Rising Sun Valley Dear Fellow Traveller

She’d avert her eyes awkwardly at his compliment, but something in his voice and the ease of his words drew her into a languid state. A little less war-torn. She watched as he gently revolved a stone under paw, and fiddled like a fledgling whelp with the dirt. Tauris too was a bit like a pup, grief waning once her belly was filled. Which was perhaps why she marshaled to her elbows, before she could backpedal, and inched closer to Louis at his invitation. The earth was cool but she could feel the heat given off from his pelt. She folded her front paws into her chest and settled down, taking care not to touch him.

She had spent hundreds of nights beside her mother and father, and all the brothers and sisters who had come and gone through her days. But she’d been alone for so long, now. The warmth of another being was familiar, yet faraway. It made her homesick for a time and place she couldn’t return to. She felt the ache of loneliness.

Tauris cast a terse glance from the corner of her eye to Louis beside her, inspecting closer before daring to open her mouth. 

“If this is a trick, I warn I’ll not be so easily pacified,” the ghost of a smile touching her lips.