Mount Apikuni And faded through the brightening air

A high, churlish wind kicked up across the mountain face, buffeting Saena and forcing her to seek shelter against the rock wall. She pressed her shoulder to it to steady herself and twisted her neck to stare out over the taiga below. Overnight, a thin blanket of snow had fallen over the world, and while the stone of the mountain absorbed enough heat from the sun during the day to melt it, the ground far below was still white even in the dark of dusk.

Here, out of sight of others, Saena allowed herself to break apart. Warbone's insistence that they were not ready to die rang in her ears, and his inspiration was usually loud enough, but bereft of her family and the last thing she really had to live for, Saena could once more see the allure of throwing herself off the ledge. Maybe then her daughters would not hate her, but would mourn her. Maybe then they would understand the depths of love she held for them, and know how they had utterly destroyed her when they chose the father who had done not even half of what she had for them. But it would do nobody any good to kill herself, she reflected, and so she had climbed instead, seeking once more the wilderness that could drown her aching heart out.

But before she could find it, she was pressed against the rock, feeling the residual warmth from the day like a comforting hug, and she let the weight of her failures come down on her shoulders. They buckled under it, and she dropped to her belly and buried her face in her forelegs. Saena didn't weep, perhaps because her hurt went so deep that it transcended tears or perhaps because boiling anger still burned within at the way she'd been shunned, but she did attempt to hide herself—to make herself as tiny as possible, as though to disappear for now, and forget everything once again.

Despite living in Saltwinter, the majority of his time was spent roaming outside its territory. Perhaps it was the nomadic nature he had adopted over his lifetime of fleeing and moving; Jackrabbit could not stay in one place for very long. Yet, nothing about his journeys away suggested he was in any position to abandon Saltwinter, regardless of the unreasonable pack mates, the boy quite liked the seaside home. Not that he would admit it, however. Any attachment he made known to the rest of the world had always proved to backfire, as if they very proclamation of his happiness was cursed. In fact, it most likely was. Perhaps, that too was a factor in his constant roaming, for her could not settle long before some disaster or other struck and he was send packing again. While he was almost confident that Fate could not find him at the edge of the world, there was a shimmer of doubt in him that he was not about to take chances with. Climbing higher than he had come before, he rested atop mountains that reminded him similarily of Silvertip, though he knew it was not. Perhaps, he would have continued to think of his biological family and the sad events of his early life, had he not come across a particularily displaced looking woman, crying, or something of that sort. 

"What's wrong with you?" The boy blatantly inquired, no touch of sympathy within his tone. The woman had herself on the ground, head seemingly buried as far as it could get between her paws and into the dirt; a position Jack had done himself many times before through his early life. Whatever weighed on the woman's mind had to be something heart-wrenching, sorrowful and emotionally evoking; various things Jackrabbit had no interest in hearing. Yet, it did not feel right to him to just leave her there. While he knew there was little he could do at all, the woman being much older than himself, he had to at least make sure she wasn't about to go off herself, before he quickly made his retreat. Curious and slightly suspicious eyes rested on the woman, though he wasn't sure she could see him in her buried state. She looked quite pathetic, if he had to admit, though not that he would say it aloud. The situation he had managed to wind himself up in was one he had witnessed too many times before, that perhaps, his unwillingness to simply leave the woman to her own thoughts was caused by the fact she seemed a mirror image of his state a few months ago.

Saena heard Jackrabbit before he ever reached her. The emotional, self-aware side of her was curled up internally in the fetal position, while the wild, rational side was what burned in her breast now. Her ears pricked up of their own accord, but she hardly reacted to the sound of paw pads on the rough mountain floor. She lifted her head marginally, seeming barely aware of the agouti youth's approach. He blended into the dusk so well that he may as well be invisible anyway. Do it, she thought, take me unawares, kill me. Do it. But he spoke instead.

She rose to her paws in a sudden flash and let her hackles bristle lightly. It was naught but a defensive posture, devoid of a true threat from the way her ears pulled back and her lips hung loose at the corners. "What's wrong with you?" she mimicked back at Jack, "approaching a full grown wolf so lackadaisically. You could get yourself killed." Saena was the last wolf who would ever attempt to kill Jackrabbit, though. Her attempts at violence were reserved for wolves who violated whatever land she claimed, and for Reek, whom she pushed out of mind as quickly as he drifted into it.

"You ever lose something important, kid?" she asked, if only for the sake of talking to someone, even if he was young, not a whole lot older than her own daughters. Beneath the depression and hopelessness that surrounded Saena in the aftermath of her visit to Larksong Grotto was a desperate loneliness that reached out for any form of contact, negative or positive.

Before he could really do anything, the woman lept up in a defensive crouch as the boy himself stood tensely still. There was little the boy could do against the woman, he knew, however his worries that he had accidentally pissed of the lady just by talking were no sooner eased as she returned with an inquiry of her own. The boy shrugged at her reply, for had Jackrabbit sensed anything volatile from the woman, he would not have approached. Jackrabbit had known many dangerous, strange adults in his lifetime to sort out the good from the bad, by now. Whoever this lady was, the last thing he got from her was life threatening, but a hint of extreme sadness and overall misery. "You're not very threatening," He stated quite bluntly, as if this was not a grown woman who actually did have the ability to end his life. "at all, really, just kind of.. sad," the kid continued to mumble but soon as he drifted to the brink of almost absentmindedly insulting the female, he shut his mouth closed as quickly as it had opened. The last thing he needed was to actually get attacked by an already upset woman on a strange mountain top, though if she did, there wasn't really anyone to care about his ab sense. 

"More than once," The boy simply spoke but did not extend further, keeping his personal losses to himself. The kid was not a very open boy, much less with a sad looking woman that he had never seen before. He had answered the question, at least; his tone with less feeling then as he spoke the words then he had when he rudely question the woman in the first place. Over time, he had looked at the constant death that seemed to surround him like any other fact, that he was a curse, or that his life was simply meant to have death contained in a bubble. It was all probably pre-planned, he had gathered. That by existing where he did, his presence was automatically eligible to kill somebody. However, nobody in Saltwinter had died, as of yet, and he found himself counting down the days till they did. 

Saena's ears pulled forward aggressively when Jackrabbit opened his mouth, and her lips puckered into a dangerous snarl as her hackles rose. She'd conveyed nothing dangerous, he was right about that, but it didn't mean she wasn't a threatening being, a lesson she would teach him if he continued to speak down to her. Jackrabbit truly hadn't done anything wrong, but Saena was quick to go on the defensive, and she was also quick to see insult where there wasn't really any.

"Then you know what's wrong," she concluded, lowering her lips over her teeth and turning slightly so that her flank was to him. It was a gesture that was both dismissive and defensive. She feared nothing from Jack. Given the choice, Saena would welcome death readily and was fearless in the face of that, though she also had no reason to believe she could be beat by a juvenile. "Got anything better to do?" she wondered. Saena wanted to be left alone, but she also wanted a reason to engage others; it was a confounding emotion, and while Jack might momentarily sate the desire for company, she suspected that he didn't have the mettle to remain in the company of those given over to the wild for very long, like she was.

Had he shut his mouth only a few seconds before, perhaps he would not have to feel the sensation of his hair standing on end as the woman snarled in his blank face that may have caused him to accidentally bite his tongue. However, he did not feel threatened by the woman, simply, that she would not be hesitant to put him in his place if he opted to insult her again. While he would have never bothered to correct his tone before, he had learned a thing or two about superiority when to close ones mouth. "Oh," Perhaps, he understood. He knew loss, many times over, yet not in the way Saena did. He knew death, but he knew not of abandonment. d for that he couldn't bring himself to sympathize with the woman; not that he figured she needed it. Regardless of his belief that the woman held no terror evoking qualities, he knew she was strong simply just by listening to her speak. She held no upfront tone of sorrow in her voice though she indicated her life had been pretty shitty up to that point; unlike Jack who had continuously used other's pity to his will. 

Yet, as soon as the topic of life problems surfaced, it ended, to his relief. Things had started go down the deep & emotional road, two things he had hoped to avoid when fleeing the Caldera. And for that, he was grateful the woman could take a cue, whereas many did not. "Not really," The boy shrugged though his tone just in the slightest suspicious, wondering what the woman had planned to cause her to ask him this. It wasn't like he had anywhere to be really, for no duties had been assigned on him, nor did he had any bed time or curfew he had to meet. Regardless, if he went missing, that would be that. Unlike he had lived in Redhawk, the boy had none to look out for him like Peregrine had, instead, he lived the way he desired. Jackrabbit took the time to sit, knowing he would not be traveling back to Saltwinter any time soon. 

"What's your name, anyways?"

She lightly huffed. She hadn't really expected anything different. Whoever owned this kid hadn't taught them very much about not being a little bit insolent, although she supposed it was better than petulance. There was nothing worse than a petulant child, she thought, and bitterly her mind went to Laurel and her attitude problem. Maybe it was for the best that her tan child had stayed in Larksong Grotto. Saena would've adjusted her attitude pretty promptly, and Laurel would have despised her for it, no doubt. She already did, though, so Saena didn't think it would've been much of a loss in the end.

Her attention shifted back to Jack when he asked her name, and she lowered herself into a sit, though her form remained rigid and alert. "Saena," she grunted. "What's yours?" Did she really care? In her current state of mind, not really, but ordinarily Saena enjoyed meeting others. At least, she thought she did. She hardly remembered her more reckless and aggressive escapades of the past. She had made many enemies in her life, some of them vindictive enough to try to kill her on sight, but she just couldn't remember them.

"Is your home nearby?" He was, what, maybe seven months old at best? Maybe less? Saena squinted, trying to gauge, but juvenile wolves were so damn hard to tell apart in age. He was certainly old enough to do some wandering, but she didn't think he was old enough to wander very far, so the automatic assumption was that he must belong to a pack nearby. Then again, at six months old, Saena had wandered away from Blacktail Deer Plateau for about a month, and returned hungry but no worse for wear... so maybe she shouldn't assume anything after all.