Qeya River I met this dude at Coachella

Sitting on the shore and hoping for a fish to swim by gave Wildfire a lot of free time. Her mind wandered, naturally. Lately, she found herself thinking a lot about her relationship with Floki. She had meant what she'd said to Gyda: she'd only ever wished him well, despite their sad ending. But now, with her head constantly pounding and her stomach collapsing in on itself, she picked at the scab. It bled. And it festered. She began to resent him deeply, maybe even hate him. But when she wondered whether he was suffering just as badly, her insides clenched. He had abandoned her during her darkest hour, yet still she could not wish this level of painful emptiness upon him.

After a time, Wildfire's mood had sunk so low that she caught herself and forcibly shoved Floki out of her mind. She tried to think of something that made her happy, to lift her spirits. Immediately she found herself thinking of Thuringwethil. By now, the yearling had been able to identify some of her feelings toward the Heda. She respected and admired the woman. She was fond of her. But she was also beginning to realize that her affections weren't strictly platonic. It felt alien, admitting it to herself, and the acknowledgement inspired a slight and inexplicable thread of panic in her chest. But Thuringwethil surely didn't reciprocate, a thought which soothed and reassured Wildfire's nerves. It didn't matter because nothing would ever come of any of it.

A splash startled her out of her deep thoughts. The fish disappeared long before Wildfire could react. She scowled, then decided to abandon this stupid, fruitless endeavor. She stood and turned, feeling a little heady and weak in the knees as she plodded along the riverbank. At this rate, she would perish before she ever had the chance to even contemplate admitting her feelings out loud—a thought which made the young Delta suddenly freeze in her tracks, fighting a sudden and terrifying shortness of breath.

The fiendish male picked his way out of the Sleeping Dragon territory and began to scout beyond. He had not spent much of his time in the surrounding territory. His so-called duties had kept him inside the pack or close to the waves of the ocean in search of herbs to treat his fellow pack members. The frequent travelling on such a shortage of prey had left the already slender hybrid looking even more gaunt than before. His frame moved like a skeleton tinged in ochre and cinnamon with the sharpest citrine eyes. But he had managed to steal a few oysters while out on the prowl and they would tide him over until he could manage something better.
 
Traipsing his emaciated body down towards the sound of water, Glu imagined he would find himself with more luck when it came to fishing. Following the waters as he tiptoed on the outside of the bank, the coywolf watched with glinting eyes at the current that pulled everything downstream. For a moment, he feared that he might be whisked away should he attempt to enter it. But the hunger that ached in his body told him that it was needed.
 
Picking his paws up as he entered the river, the coywolf felt a chill in his bones that formed in goosebumps along his flesh. His canary eyes followed the movements of the water until he found a rhythm and he noted the few fish darting downstream. With careful precision, Glu darted his muzzle into the waters and clasped tightly to the writhing swimmer. A medium trout; enough that – on his emptiness – he would feel the life return to his body once more. Hopping back until he stood on the bank of the river, shaking the water from his pelt, he caught a movement from the corner of his gaze. An unfamiliar form with a scent that he knew well enough; another dragon. The ginger-hued woman did not appear well, and though the coywolf male was a wicked little beast, he was curious.
 
“Hungry?” he yipped to the woman as a smirk curled the edges of his lips.

The edges of her vision darkened as Wildfire struggled to catch her breath. She hadn't let herself think about it until now, how she was staring down the barrel of a gun. Now that she was all of a sudden facing her own mortality, the yearling struggled to cope. It wasn't just that she might never get a chance to figure out if she was dead wrong about Thuringwethil reciprocating her interest—although that was terrifying, despite her earlier deniability—but that she might actually die before getting to experience everything she wanted in life. Not just another chance at love (in whatever form it took)... but literally anything and everything else.

She began to sink to the ground, her breaths coming in little sips and gasps, and she hardly noticed the emaciated figure skulking toward her with a trout tucked in its mouth. When the voice spoke, she registered it dimly and raised her blurry amber eyes, blinking at the gaunt stranger. She was hungry; she was famished. But she was too far gone to speak at the moment and she couldn't even begin to tell whether he was offering or taunting or something else altogether. Wildfire could only stare at him, eyes suddenly going glassy as her vision dimmed totally to black.

Gluskap had been more pleased with the catch that still wiggled in between his jaws than he was attentive to the fact that the fiery-furred female was struggling. It was not until he managed to close some of their distance that he noted the quick gasps of her breath and the shaky movements that her limbs provided her. His fangs were clasped tightly to the trout, but his eyes were trained on the amber-eyed girl. She was miserable, and the more he seemed to scrutinize her, the more Glu realized that the famine was a wicked and terrible plague. It had sucked the very life and soul from this creature, and even he could feel the pressure of his skeleton against his skin as it confirmed the very same for him.
 
It was remarkable.
 
Lowering the fish to the earth in front of the she-wolf, Gluskap nudged it forward with a tentative glance in her direction. The female did not look like she was altogether there. In a morbid attempt to understand what was happening, the coywolf male inched closer to her. His sharp canary gaze bore holes into her frame as he analyzed the very core of her being, interested in a way that would have been deemed ill. The fascination of it all was enough to cause his heart to beat in his chest. But he was a designated medic for those wolves.
 
“Eat,” he purred softly, still holding that coy smirk on his leathery lips. His skeletal frame danced around her carefully as he investigated her body. Her eyes were glossed over and distant; she looked at him as though she were staring into the horizon. If she were to collapse, he would be sure to get a better examination in.

Her muscles loosened and she crumpled, still dimly conscious but mostly out of it as she sank down onto the damp riverbank in strangely slow motion. Wildfire rolled with the shoreline's natural grade, sliding toward the water's edge. That should have roused her, yet she didn't react when she slipped a few inches into the water. Fortunately, she didn't go any further, coming to rest there in the shallows, head swaying ominously as she fought on some basic level to remain aware.

The fish being thrust toward her affected her where the water's wet, chilly touch had failed to elicit any sort of reaction. In fact, it was if someone had put smelling salts beneath her nose. Wildfire went suddenly rigid, eyes blinking rapidly. With an uncharacteristic snarl, she lurched toward the proffered food, blindly aiming to tear it from the other wolf's grasp.

The woman dropped from her legs into a heap and slowly began to slide towards the water’s edge. Gluskap did not move to catch her. In the state she was in, it was more likely she would actively attack him than allow him to assist. He was still perplexed at her state of being, and so he watched and followed with tentative steps in the direction of the female’s slumped form. He had retrieved the fish back into his mouth by this point in time. Her body touched the water’s edge and even managed to slip further into the river. Glu frowned thoughtfully at the lack of a reaction her figure seemed to have upon being wet.
 
Drawing himself closer, trout clasped in his mouth, the ochre-tinged wolf watched her closely with squinted eyes and tense muscles. In a strange twist of fate, the woman seemed to be roused from her momentary lapse and within seconds she had darted her snapping fangs towards Glu and the fish that had already been offered… without fight. Perhaps it was in her blind hunger, but her teeth came in contact with the edge of his muzzle and he released the fish immediately. Wincing and pulling himself backwards, the coywolf narrowed his brows at her and frowned. The dead fish landed with a sickening flupp in the sand and water to the front of Wildfire.

In her overeager attempt to snatch the fish from him, Wildfire's teeth closed on more than just the trout's slender, scaled body; she felt her fangs sink into the tender flesh of the stranger's lip too. They both startled at the same time, resulting in the trout dropping into the shallows between the yearling's forelegs. Having lost too many damn fish (or, well, failed to catch them in the first place), the Delta refused to let it happen again. Still not firing on all cylinders, she snapped at the stunned fish, yanking it clear of the water and tipping back her head to swallow it in one smooth motion.

And then, of course, she began to choke. Unwilling to let the trout make its way back out of her mouth, Wildfire determinedly swallowed again and again, trying to force it down her gullet. Her vision began to go black again, stars bursting in the middle of her field of vision, but in the end, she was somehow able to get it to slide downward. It hit her belly even as the Delta spluttered and coughed, then ducked her head to take a long drink to wash it down and soothe her now horribly aching throat.

In a strange turn of events, with Glu’s lip bleeding and the fish sitting in the muck of sand and water, the woman seemed to come to her senses for only a moment – long enough to realize she ought not to let the fish escape – and then began to lose them once more. The coywolf was transfixed as he watched the she-wolf dart forward, scoop the trout up, and unhinge her jaw like a snake to swallow it whole. His sharp yellow gaze did not leave her face for one moment as she struggled to down the swimmer in a single swallow. He did not make a move to assist her any further for fear of losing a limb. Whatever had ravaged this fire-furred woman was both awe-inspiring and frightening.
 
When the fish had finally slithered down the back of her gullet and she was capable of slurping up a few quick drinks of water, Gluskap warily held his gaze to her frame. A single front paw was held up in front of him, almost as though he was offended by the sight he had just witnessed. His face was twisted into an expression of horror and interest.
 
“How did that feel?” he soon inquired. Brows knitted on his forehead and his face leaned towards her out of complete curiosity.

With each swallowed mouthful, her senses came back online, one by one, so that when the stranger questioned her and Wildfire lifted her head, she looked back at him with sentience fully restored. Accordingly, her ears slowly drew backward and she dropped her gaze, feeling a whole range of emotions: guilt, shame, maybe even some remorse. But there was also the relief of having something solid in her belly and, moreover, adding some longevity to her life. Her days were still numbered—she couldn't unring that bell—but she had added at least a few more heartbeats and breaths, a little more sand to the dwindling hourglass...

"Brutal," the Delta muttered under her breath, rolling a shoulder guiltily, unable to bring herself to apologize to this perfect stranger. Or... was he a stranger? Her amber eyes suddenly squinted in recognition. He smelled of Drageda. And it took her a moment to place him but she suddenly realized he had been on the moraine, in the tag-team effort to wrestle the wounded moose calf from those grotto wolves. "You're from Sleeping Dragon?" she added, just to be sure.

As the food began to sit in the wolf’s gut, Glu watched her mind return to her body to make sense of her surroundings for her. His interest was in the return of the normal functions in her frame. He watched the glass fade from her vision and her eyes became sharper, clearer, until she seemed to have full control of herself physically. Medically, he was as interested as was possible. In other terms, this female was another wolf from the same pack and it should have taken his mind away from the medical marvel that she was. It did not, though.
 
Once she seemed to shrug away some of the ache from her limbs, he took a step forward and breathed heavily through his nose, hoping to discern whether or not there was a change in the aroma that she presented after having the fish applied. “It looked… brutal,” he remarked distractedly with a coy smile. His muzzle still dripped blood from her lashing, but he had long since forgotten the small gash that was left there. It would heal in time, or he would find a way to wrap it in seaweed to help the process.
 
“I am from Sleeping Dragon. Gluskap,” he introduced after a moment, darting his citrine gaze up towards her face.

He didn't seem particularly perturbed by her strange behavior. In fact, he was looking at her like she was some sort of very curious science experiment. She expected him to be offended by her lack of apology at the very least, yet he just continued to act entirely intrigued with the entire situation. Despite the hearty snack, she didn't have the energy to feel too concerned about it. In fact, she felt downright drained, now that it was all said and done.

"I think I need to go lie down," she announced a little abruptly, before realizing she had more or less ignored the introduction. "Gluskap," she repeated slowly, to show that she had heard him. "Thanks." It was a weird and stilted bit of gratitude, yet that was all she could scrape together at the moment. And she didn't bother introducing herself—perhaps purposefully—before turning away from him and slogging off to be a hot mess somewhere else.

Though attentive to her odd behavior, the coywolf may have mistook her shortness for something other than just wanting to leave. While he was certain that she would not readily seek to swallow another fish without chewing first, he did not feel the need to halt her in her departure. After she echoed his name and offered him a half-hearted appreciative remark, she turned tail and departed. The hybrid did not say another word to the peculiar fiery snake. He did leave a mental note to seek her out at another time to determine whether or not her health was at risk. Though he was certain that it would need to be when she was not as guarded… to catch her sleeping would do just fine.
 
After Wildfire had disappeared from sight, Glu turned back to the river in hopes of catching himself something to eat to tide him through the remainder of the day.