Sunbeam Lair Spotlight

His smile is gentle, but in his eyes she’d seen the pity. She straightens out with undue awareness, as if she now has a point to prove- that she is strong and capable and that his pity was better spent elsewhere.

She sits and folds her tail as a way to cover up dirty paws. Something in his air of speaking leaves her feeling shabbier than usual. She imagines he must be some nearby pack’s noble son, perhaps with an affluent pack soon to inherit.

“I live just down in the valley,” She indicates with a little dip of muzzle over her shoulder. That was home for now, as much as a lone wolf could claim, anyway. Eventually she would move on, pushed out by weather or packs, or if she’d ever find purpose beyond a scant isolated existence. If that day would ever come. She was adverse to waving a pack’s banner, or discarding her ideals by adopting their’s.

She rolled her shoulders, relieved herself that she had not trespassed and that this red stranger was polite. A curious nose tests the boy’s scent. He is, by every definition, striking. Beautiful, even. He could not have been much older than her, perhaps even a recent dispersal like herself.

“You’ve come a long way down for unique fauna. Are you a healer or something?” She asks.