing. She felt out of the loop, tucked away with Killdeer while the pack apparently fell to pieces around her. Weird to feel both grateful and resentful of that.

She hadn't gone this far since giving birth but she'd insisted on at least helping with the search. Her mom could take care of herself but shouldn't have been gone this long, and her little sister was a whole other story. They needed to find her before Towhee got home, if possible.

Fennec nosed about the floor of the forest but found no trace of any of them; neither had been this way. She was just about to give up and try another route when she heard something large nearby. Her ears twisted curiously. Definitely not Tierra, and it didn't sound like her mom. Hey! Whoever's there - I have a question for you.

She froze, waiting for an answer or some form of acknowledgement... and poised to run if that sign came in the form of a fast approach.

there is a voice that calls out to him in a tongue that takes him a prolonged moment to process. not the tundrian of his home, that is as familiar to iku-turso as drawing a breath. ...but nothing about these foreign lands is familiar and for a longer moment — a handful of heartbeats — the tuhatsarvi considers continuing on his undetermined path and ignoring the words of the stranger —

he never was one for talking. it hadn't been his role in enok tundra. to be warborn meant he had one purpose: to kill. to protect, if one was feeling generous about the bloodied work that he did.

golden gaze scours the writhing shadows to fall upon the pale sylph in the distance. ask — the tuhatsarvi speaks, voice rough like the land he hails from; thick and raw from general disuse. likely, he had no answers for the woman but something about this encounter bid him to speak. what, he couldn't say and was not interested in investigating within himself.

They took a while to answer, but Fennec knew that someone was there.  Maybe they were dumb, or deaf like her mom?  Or maybe they were a monster like the one Fig had mentioned in the nearby woods a few months back.  Maybe they were staring at her right now, huge fangs, ready to try and eat her.  Shit, that'd be real cool, if bad for her goal of info gathering.

Instead she finally got a response.  Well, a word.  This wolf definitely wasn't one for wasting his breath.  Or, apparently, engaging in small talk.  She liked him already.

I'm looking for a pup.  Uh...  Oh.  Shit. Fennec was prioritizing her younger sister, but forgot until this very moment that she didn't know how to describe her in a way this stranger would recognize.  How did you describe a wolf's scent.

Our pack scent might have faded, but her name is Tierra.  Or Sapsucker.  She's loud, and would be a couple months old. Seen one?  Fur color etc was all a wash.  She'd never bothered to ask or care about what any of them looked like.  But now, with this realization, she was glad she'd had them describe Killdeer to her.  Their words hadn't meant a whole lot but it at least gave her somewhere to start it the worst happened someday.