Dragoncrest Cliffs Cut me loose

She couldn't decide which looked stormier: the sea or the sky. From her perch on the sheer, windswept cliff, everything looked gray and turbulent. The waters below boiled, the steel depths disrupted by a choppy white froth. Overhead, the clouds raced across a backdrop leeched entirely of color. There was a bite to the breeze which pushed against her, salty and bracing. Against the distant horizon, Wildfire saw a quick flash as lightning split the sea.

April showers bring May flowers, the she-wolf thought inanely, her gaze dropping to the beach below. Were she a more graceful creature, she might have picked her way down there, maybe even waded into the rough surf. But chances were she would only break her neck, so Wildfire stayed glued to her high-up roost, opening her mouth wide to let the cool wind steal the breath from her lungs.

He heard his name on the wind, salt and cloud beckoning him towards the coast.

Warbone didn't like staying within Sleeping Dragon for too long. He slept down in the Hollows, and often kept to the borders. In truth, he wasn't fond of the heat that came from an underground sun (as he had been told The Core was, thus the activities of volcanoes) and the occasional plume of smoke that The Dragon emitted were obvious warnings to its worry-less inhabitants. But no one saw them as bad omens. They merely followed Heda and her god-like influence.

But Warbone was a skeptical beast at heart, and he would follow his own instinct long before the opinionated barks of another.

So he made for the cliffs; a place he had passed, but not visited. It still wasn't warm enough to warrant a visit to the beach, but overlooking the water would be a welcome reprieve from the desire to constantly challenge those around him to establish his superiority among the wolves of his home of two names. His journey was slow, and took the better part of three days (he would return at a faster pace) but when he did arrive on that very gray, heavy midday, he was surprised to find a familiar red body on the ledges.

He came to stand at the edge too, several yards to her left, and then he turned his head towards her, angling it curiously.

The whipping wind favored the new arrival not only by blustering his scent in the opposite direction, its noise also blotted out his footsteps. For a good while, Wildfire remained oblivious to her company, until she randomly scanned to her left. She started and might have toppled right over the cliff in an attempt to get away, if recognition hadn't registered nearly right away. Her body still tensed, her amber eyes narrowing, but she knew this wolf. She didn't trust him, necessarily, but she couldn't just forget his generosity, even after her dealings with Goober.

"Warbone of nowhere," she greeted after a pause that was likely long enough to be awkward. "What are the odds of running into each other here, when we met on practically the other end of the wilds?" she mused, trying to raise her voice somewhat to be heard over the blustery weather.

She hesitates and he stares, prompted to fix his head into a deeper tilt as at first she seems cautious. He had thought them past this, but then again, they have only met once and his concept of time was too skewed to recall how long ago that way. His tail picked up faintly when she finally addressed him, and he inclined his muzzle slightly in affirmation. Her small voice danced on the wind, and he pressed his ears forward to eagerly catch them. "We wonder the same things, Wildfire," he said, taking two or three steps closer, and then reclining to his haunches. "Unfortunately, mathematics was never my strong suit." His mentors had impressed upon him the importance of knowing ones hunting ratio when it came to knowing ones successes in comparison to failures— but it was a part of his formal training he had never picked up. It had mostly been an emotion-based motivational tactic anyway. A wolf tended not to feel good about itself if it's success rate was only thirty-five percent.

"Scouting?" he asked quietly of her presence here, now.

He moved closer and Wildfire felt something wind more tightly inside her, a piano wire of tension. It did not snap, however, and she exhaled into the wind before letting it fill her lungs again, breathing for her. The salty air felt cool and tingly in her chest, so she trapped it there as Warbone spoke to her, then released it slowly through both nostrils and mouth. It made her think of meditation, and maybe that's sort of what it was.

"Yes," she replied simply to his question. A slender shoulder rose and fell in a shrug. She didn't feel like elaborating beyond that. "You?" she bounced back to him, squinting a little because the wind was officially beginning to make her eyes water. It was cooling and she could smell the ozone building on the air.

"Something like that," he mused in response, hawkish eyes taking in Wildfire as she breathed slowly and seemed to level some sort of imbalance in her. He couldn't remember this being her demeanor before, and he had seen enough prey in his life to recognize the moment a creature was gripped with paranoia. It was slight, nearly invisible, but there nonetheless. He found it strange, if only because when he had been a complete stranger she had treated him with less caution than this, and he couldn't help his curiosity at the evidence. She was troubled... retaining something that he felt wary to broach.

Warbone turned his head out onto the water, certain that his gaze could cause her to feel self-conscious if he continued to stare any longer. "I will never be a threat to you, Wildfire," he said offhandedly, letting her know that he was aware of her reserved attitude, and that he thought himself the source of it. It wouldn't be the first time he had intimidated himself out of a potential friendship.

He answered just as curtly. Wildfire said nothing, her eyes squinting even further at his next remark. Feeling suddenly self-conscious, she dragged her eyes back out to the tempestuous sea. The water now looked nearly black as the horizon darkened with thunderheads and rain. She bit her lip, wondering how obvious her cagey demeanor was to those around her. Pretty damn obvious, she mused, her muzzle dropping parallel with her chest for a moment before lifting up again. She still didn't look at Warbone.

But she did break the momentary silence to murmur, "I don't mean to be so... aloof." Realizing he might not be able to hear her mumbling, she said louder, "I don't mean to act weird. Life's just been—trying, lately," Wildfire said with a brief flush. She paused, running her tongue slowly over her lip now, finding it tasted a bit like salt. "I'm actually no longer living at Moonspear. I guess I'm also of nowhere now."

when she says purple,  she means a mix between frustration and sadness, FYI. She describes emotions in colors most of the time, heh.

The purple woman had been watching them from a distance for quite some time now, but they didn't seem to notice the songbird, as she was called. She wondered where the coy coyote was at this time. The one with the beautiful black mask. That was not worth her thoughts right now though. The pale blue and white woman was a ghost among the atmosphere. She flitted from here to there, seemingly floating.

The red one made her turquoise, curious. It seemed upset at first, but its mood changed as it met with a male that was unknown to her. How could a mood change so fast? Lotus frowned, her blue back bristling with agitation. She bristled when she didn't have the answers to something, it was just a natural quirk of hers. Her tail lashed and she stood there, agitated, confused, and unhappy that she didn't have answers.

Lotus's moods could stick like burs sometimes, so it confused her to see others with mood swings. The only time that happened regularly was when she was in heat, which was quickly coming upon her now. Is that why she had so quickly become agitated? But then why should she speculate about other's moods changing if her heat was bringing on mood-swings as well. Bah! To many questions.

So it had nothing to do with him at all, then. Warbone ignored the urge to turn towards her again. Whether she realized it or not, the wolf had favored her since the moment he'd set eyes on her. A lone wolf sharing his meal in winter (even the tail end of it) was a big deal, and he considered it as such. He didn't expect her to be grateful or anything or the sort, nor did he imagine that their bond was an unbreakable one, but he didn't see her in the same manner he regarded other wolves. While he felt anyone could be a victim of his wrath, Wildfire was excluded from that list— Gyda, too, if he thought about it.

Maybe it had something to do with their size...

The air picked up, buffeting his chin as he lifted his head against the blast of salt and sea air. He swore he was getting damp. It was a while before he decided to respond. "Then I understand," was all he said at first, and then he breathed deep, taking long blinks at the watery horizon. "And it would seem that we are again at odds. You, a loner, and I, now Warbone of Sleeping Dragon." He looked at her again, and though he wanted to ask her why she was alone, he thought better of it, and simply gave his opinion instead:

"you should not have to be alone."

Not ignoring Lotus; she just hasn't noticed her yet!

They seemed to have swapped places. Wildfire felt a queer, jealous ache, though it subsided quickly. She knew of Sleeping Dragon. Her aunt, Magpie, lived there, and she had met its leader, a striking female whose long name slipped her mind at the moment. Wildfire knew she could try seeking entry into its ranks, that she could theoretically join any pack she liked, for any reason at all, at any time, even on a whim.

But she shook her head. "I'm better off alone, for now," she said, still unable to look at Warbone directly, though she did glance at him out of the corner of one amber eye. "I always wondered what it would be like to be a free spirit. Now I know." She made a heh noise and shrugged her shoulder again, attention snapping back out across the open ocean as the storm made landfall with a loud grumble of thunder.

"We're about to get soaked," the she-wolf observed, eyes tracking the clouds that scudded inland, ready to shed their loads.

Lotus watched, indigo eyes gleaming. Her large ears perked at their words. The male was speaking of a pack, which took Lotus's automatic interest. Ugh, again with the mood swings. She was curled up in a ball, attempting to hide her blue-saddled coat in a patch of long grass. The red female was truly lovely, so she began to wonder why the male had not attempted a claim yet.

From where she came, a male would nip at the female's flanks, driving her to run. He would then judge her stats, running her as far as possible to test endurance, then tackling her when she stopped. The male would wrestle, attempting to dominate but not hurt her. If the female gave up to soon, he would walk away, as no male wanted a weak mate. If the female won though, she placed a scar on his flank, a mark of embarrassment that he would have to carry to show other males his strength. this ultimately also determined his rank in the pack. If a female fought hard enough though, and gave up to only when she had to, she would be claimed. All wanted a strong female with more endurance than speed. Lotus had never been that. She could outrun the males until they would fall to the ground, then lock her jaws around their neck and threaten them until they submitted. She would then puncture two holes with her canines into their flank, helping to determine their rank.

Sorry, Ezi, I didn't even notice your first post :> my bad!

"So being alone suits you then?" he asked. It had suited him, but only because he had made it so. Warbone had never been particularly happy being alone— though things seemed less complicated in the vast space that was loneliness. There were very few things you needed to worry about on your own, and since the mainstay of them had to deal with personal survival, it was made all the more easy to leave behind the social and emotional aspects of ones life; especially if they grew comfortable in their solitude. "I was good at it, but it never suited me. I will, one day soon, make a claim of my own. It is perhaps, my most innate nature to want such a thing."

He talked more openly with Wildfire than he did with anyone else, and that had been from their first encounter really. He might've said more if he hadn't noticed in that instant that they were being observed by a third party. His spine prickled, and the wolf got to his feet, turning so that he might face the peeking hybrid. Unintentionally, he paced forward a few steps, placing himself between Wildfire and their guest. "Make yourself known or die nameless. I do not care which," he stated with an obvious distaste for being snuck up on. And because the stranger currently stood downwind of them, he couldn't be certain of its gender or its pack relations, if any.

"For now," she repeated simply, eyes growing warier as she braced herself for the coming onslaught of rainfall. Strangely, neither wolf made a move to find shelter. Maybe it was because it was so inevitable now. There was no way to outrun the storm at this point, so all they could do was weather it. In fact, the sprightly she-wolf hooded her eyes and leaned backward in anticipation of its force.

When Warbone's demeanor shifted suddenly, she initially thought he was going to make a break for it. "You won't—" she began to call after him, turning herself, when she noticed their guest. Before Wildfire could form a proper reaction, the wind veritably began to howl, buffeting against her with force enough to make her step sideways away from the ledge. Not a moment later, the rain began to fall, billowing in sideways sheets.

"I'm heading that way!" she shouted mostly to Warbone, darting inland in the general direction of The Tangle and leaping beneath the first cluster of trees she could find. She huddled down, wet and shivering, wondering if he intended to join her and how she felt about that possibility. And what of the random stranger?

The woman popped up from her hiding spot, as though she was insane(and a genius), she had the word 'die' in her vocabulary. "So I see that all of you sea birds are quite aggressive, yes? As the masked one I met was not nearly as aggressive as you, but she happens to be stone cold. I don't know how exactly I feel about the sea-witch, but I definitely do not feel the same way of you. How can you take a soul that is not yours to take? And how exactly do you tell another to die nameless if others know them. What if their name finds you someday, and you realize that you may have made a great mistake murdering the child of the waves? What if..?" Her indigo eyes were ablaze, curious, upset, and excited. She knew that if she must, she could run from the hideous brute before her, but simply chose not to. Their was not much of a point, now was there? For if she ran, the intellectual would never get her answer and would simply have to confront the beast again the next time she saw him. Lotus lived for answers, and answers she would get.

"What?" Warbone snapped, having watched the slim figure expose herself from the underbrush and proceed to babble nonsense about existential crises he had never considered prior to a killing and wasn't about to start now. His tail lashed, and the white she-wolf, whose tapered features suggested that her blood mingled with coyotes (no wonder her naive idiocy), seemed to wait for him to respond. "Do you ask such things of your prey, stupid girl? When you kill a rabbit do you wonder whether it had a name, or if there is a family to avenge it?" he growled scathingly. "If you do, you are even more foolish than your first impression implies, and death would become you anyway— with or without my aid." He opened his mouth, perhaps to insult her further, but just then droplets turned into an entire sheet of water, and a thundering downpour blanketed the wolves in an instant.

Warbone turned his head as Wildfire called out, and he immediately turned to follow her without looking back for the stranger. He felt no threat from her, though he likely would not be very kind if she too joined them in the flush of trees shielding them from the brunt of the rain. That being said, it was highly unlikely that he would kill her, either. Not only did he assume Wildfire wouldn't appreciate witnessing a murder, now that he knew the intruder was female, he was less inclined to react violently. Females, the mother of his very species, did not deserve his fangs no matter how eerie or convoluted they seemed to be.

Joining his companion beneath the trees, he gave himself a curt shake, and sat a few feet to Wildfire's right. "I apologize for my brazenness. I am quite peevish about being snuck upon," he told the scout, though was unsure why he felt she needed an explanation of him.

She didn't have long to think before a wet, wild and woolly Warbone hunched down beside her, both of them facing outward. Wildfire felt a shiver pass through her that didn't entirely have to do with the cold rain. To distract herself, she squinted and asked, "What about...?" Her amber eyes fixed sharply on her companion's face when he apologized, not quite understanding. Wildfire had been too caught up in the approaching storm to worry about Warbone's treatment of the stranger, if she'd even registered it in the first place.

"Who was it?" she asked blandly, eyes moving back to scan the rain-drenched world in case the stranger made another unexpected guest appearance.

"Oh, but you see, I happen to kill for meaning, unlike you want to." She said, a tiny hint of wryness in her voice. As the sheet of water flew towards her, she headed towards the pair, flying straight past them. She shook several meters from them, before running back out and crouching down in the brush. She allowed the water to graze her ears and back once before turning on her back in the rain. It thundered down on her stomach, but she relished it. Her large ears flattened back so that water couldn't get into them. She smiled and let out a breath of air through an O shape. The strange genius stood up then, wind forcing her to crouch as she walked, and she crept across the land, finding shelter under a boulder and giving a hiss.

Warbone never killed for no reason. Just because it wasn't a very good reason didn't mean that it wasn't one. He watched, in dissatisfied silence, as the coywolf darted into the same grove, and then hid with a hiss among the rocks and foliage. The massive wolf made an low, irritated noise in the back of his throat, but went without speaking for an overly long moment. He seemed to be reining in his vitriolic mood. "She fancies herself a philosopher," he at last responded to Wildfire, telling her what he knew since he didn't have a name for the fading nuisance. He turned his head and angled it downwards so that, in his sit, his hind leg to scratch a bothersome wet spot behind his ear.

"Unfortunately, though I stopped to chat, I do not have time to wait out this rain, so I must brave it," he said after he had finished, dropping his leg with a thmpf and turning his eyes on the sodden red wolf. "Have fun with her," he advised, getting to his feet and casting a cold gaze over the hiding spot of the stranger. Then to the wolf he was familiar with: "and if you ever need someone to travel with, or find that you are done being alone, you can find me with the Dragons," he said, face lifting into what could be considered a smile for the generally expressionless wolf.

He turned to the edge of the protective trees, took a deep breath in and out, and then plunged into the sheeting rainfall.

In a matter of moments, Wildfire found herself alone again, watching Warbone's retreating figure as it rapidly disappeared into the smear of rainfall. She hunkered down in her makeshift shelter, which more or less shielded her. The occasional cold raindrop made it through, hitting the top of her head or somewhere along her spine and making her shiver. It was better than being out there, exposed, even though she wished she could have stayed on the bluff and taken in the view.

Somewhere nearby, she knew the so-called "philosopher" lurked, yet Wildfire had no interest in making contact. In fact, she hoped the stranger would leave her well enough alone. She pressed the line of her belly to the damp earth, assuming a sphinx-like position, eyelids drooping as she watched the blustery day unfold and thought where she would head next once the weather cleared.

This is my last post, unless you'd like to continue. Just tag me if you do. :)