Lost Creek Hollow Tiptoe Closer

Anyone interested on enlightening a curious loner loitering on the border about this pack? Mitanni would really like to learn more.

She'd crossed so much ground in recent days that she wondered how much further she would feasibly be able to travel. Nowhere had she found a suitable place to camp for any permanent amount of time, and though she was still leery about the idea of selling her freedom to a pack Mitanni understood the necessity of it. Quite a few borders had been skirted and avoided already, but after meeting a few friendly lone wolves she found her curiosity growing too swiftly to ignore.

Further eastward she went, crossing mountains and grasslands, and eventually the mottled wolf found another pack border. With careful, cautious steps, Mitanni danced closer to it, her neck extended outward so that she could scent the delineation more closely. Strong, stable, and yet strangely light. Interesting.

Backing up a step, Mitanni surveyed the territory before her. Thick, closely grown trees appeared to cast everything in shadow, and somewhere on the air she could smell water within. "Not a bad place," the black and brown she-wolf muttered softly below her breath, and with still curious glances given at this claimed territory she began to walk, skirting along the edge of the border as she went.

Warmer temperatures held fast and for a change of pace in the wintry world, things were beginning to thaw. Some of the rudimentary streams within the Hollow, the ones that had long been frozen over with ice and thick with frost, had crackled to life once again as the warmer days clung to the earth. The days were longer, though Mordecai hardly noticed with the continuance of stress and strain. He focused on the things that were good, that they were seemingly coming out of winter whole; his children grew day by day and were already so eager to explore the world that had yet remained blocked off to them. Of course the latter of that in itself had problems of their own, but they had not yet breached his mind.

In fact, little was on his mind as he made the round of the borders. While he had instructed the others not to go it alone, he took that risk as he followed the curve of the land along the south and east sides. There it was easy to know if there were stranger creatures about — the melting snow and the mud beneath gave away even where he went. And at least there, he had never stumbled across a trace of the cougar that had terrorized them and the surrounding countryside for weeks.

Drawing in the sights as he crested a stout and rather unnoticeable hill, he paused. There he could not avoid the sights that followed the winding path down and more importantly, the figure that crossed quietly through the thinning timberline of the valley. Perhaps if not for the snow, it would have taken him longer to distinguish the mottled and dark fur and at any rate the lacking depth perception did not immediately throw out a gender.

He tested the air for a moment and finding it not in his favor, gambled with an approach that was announced with a bark.

As she moved, Mitanni's deep amber eyes continued to dart and peer past the pack's border with apparent interest, her typically inactive imagination sputtering to life. What were the wolves that lived here like? Were they as friendly as those lone wolves she had met thus far? How did their pack differ from those that she'd recently learned about?

The mottled black and brown wolf became so caught up in her own musings that, even with the wind in her favor, the pack wolf went unnoticed until his bark jolted her out of her reverie. With a visible jump--and recalling very quickly that she was currently tiptoeing a very fine line between passing through and outright trespassing--Mitanni spun around and froze in place, instinct driving her to sink into a slight yet nervous crouch.

Against her haunches, her tail twitched and then offered a placating wag in greeting, and Mitanni hoped that her curiosity hadn't landed her in a dangerous situation she would have much rather avoided.

At his heeding, the dark-haired wolf sank towards the earth with a jolt; a key sign to him that they were aware of the path that they were treading. More times often than not he had encountered those that would have turned towards him with some sort of indifference, as though they had no concern for what it was that they were doing. And truly, Mordecai preferred the lax sort who stuck to the rigid code that was their law, that knew that their occasional if not frequent deviations from it were only tolerated so far.

But since they didn't break into a run or otherwise halt as though he were inconveniencing them, he felt it safe to continue his approach. He came in direct and postured, letting his body language do the speaking for him as the finer details came to him. The wolf, a female, had the telling tale signs of being travel-worn but not quite in the same way he had seen of many others. She was healthy, clearly capable of foraging on her own even in the late winter. Or maybe she was a recent dispersal — it was too hard to say, let alone speculate, as by then he had come upon her curiously.

"You'd do wise to be careful through these parts," he opened, somewhat ominously. But it was no threat coming from him: "There's a cougar preying on our kind to the north." Mordecai felt it fair to warn her, though even that was veiled by the wonder of why she had strayed so close to their borders. His gaze wandered from her briefly, if only to scan the still somewhat uncharted lands beyond his claim. "But I must ask, what brings you so close to our home?"

Her nosy idea to get closer to the pack's border and learn what she could from observation had been a good one at the time, but now faced with one of those pack wolves--at least she presumed this to be one of the pack's wolves--Mitanni's nervousness returned in full. Each wolf she'd encountered so far had only been in the formation process of establishing their packs, which likely now she realized explained their niceness. This wolf, and any others who would possibly show up, had a well-established pack and a clearly marked territory. It was foolish for her to think she'd receive the same sort of hospitality from those who had so much to protect.

Fidgeting on her feet, she tried to stifle as much of the intimidation that she felt from the wolf's authoritative posture and larger size, reminded all too keenly of her tiny stature and slight build. She was quick, sure, she'd be the first to acknowledge it, but that only helped if she managed to get a head start. And as she held her ground, averting her gaze, Mitanni felt those chances slip with every step the wolf drew closer.

The warning in his tone made her ears dip worriedly, immediately interpreting the threat behind his words, but he clarified that he only spoke of a cougar terrorizing their kind somewhere nearby. She chanced raising her eyes to search his face but found it to be honest and sincere if not concerned and possibly curious. His question regarding her intent beside the border didn't surprise her, though she wished she'd given thought to how she might answer beforehand. "Curiosity," Mitanni admitted, suddenly afraid that her simple statement wouldn't be good enough. She went on to hastily add, "I've recently taken an interest in learning about the packs here. Yours just happened to be closest." It was still no excuse for loitering on the border, but she hoped it would suffice for now.