Moonspear one night the clock struck twelve

It was a late hour, the moon hung high in the clear, starry sky. Everything awash in a low glow as he prowled near their defined resting spot. A restlessness had imbued him since they had visited the glen and Altair found he wanted more—wanted to see more of that little world just beyond their sanctuary.

He had ranged low into the old wood, blending in cleanly with the shade within the ancient glade easily. While not like some of his siblings, he at least possessed a hooded and cloaked body that let him have some advantages in the dense timber, though he was hardly there to hunt. He wasn’t alone either, certain that @Mira had seen him slip off and was somewhere in tow.

Probably keen to figure out what he was up to so she could tattle, he surmised.

It did not deter him, however, and he progressed swiftly and quietly as he could muster.

Those first few days in Moonspear went by swiftly, though they brought about a variety of feelings. Sheltered as she recovered from her travels, Ciri hadn't met many of the wolves, but she was growing more curious - especially of the other pups that resided there, cousins, that her mother spoke of. She wasn't even sure what a "cousin" was to her, nor had she thought to ask.

Altair was not alone in his prowling. The little blackbird, made restless that night in her pining for her beloved Papa, stepped carefully from the her family's rendezvous to test how far she could roam.

It was nothing exciting, she decided, for Moonspear was just another mountain to her. Made of rugged terrain and littered with evergreen foliage, it was welcoming to Ciri in a sense that it was the sort of place where she'd always made her home. The territory suited her just fine; it was the uncertainty of its inhabitants that made her nervous.

When she detected the movement of another in the darkness ahead, the girl paused. Yellow eyes studied her surroundings and she held her breath, sable ears twitching to listen for further footfalls.

Something halted in his peripheral—a dark figure he thought he recognized. A few more paces brought him to halt in the cover of shrubbery in which he peered through, but could not quite pick out the finer details of just who it was that watched him. He was certain it was Mira though. She had probably been able to outpace him and get ahead to try and spot him much in the way that he was trying to spot her.

Well, he decided he would see about that.

Altair crept forward as quietly as he could manage, knowing full and well that his sister knew his antics well enough to have begun to pinpoint what he was up to now. Getting the drop on her was a rather tricky thing and wasn’t entirely his goal in this endeavor. Getting close enough to stare her down, however, was completely within the realm of possibility.

And when he had reached the apex of such an event, he bristled.

In a hissing, hush tone: “Mira don’t you dare tell Mom. You can come.”

Maybe that would hush her, for now.

@Mira feel free to pop in whenever!

The sound of padding paws stopped suddenly, and Ciri's anxiety heightened. Obsidian lobes splayed backwad and her body sagged. She lowered herself in a sudden desire to be hidden, as smoothly and as quietly as she could, and her vivid eyes scanned the darkness before her for any suggestion that the stranger might advance on her.

He did not, thankfully, and the rise of his voice eased the blackbird's stress a little. Ciri, feeling a little giddy at having been mistaken for someone else, considered making attempt at slipping away unheard. Always curious, however, the young Ostrega remained rooted for a time while she tried to muster the courage to step forward.

She exhaled the breath she'd been holding and, with her dark tail still tucked at her rear, Ciri crept nervously forward. "I'm not Mira," she managed in a hoarse whisper, vibrant gaze still searching, "but... I won't tell anybody anything, I swear."

The words, off into the air, were met with a surprised look upon his face as he peered out from a bush to find not Mira, but another. An apology swept across his features then, ears fanning back against the dark hood of his head as he fumbled briefly to find words that would somehow make up for his error; he hadn’t meant to startle someone, but then again… who was she?

“Oh, uh,” he faltered, “I’m sorry, I thought you were my sister.”

She was dark, like his mother, but not quite the same pitch that coated her and some of his siblings. She was meek, not imbued with a headstrong attitude that he had come to associate with many that resided in their pack. And perhaps most importantly, they were about the same age if he had to guess—still all legs, but heavily marked with the shapes and sizes that would follow them long into their adulthood.

He emerged fully from his cover, nose working to ascertain who she was. He smelled his father, his aunt, and a smattering of others. She was definitely apart of them in some way, but he didn’t know her—she must have been new. Maybe one of those new kids he had recalled being told about but not quite listening to what was being said.

“Who are you? I’m Altair… and… cool, that you won’t tell anyone. I’m not supposed to be out here and you probably aren’t either I’m guessing. I wanted to go check out the borders,” he went on, gesturing off into the darkness behind him. He offered her a smile—maybe this would make up for it: “You can come if you want.”

Something guilty swam in the boy's black-gold features, and Ciri mused that he looked as awkward as she felt. She averted her yellow stare toward the ground and the tip of her raven tail gave an anxious twitch, as she fully expected him to reject her presence entirely.

Hey, can you fuck off?

Phaedra's harsh words flagged in her mind, and Ciri's ears splayed backward at the memory of the pearl's cruelty toward her. She'd simply yearned for the companionship of a peer that night, eager to reach out for new connections with others outside her family circle.

Instead of bitterness, however the agouti youth... welcomed her to join him? Ciri pricked her ears and lifted her muzzle, surprised, and gawked at him for a long pause before she stumbled over her words: "oh, I-" Heat rose to her cheeks, which reddened beneath her fur. "I'm Ciri, I..."

I thought you were going to tell me to get lost.

"I would like that."

She was soft-spoken, so very different from the other girls he knew. Mira was rough, Sialuk was bubbly, Mintaka had a certain airy lilt to her voice even, but Ciri? There was a timidness beneath the tension of her voice, a wavering note here and there that made him doubt for a moment if she truly wanted to come. Uncertainty was something that Altair did not know a lot of; he eked confidence. He may have even been a little too self-assured for his own good in the right company.

“Well, c’mon then,” he said decisively, flicking his head over his shoulder.

If she wanted to go though, at least for real, then he would oblige and take up the company.

He didn’t look to see if she was going to follow as he turned back, setting his sights for the trail that he had abandoned in the middle of its own forging by his hand. It was better that they stayed off the main paths anyway—he didn’t want to get caught, not at least before he even hit the edge of where he wanted to be.

“You’ll have to be quiet, well, we’ll have to be quiet,” he went on, his voice dropping low into a whisper. “If we get caught my mom’s gonna be real mad. Probably my dad too,” though perhaps in not so many words. He knew his father would be disappointed, and the look of such would be warning enough. His mother, however, would be far more stern and desire to ground the rules in.

The rules never seemed to end at that.

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