Lost Creek Hollow were you there to bedevil and beguile?

she thinks the rest of the day might prove productive if she manages to find something useful to add to the caches. eager to prove herself, she decides on yarrow, those tiny flowers Brisbane had explained well and would surely be useful. she's got the rest of the day to search, and with her bum leg that has her adopt a three-legged trot after a good hour of searching, there isn't much else she can do. some vegetation catches her gaze, and she hobbles over to stick her nose into a small mound of vegetation beneath a fir. there's something sharp about their scent, and hoping they might be somewhat useful and not merely plants she'll carry for the rest of the day only for Baelfire to tell her they're useless, she tugs a small clump away and continues her search.

the success of achieving his aim, to be promoted into the adult ranks before the natural time, sat well with merrick, and lent a new jauntiness to his step. his pride was well-placed; he had earned his place in the hollow and nunataq still held the restricted amount of love merrick had to give.
wending between the trees, the boy's jaws parted to let his tongue loll as he watched with some curiosity a new recruit to the creek. she was taller than he, with a bulk that outweighed his own, but the lacerations that littered her body, the struggling gait — these things appealed to his predator's eye far more than his neighborly sense. 
making himself known with a gentle step, merrick delved into his introductions with anything but decorum: "the person who did this to you didn't follow you, did they?"

there! tiny flowers, pale, and blooming barely in a sun-warmed patch of earth. she increases momentum as her hobble becomes more forward-leaning, and yet she is paused before she can close the final few meters. a boy, dark and russet in hue, makes himself known and she is quick to put all four feet to the ground, straightening the slight bend to her spine that seems to make her burn in her ribs fade. the hurt returns, but it's worth it. the plants are dropped at her feet when he speaks, but it's hardly the introduction she'd have liked. she doesn't want to become known as the charity case, but it's obvious enough already. "he was too injured to."  she offered; he didn't have to know that it was because he'd taken the brunt of the fall and not because she'd fought back. she's still slightly off-put, and the flowers are forgotten for the moment. she searches for some way to way to pry tactlessly into him, but finds none. "I'm Vuk." 

merrick was pleased that he had seemingly put her off, had snuck beneath her damaged veneer and hit upon something private: a sense of weakness. it was not in him to display his own as openly as these wolves did; wearing oneself that way only led to darker things, and he wondered what stupidity had made this one trail into the mouth of a beast.
a male beast. maybe he had wanted her in the way that men pursue women, and she had rebuffed him. why, if she lost so caustically in the end? his scrutiny was momentary; he dipped his muzzle with a cultivated encouragement. "good."
ah, names. names. what was the need for them. "merrick." but he was polite, not because indra had taught her forgotten little princeling anything, but because it benefitted him to be so. "do you need help with anything, vuk?" the young wolf continued, warm, charming, affable. she was his packmate after all.

he seemed to accept her answer without question, and his answer was encouraging enough to ignore the small rumble in the back of her mind that told her something was off. she put it off to the odd way he'd greeted her, and though it still pricked at her, his continued words seemed polite. she hesitated a moment before responding, wondering whether or not to accept his help, concerned still with the fact that she most certainly was a burden. "I'm looking for yarrow - it's a bunch of little white flowers, clumped together." she didn't specify what exactly she'd need his help for - though she'd certainly be accepting of help in her search or a point in the right direction, she left him an out at the same time.

merrick wondered why vuk hesitated, but in the next breath she had explained her need. the boy was no herbalist, preferring to hunt other things aside from flowers, but in this moment he wondered if the task was worthwhile. "i can help you search," he murmured, sweeping the surrounding area with his sharp gaze before setting a slow pace into the woods. "what is yarrow used for?" merrick inquired, genuinely curious. it seemed innocent by her description, although he knew many innocuous plants held poison in their pretty stems.

he agreed, and she thought that surely she'd misjudged him. "thanks," she offered with a small smile. she moved parallel to him, a little further off but still plenty able to communicate across the distance between them.  "if you chew it up and put it on a wound, it keeps infection away. if you eat it, though, you throw up - too much is dangerous." she couldn't remember, exactly, how - it still seemed odd that plants had such duel natures. though, she supposed, everything could kill you if you ate too much of it. poking her muzzle through the base of some scraggly undergrowth with promising plants at its base, her breath pooled hotly against the earth until she decided they were of no use and withdrew. "do you know much about plants?" 

unbalance, confuse, strike — such was merrick's growing approach toward those around him. though within the comfort of the hollow, there would be no blow. and so vuk, whether or not she understood it, was in no danger from merrick. not today. "i actually know nothing about plants," he answered with a small smile. "i prefer to look at the stars. but they aren't as helpful, it seems."
he nosed around a trio of half-buried stones and straightened. a patch of small white flowers, though he wasn't sure if it was what vuk was searching for. they looked rather indistinguishable from wildflowers to the boy. "is this yarrow?"

she was hoping his answer would be positive, but she's not entirely surprised when it's not. "I didn't either, a few weeks ago. but then I had to learn." she offers, referencing the scattered and healing wounds across her body. his own interest is one she knows next to nothing about, and yet - "when I started traveling, that really bright star - the one in the north - was helpful." she would have gotten completely lost without it there, and in all likelihood managed to circle back to the family and life she'd been so desperate to leave. it had taken her a few days to realize the importance of the star, as well as its immobility, but it had been in part what had led her here. 

she moves to inspect the flowers he's found, though is quick to realize that she herself has never actually seen the plant. "yes! well, I'll check with Baelfire to be sure, but those match what I've been told." she offers him a grin, and moves to tug carefully some of the largest clusters from the earth.

ah yes. breccan had mentioned that star too, had he not? it was one of the most important stars in the sky, yet he preferred the constellation called ursus a good deal more. perhaps it was the fact he was born in bearclaw valley, but merrick had discovered an affinity for bears not yet indulged.
"where did you travel from?" the boy inquired, ears sweeping forward even as he stepped back to allow vuk room for her collection. filing away the name baelfire, not wanting to ask too many questions as he built a rapport with his packmate, he was nevertheless intrigued immediately by the title, and wondered who he was to the aspiring healer.