Mount Apikuni don't go out tonight

There is little that holds his interest here.  The ageless stranger's blackened, rawboned form lay hidden in the broken shadows of Apikuni.  His looming is accompanied by a gray and cheerless twilight that sucks the color from his surroundings.  His long, rangy legs take up the entirety of the available space on the steep ledge he has sprawled upon in an ungainly looking position.

His head all but hangs off the edge as he watches a gathering of @Quails as they skitter to-and-fro with their kik-kik-kikking.  He sucks in a deep breath, the thin flesh across his ribcage taut, and lets it out slow and metered as he closes his eyes.

it is as if the winds had teased her up and down the valley, pulling and pushing until she'd lodged up in the rock. here, their reaching fingers and whispered words could not reach her, and here did she remain as the sun settled low. she was subservient to the wills of winds and trails, and yet could not help but find contents in the mountain nook she'd taken up in. 

frail body unfurls and moves like a rippling banner to poke her muzzle out of the crack in the rock; the chatter of quails bring tufted ears to sweep forwards. it is not them she spots but him, lain out on the ledge just in front of her crack as if it is his. it is, now, and she will not contest it; withdrawing so that only her muzzle peeks through the crack in the rock; falling motionless and soundless. she is well versed in that art of seeing unseen, and she will remain this way until the ink-stained stranger noticed the pewter irregularity in the rockface.

His limbs are long and their reach expansive, but he is still thin enough.  Her tufted ears are large enough to make noise when they move and it catches his attention, but he is content to remain ignorant until her muzzle appears in his peripherals.  

He can tell almost immediately that she is small by the way her features are crafted, barely visible from his position, so he takes his time as he gathers himself to stand, looming in the front of the craggy scar that houses her.  

He lowers his head to hers, venemous yellow eyes the only distinguishable feature as the sun at his back darkens him, and he keeps his vision trained on her as wordlessly, he waits for her next move.

in stillness she remains until she male begins to gather himself; she withdraws soundlessly into the shadows of the cleft. yet, it is all too obvious that he knows very well her nook is not barren. phantomesque shadow moves, shifting, until the dying fire at his back casts him in shades of ebony and charcoal. gaze is bright and obnoxiously yellow; like one of the artificial colours of before. 

she is still only a moment before pushing forward a small step, sinking down onto her stomach as ears flatten, tongue flicking out to wipe at her lips in universal submission. low note escapes her, not so much a whine a placating sound, she is small and not a threat. colourless gaze meets the vividness of his own for only a moment before it averted, sweeping low to rest on his chin; his chest. forepaws jut from the crack awkwardly, ribs scraping against the sides.

What a fineboned little thing she is, too.  He draws his tongue across his lips as she cows before him, and her display of submission draws a low, rumbling hum from his throat.  For a moment it looks as if he makes to force his way into her makeshift home.  His tail sways just once before he moves from the entry of her cleft to allow the sunlight to hit the subtle variation in her pelt.  The golden rays offer a glimpse at what she might have been, had she not been given that icy autumnal roan.

He takes another step back onto the ledge and lowers himself to her height, trying to entice her from her hideaway.

he is larger than her, but thin enough. he could very well force his way inside the nook if he so wished; likely tramping her in the process. his smooth step away have her glassy eyes narrow as shadow turns to fading light. he steps back once more; it a moment before she understands. she rises upon half-bent limbs and once more unfurls, this time onto the openness of the ledge. 

he has not spoken and nor will she, sharpness of gaze, like shattered glass, stark against the soft down of her pelt, the innate submission. they do not meet his toxic citrine optics, yet flick over them once in curiosity not quite beaten down by her display.

Neither of them desire to break the silence.  His undercarriage grazes the ground as he stoops even lower, a sorry attempt to assure this wayward waif that he is no threat.  He is more than willing to share this space with her if only for the price of being able to keep his gaze fixed upon her, and it would be shameful to deny others the same.

I will not hurt you, woman, the blackened stranger rumbles gently, tail sweeping the ground behind him.

it is odd, her submission. not coupled with skittishness or fear, but rather conducted cooly and perfectly. his stomach grazes the ground and her gaze moves up to his chin, pushing carefully up so that she perches upon her hindquarters, dwarfed easily by the stranger. they are alike in thinness yet not in height; her's approaches that of a dog. 

"ok." firm, crisp, enunciated in an accent tangible even in the simple syllable. her meekness does not falter, but she speaks once more. "I am Quail."  then she is silent, displaying none of the curiosity the male elicits in all his oddness, his novelty.

She is calculated and unnaturally placid in front of him.  He returns to his full height; even for a wolf, he is ungainly-looking and tall, and he towers over her more than easily.  

Like them, he says with a sweep of his paw towards the gaggle that has collected beneath them.  They are still making noise.  I am Barracuda.

he returns to his full height, and instinct has her falter in her soft-seated stance once, ears sweeping back atop her crown before rising slowly, carefully. "like them." she affirms, voice a soft echo. 

her gaze sweeps across him then, taking in the shades of his pelt before the rising sun can reduce their contrast further. gaze flickers to his once more, remains there a heart-thumping second, two, before drifting away again. "do you hunt them?" soft still, curious. she is neutral towards the killing of her samesake, yet some part of her avoids their culling when she can. illogical, and often ignored. yet it would well explain his presence here; still she wonders if such a man can be explained at all.

Like them.  Although she certainly does not look like them.  He wonders if as a child she were more vibrant, both in life and in color, and wonders what has caused her to become such a shy little thing.  


I hunt what I must, he states plainly.  He has no reason to hide it from her.  
Does it bother you?  He too had the name of an animal but the barracuda was mighty with many sharp teeth and it was not often that the men of his father's mighty band had come back with them.

she rises, padding towards the edge; nearer the Barracuda. head lowers on her shoulders as she peers down at them, his question hanging in the air only a moment. "no." head shifts to peer back at him, ears sweeping towards the birds as they begin to chatter, back towards the man. 

"I have not seen colours like your eyes."  her interest in them, in him, is betrayed easily now that moments have passed in his presence. once, perhaps, a bright and blaring colour that she can not fully remember, a memory half-processed.

There it is.  Her belated intrigue is enough to hold his interest, and those yellow eyes she so loves are unflinching as she looks into them.  He knows they are peculiar, too bold and venemous to be gold.  I have not seen a pelt as intruiging as yours, he supplies instead, unsure of how to respond to her statement.  Was it just that, or was there some hidden compliment there?

her own gaze dances around the toxic yellow; flickering toward them once to find his gaze holding hers. she does not look away despite the wrongness of it deep in her stomach, until finally she is the one to break away. he speaks, and her auds sweep a little higher on her head. not out of pride; but interest. if her pelt is intriguing it is because of its total absence of warmth, odd shades and colours where they do not seem to belong. 

her tail flickers from where it hangs low at her rear. "it is soft, too."  the words are uttered the same as all the rest she's offered him, and yet there is something hidden should he care to scratch the surface of the words.

He wonders if there is something about him that he has missed for all of these women to come before him like this, slinking and submissive and wanting.  His eyes which have to this point remained unflinching widen just barely in response to her statement.  It is soft, too.

He bets you anything it is.  She is very much a woman, and she is certainly his type.  She is finely crafted and willow-thin.  But there is something about her colour-drained features, her stoic demeanor, that is much more than that.  He cannot place it.

He is a man, black and ugly as he is, he still has desires.  But he does not like feeling used.  Is it, he states impassively, not daring to move.

he stills behind her, and she peers down at the quail as suddenly they scatter, uttering shrill alarm cries before falling silent. something unknown has spooked them; a robin takes hasty wing from where it had been perched, somewhere out of sight. she watches a moment two, before she pulls back from the edge, perching docilely upon her haunches. 

her shoulders rise and fall, a tiny gesture. "I am not all wolf." that much is obvious from her appearance; yet her pelt is a feature hailing from no wild ancestor; downy as it is. she slinks through the conversation like a minnow through the shallows, changing momentum, direction, easily. she too has wants, interests, but they are easily held at bay.

He cannot tell if she is truly as intrigued as she had led him to believe.  First she was timid and now she is wholly uninterested; it comes to mind to threaten her just to wring some of the emotion back out of her.  But he does not.  The quail cry and scatter, and a cold wind blows from the east.

I can tell. He lays it before her plainly just as she does not beat around the bush and whlie he is fine with this banter for now, he does wonder if there is a point to it all or if she is making small talk (which admittedly, he has never been good at).

conversation grinds grows dull; she has never been good at this and therefore finds it to be normal. one of the many drawbacks of a life meddled with and interfered in. she is meek yet; ears half-mast and tail curled. her mere appearance is enough to consider her such; crafted with none of the fire and ironwood of the wolves, none of the burnished sleekness of the coyotes. 

yet he is made in the disjointed fashion of a creature like her; not entirely meant for this earth. she was merely made too small, too bleached. he was made in the shape of no wolf, and yet there he stood; gaze dragged from a world artificial. 

"nor are you. not really."  he was wolf plain enough, through and through, yet clearly something more. gaze met his once more, the allure of his eyes like an eclipse; she must look away lest it burn her. her ears swept back once more, as if to downplay the words.

If I am no wolf, say you, than what am I? He grins wide, teasing, with fangs that are too long and macabre to be real and lips that reveal a little too much.  If she were to look down his throat perhaps she would see something writhing there in the whirling inky darkness of his gut.

He takes a single sweeping stride towards her and makes an attempt to come up on the other side of her like a feline toying with its dinner.

he is jolted from the smoothness of their banter quickly, and the inky darkness of his throat beckons. gaze turns sharp-cut just as she sweeps into submission, neat and tucked and passive, save for the eyes that follow him. tongue flicks to sweep over her muzzle once before she replies, words coming a little quickly, but delivered in the same crisp tone. "you are a wolf and you are not." 

tail tip flicks as it draws near to her, muzzle inclined up toward him. "you are shadow given shape." had she had the childhood afforded to most wild-born creatures she would have drawn parallels to a boogeyman, a sinister god. his eyes alone did not belong here.

It is some kind of flattery to personify him as something supernatural.  The words she spin cause his chest to rise as he circles her and she once more cows before him.  She would be so easy to grasp between his jaws and break. Snap the veins and let blood flow ( & flow & flow ) like waterfall.  

These thoughts come to him frequently and it is most often her type that brings them forth.  But he has no desire to hurt her.  "And what does that mean for you?"

He lingers behind her.  Her tail is plush and full.  The full moon dishes of her ears are different from this angle.  As he sweeps forth the turn in perspective allows him to see the featherlight fur that rounds the inside.  

She is right.  She is soft, although he as only touched her with his eyes.  "Is your submission a reflex? Is it perhaps... just for show?" He has blocked off her access to the hole now, and his ears sweep forward as he presses for a response.

his chest rises. if she were to glance up at his toxic gaze she would find something lingering behind it that would have her skin prickle and burn. and yet she does not look up.

"I do not know, yet."  she offers quietly. she knows. it means her blood sings through her veins and her pelt burns, fear mixes with sharp intrigue. but that is all hidden beneath careful layer of docility, and then he is behind her and her nook behind him. 

he pokes and prods, a creature sharp as he is thin, perhaps. most do not question, merely accept. her muzzle tilts to the left in the slightest, yet her gaze does not find him. "it is both and it is survival." a learned reflex; a careful show made reality every time someone decides to press down on it like a heel on an ant.

"Your body says one thing and your words say another." Her careful caricature of submission was accurate and perhaps even genuine enough that it might have quelled the hostility of some foreign enemy... but she still had the gall to test him.  He respected that in its own right.

Curled around her yet still not touching, he lowers himself again to the ground.  He is arrogant enough that he does not fear her: she is small enough that if she came after him unprovoked that he knew he could take her (although with the cliff's edge right there, a fight would inevitably assure their mutual destruction).

He bristles and shivers as a chill runs through him. "You do not have to fear me."

she responded naught to the first observation save for a blink of her eyes. so removed from what had instilled and forced that submission into her in the first place, it is hard to rein in her voice. he curls around her then, something twitches and calls out warning in her chest. it is ignored.

she says nothing for a time, but her ears rise to half mast and her plume relaxes at her rear. "I am glad." she is, truly, and sharp cut gaze settles on his own for a moment, two. it drifts away. she does not fear the sun but it will still burn her. and then she is bold. muzzle shifts a fraction. close but not touching, and her gaze asks permission. as if she seeks to touch a dusty relic behind glass; she is reverent.

She lingers close enough that he can feel her while not really feeling her all the same.  His lip quivers to reveal his teeth while her muzzle lingers there, and he extends to her a low rumble. 

The poison of his gaze never wavers, but he exposes both his stomach and his throat to her in a show of good faith, narrow wrists tucked to his skeletal ribcage to allow her room on the ledge.  Inspect me all you want.  Touch me, almost like a dare.