Stone Circle now, which is the future you're choosing before you go dying?

ava last week. accipitra today. the headaches roll like fog, each of them a change of face and mind.

at some point hex had escaped and a wicked winter squall separated their small party, drowning the landscape in heavy snow.

 ava that day; ava had the sense to hide.

pakasqa crawled out of the dugout like undead; eating snow ravenously, particles of light reverbrating along her gaze.

a black doe she followed, visible only to her.

and suddenly she was standing before the thin razor's edge of a pack's boundaries. conical teeth of stones in the distance.

knowing something here was part of her. the soil or the trees or even perhaps the stones and what bones were housed beneath them.

accipitra stared within, sunken eyes wretched with lonely hunger.

a young woman.

beautiful and uniquely marked.

forsythia was intrigued at once. enough to not immediately call for @Sven — instead she approached by herself. comfortable now in doing such for kvarsheim. when had that happened, she wondered.

sunken eyes.

intrigue turned into a quick pittering heartbeat.

hello, her tail gave a brief wave before it stilled again. this is kvarsheim. what have you come for?

lanky. small. honeyed colors of flaxen and deep chestnut. these were the first things she noticed about the girl that met her.

younger, but not by much.

her voice was soft and eye kind. she could not answer in words, but she could in actions: accipitra drew to the ground where her belly cut into the cold snow, ears flat and body supplicating in the universal gesture of desperate submission.

if they would have her, she would be theirs; no wolf thrived alone in the savage midwinter.

it was not her place but...

she watched as the young woman sunk low to the ground and her body became a thing of physical display. once she had needed to do this — come to kvarsheim and make herself so presentable.

she did not think sven would mind, would he?

forsythia could take care of her — like a sister.

hungry? she asked finally with a gentle flick of her tail, a softening to her features.

it only took the softening of the stranger’s eyes for the girl to melt further, spread across the snow in total supplication. 

hungry? she leapt up — almost too abruptly — tail beating against her hocks and form crouched in answer.

excitement and energy.

good signs, in a tender's mind.

okay, okay, a small smile and soft gesturing for the young woman to follow. come with me. stay close. she did not think she was bringing a fox into the hen house. yet proximity to one another might ward off too sharp of an interaction from those who called kvarsheim home.

she meant to guide them to the creek now. where she knew she had buried things for eating among its cold and stony shoreline.

though she spoke never, she knew every meaning in the gentler wolf's words.

the girl drew close, surprised by the instinctual imperative that bid her to match this stranger's smooth stride step for step.

rushwater sounded in her ears as they came to a stony creek whose surface was limned with ice.

they drank and then they moved on; after an hour in forsythia’s company it was if the girl had belonged here all along. 

that night she slept with belly full and mind rested, content within the sanctity of six tall, protective stones.