Jade Fern Grove with every lonely, aching step

Slowly, he was getting his scent to permeate the boundaries of the Grove. It hung in the trees, where tufts of his fur lay. It danced about the bushes where he scratched himself.

It was in the ground by now. This was to be a home, for him.

Now he just needed to fill it. With both prey and others.

So he set out to do one or the other that fine morning, loping through the grove he was coming to learn rather well, paws rhythmically thudding against the grove floor as he roamed towards the borders.

Impossible.

And even that seemed too small a word for this.

Levi practically danced on his toes while he slung his head low, weaving about the singular scent he found here - yes, here, and everywhere! - along the outer rim of these verdant woods.

Byleth! he raised his head now to call for his friend and to search the trees for him. Brother! You build a fort in the woods, and never send home an invitation? Yet the man laughed, brimming like gold. Enough to make a child of him.

It was impossible.

Byleth froze in place, perched above a small offshoot of a creek. The babble was the only sound, for a moment, before the voice reached him again.

Leviathan. Of course it was.

He turned and ducked into the trees, ranging forward with eyes sharpened to find. And he found.

Leviathan. For all that he sounded gruff, there was a rare smile touching his features.

I see you found me.

Found you! Leviathan laughed, surely there is a word stronger than that for the finding I have done! 

He returned Byleth’s subtle smile with a broad and toothy grin, a rushing past the borderline, a swing of his legs to smother his friend in a wolffish embrace.

Leviathan would unravel himself in fair time, unless Byleth knocked him off him first.

I have missed you! Where have you been? And what are you doing here?

Byleth smile grew wider at the physicality of the man he’d all but adopted as a brother. He swung a leg up to wrap around Leviathan’s own shoulders, tail wagging subtly behind him.

Im making something, here. For survivors, to survive the winter. It’s coming ever closer. He didn’t respond to the rest of Levi’s statement, and shuffled uncomfortably at the thought.