Deepwood Weald but need alone is not enough to set power free

The druid had ventured through the Sentinels until one forest had bled into another. The fire had not destroyed the entirety of his family’s old home. A large portion had indeed been wiped clean by the flame, but even there life had started to return and was flourishing well. Most of the ash had left the seaside wood. As the rogue prowled through the remainder of the Sentinels and into the weald, he noted the change in scent and glanced back over his shoulder to see the stretch of land he’d covered.
 
Pressing on into the weald, Knaven found a peaceful location beneath a tall tree. The sun was all but gone behind the mountain range and night would fall upon them. The earthy beast glanced upward to see if he could make out the stars, but the trees obscured his vision and cast a powerful shade onto the forest floor.

Nearly a week had passed since his run-in with the enraged wolf. Draper felt more or less back to normal. His cuts were well on their way to scarring over, his muscles and bones had loosened once more, and he was on the move again. He was hunting not for live animals today, but for scraps left by others. A murder of crows had led him into this forest where he had feasted upon a decaying elk.

That was until a larger predator (a cougar) came along and decided she wanted it all for herself. With nobody to back him up, Draper had been forced to relinquish the rest of the food to her. At least he'd gotten a good belly's full of sustenance, and she'd been too distracted by the food to take a stab at him. Now the sun was sinking below the horizon, a fact Draper could only know because the sky grew darker. That meant rest, which sent him searching for a good place to bed down for the night.

Instead, he stumbled into the path of a wolf.

Great.

Draper froze like a deer in the headlights, his brain trying to decide if "flight" or "fight" was the correct response to this situation.

An unfamiliar scent passed by just moments before the coyote stepped out into Knaven’s path. The druid stopped immediately in his tracks and drew his crown high, favoring confident dominance over submission. When he realized that the animal was closer to his kind than anything else, he lowered his head some and flicked his tail twice to the spindly trickster. Coyotes had never been much of an issue for the earthy wolf. On the islands, they tended to stay inland and out of the Cairn’s way.
 
“You speak common tongue, eh?”
 
The druid spoke out to the coyote curiously. If the slender creature opted to flee the scenario, there wasn’t much that he could do to help that. Not all of the beasts who wandered the earth were bound to find common ground. The dark of his eyes gleamed as he drew his muzzle upward and drank in the scent of the stranger once more.

In a wild twist of events, it wasn't fight or flight. Instead, the brown wolf posed a question. A stupid question, Draper thought, but one he could answer easy enough.

I'm not mute; I'm a coyote, he said.

Why was it every wolf he came across thought that he was some fucking wonder. Charles might have been the only exception to that rule, and that was only because he was part coyote (whether he wanted to believe it or not). At least this encounter hadn't started with an attack, which was more than Draper could say for plenty of his run-ins with wolves.

I don't want trouble, he said. And he meant it. Draper was fine to just go about his day.

Had enough of that for a lifetime.

Most of that trouble wasn't even incited by him. Wolves seemed to be the ones who were always out to get him for no good reason. Draper was at a loss as to how to stop it from happening. Everywhere he went, there was another one of his larger cousins ready to rip out his throat. The coyote fully believed he didn't deserve the reputation he'd been given. No wonder his kind was always so wary of wolves: they were constantly trying to take coyotes out.

“Didn’t ask if you were a mute, ‘yote. I asked if ya spoke common tongue or not.”
 
A gleam crossed into the muddy russet of his eyes. The druid lifted his crown upward and eyed the slender canine with a guarded and prying expression. Knaven was a relatively easy-going fellow, but he wasn’t one for being misconstrued or misinterpreted. In his youth he had adopted a strong sense of pride and knew his worth; sometimes he spoke in a way that confused those around him, but he wasn’t as big of a fool as he was made out to be.
 
“Yer kind speaks the wild tongue where I’m from, see…”
 
The rogue figured that providing this context might ease the other a little bit. The guarded expression of the slender figure was one that sparked a sense of frustration and superiority inside of the earthy yearling. He allowed those two emotions to wage war inside of his chest for a moment before his ears turned at the remark the coyote made – not wanting trouble.
 
An easy smile split the features of the druid.
 
“I’m not too fond o’ trouble myself, cousin.”

Feel free to stop him! He'll turn back if Knaven wants to talk. ^__^

Draper rolled his eyes at that comment. Maybe he hadn't asked, but the wolf had implied as far as he was concerned. And besides, he'd answered the question, so why did this guy have to get all defensive about it? What a tool.

Draper also didn't know what this "wild tongue" was. Sounded like a crazy sex move or something.

After that, at least, the guy seemed to ease up a bit, mentioning that he didn't want trouble. Well, there was that. Draper would take what he could get, even if it seemed like all wolves wanted was trouble with a capital T.

Good, he replied. Then I'll be on my way.

No sense in sticking around unless this guy wanted something. Or unless he wanted to offer something. Fat chance of the latter scenario happening.

The druid cast the narrow-faced creature a sickening smile, riddled with youthful confidence that had not been earned. He wasn’t about to stop the ornery little coyote from taking his leave; the creature had really given no reason for Knaven to want him to stay. Then again, he hadn’t necessarily been anticipating that he would cross paths with one of them that could talk to him without getting their words in a jumble. Then again, there was a good chance that this stranger had no idea what those beasts were like. Knaven knew well enough that there were many differences on the islands of his home.
 
“See ya,” he called out cheerily after the disappearing image of the golden-coated creature.
 
With no intention of remaining there, Knaven sniffed the nearby area a few times and nosed his way outside of the aroma of the coyote. He found a pathway that drew his interest, and he began his journey along that route. The scenery shifted and changed around him until he had ventured into a place unlike the one where he had spoken with the coyote – with that, his memory of the beast had faded.