Wapun Meadow in the beginning

In the beginning there was a spark, it lit a fire of curiosity and sent a buttercream furred yearling from her closely knit family to self-discovery. Discovery however was but a part of her adventure, and adventure had found her scaling rock faces and wandering alongside a frozen stream in an unknown wintery meadow. Soft brown eyes admiring the way the ice made a crisp crackle sound when she strayed too closely to the streams edge. Luckily for her, it wasn't a dangerous venture because she knew of the dangers of frozen waterbeds and was careful enough not to lean in too deeply. 

She was but a young child, just approaching her first year when she declared in front of her entire family that she was going beyond. She would never forget the heartbroken expression on her fathers face. It was the very last thing expected from his only daughter in a family filled with sons who hadn't strayed from home. 

Liatris wasn't entirely sure where her adventure was leading her, she only knew that the beginning was taking much longer than she had expected. Where was the light?

Much like Liatris, Oni was on a fresh new journey, and was even a little bit excited to see where it took him. Unlike Liatris, his was not something he chose for himself. It was preordained.

The crunch and squeak of snow underpaw was his only companion for quite some time, and it took him many heart beats walking toward the river to realize that some of the crunching and squeaking wasn't his doing. There would sometimes be a squelch of snow when all his paws were planted, and when he finally noticed it, he swung his narrow mug up and glanced surreptitiously around himself.

There! Oni's blue green eyes snagged on a flicker of movement, and then he noticed the subtle shades of dirty snow and driftwood, and finally, Liatris materialized out of the background. He hadn't noticed her at first thanks to convincing camouflage, but now the difference between her coat and the much paler snow was striking. Lone wolves were an oddity where he was from. He had yet to run into one, and she piqued his curiosity. Oni was raised to be careful and he adhered to that as he took a cautious step forward, masquerading as a thirsty wolf looking for a drink in hopes of hiding his blatant curiosity.

Her focus had been on the way the ice crackled, so much so that she didn't realize there had been snow crunching under the paws of another. At least, not until she had paused to take note of her surroundings. She heard the cautious step taken by another and her heartbeat quickened. It didn't take long to find the owner, they were dark furred with lighter coloration down the shoulders and throughout. She was uncertain at first, male or female based on appearance alone, but wolf was obvious. 

Her heartbeast remained a touch quickened, as she was unsure of formalities in this particular situation. She didn't scent a pack close by, nor did they, the other have a particularly strong scent to them. Her ears flattened a small amount, expressing her confusion, and she actively tucked her tail into a more neutral manner. Though alone, her darker furred companion was older, more mature and she knew that getting into a scuffle wasn't the best move on her own. 

Perhaps, Listris thought, she should have learned more about being on her own before being on her own. 

"I'm Liatris." She spoke confidently, her voice authoritative without being aggressive. Think Captain Janeway of the Starship Voyager.

Would they answer, approach, flee? Call for reinforcements? Liatris wished that Dodder had remained with her just a while longer to help her navigate the social skills she hadn't yet mastered before he had returned to The Piperales. She felt like the foolish young lady she was in that moment. Her birthright no longer afforded her any protection.

He brushed his nose low over the crumbled ice at the edge of the river, and was disappointed to see the whole thing was frozen over. Bummer. Getting a drink would have to wait. All the while, Oni kept one ear trained on Liatris. He kept his interest as aloof as he could, but he was naturally a curious thing, and certainly wanted to know what brought another wolf out alone in winter. It wasn't a usual habit for their kind. But Oni was also a little bit queer in his tendencies, and wouldn't come right out and make it known.

Liatris' voice cut a formal and nearly commanding air across the distance between them, and at last, Oni lifted his spruce eyes to meet her gaze momentarily. Her eyes were a gentle brown, like a doe's. He could tell in the lines of her face that she was young, possibly even younger than him, and he lifted himself to his full average height without much fanfare in light of that fact. His tail swished pensively at his thighs as he considered Liatris across the way, then quirked his head a little to the left and ventured, "and?"

He was certainly nonchalent, she thought. Liatris couldn't help but notice, obviously that he didn't respond with his own name. Perhaps she was the odd one out, offering her name to a stranger. Liatris wasn't exactly sure how to answer, but noted that his body language didn't seem to imply that he was any sort of an immediate danger to her. She wasn't used to initiating conversation, typically, all of the small talk and pleasantries had been taken care of for her.

If she could furrow her eyebrows, she certainly would have. She wasn't frustrated, but confused. Navigating her own uncertainties were confusing when you'd been fed everything you've ever needed to know. She silently admired the uniqueness of his deep blue-green eyes, while arranging her thoughts and changing them into words.

"I'm not used to being on my own. Are you from around here? Are there others?" Perhaps, he was. Perhaps he wasn't. But, she didn't want to stand there and look stupid. Besides, if he know something about the other inhabitants in the area, it would behoove of her to know. For now however, she didn't close off the gap between them. She simply wasn't sure of herself enough yet. It was odd, having felt so confident, strong, and powerful just two weeks before. Now, she felt insignificant and uncertain of her own place here, wherever this here was.

Ah. That explained a lot. Oni was sent on his way not so long ago, but he was older and more wizened in travel and self-preservation, he assumed. The wide world and all of its solitude didn't bother him much, but he supposed he understood why a younger wolf might feel a little lost in the whole thing. The world was a big place, and they were a very social type of animal.

"Are any of us?" he wondered rhetorically, following along that same vein of thought. They were raised from birth to believe in the collective. Was any wolf capable of being alone and truly feeling at ease with it? Oni challenged the very notion, and thought any wolf who proclaimed themselves thus was simply trying too hard. "I'm not from around here, but—" he paused and lifted his nose into the sky to take a whiff, "I reckon there's no one to worry about." He was not the violent type, after all.

"If you aren't used to being alone then you must not have been alone long," he surmised, turning a pointed stare on Liatris and abandoning his feigned interest in the ice. "What changed?" For him, it was destiny. For her?

What changed? Just about everything. "Mhm." She responded softly, in response to her only being on her own a short time. "I'm uncertain. I got tired of complacency?" What kind of a life would she have if she had remained the Princess of The Piperales? She had fourteen living older brothers to fill the 'important' roles. Being just a 'figure' wasn't exactly what she was looking for in life. She was tired of being primped, proper, and fed. It got old and boring rather fast. It was unlikely that anything about The Piperales would change, seeing as her eldest brothers were quite similar to her father.

Complacency might not have been the best term, seeing as how wolves were pack creatures. It was best for the collective to share similar ideology, but it wasn't best for them to be unopen to change and adaptation. "I think challenging oneself and the whole is critical and healthy. I was the black sheep." She followed up. In a way, clarifying for herself the reason she began to separate herself from The Piperales and simply be Liatris. Who was Liatris though?