Whitefish River a crack in the mirror

Keeping Skaro's possible injuries vague. Travel thread so he can get to SB. He's followed the river to Greatwater Lake. Maybe @Meldresi or someone from BFW can spot him? A brief encounter might be fun.

When one venture did not pan out, it was always a good idea to have a backup plan. The only plan that this nimble-footed scoundrel could drum up was... to run. And he did it with gusto, barely stopping as he caroused through the thick forest and over strange fields of snow; he saw distant mountains and thought, yes, that is a good destination. Any destination would've piqued his interest at this point. Perhaps he would have better luck in the shadow of these mountains.

When Skaro did stop, he was forced to. A river suddenly cut through his path, zigging and zagging in a manner which prevented further exploration. A part of him was glad; he was a nervous beast, and made more erratic in his fear of heights - the mountains seemed like a good idea until they were within reach, and this fear was remembered. So instead of heading towards the cliffs, Skaro followed the river.

He ached from the travel. He ached in the pit of his stomach from lack of food, and his tongue was growing sore without fluids to drink; a few times Skaro had tried to eat snow to satiate himself, but that only made his stomach rebel. He had learned within the first year of his life that snow was a deadly thing, but most importantly... It was a tricky, taunting, evil thing. You could munch on it all day if you had the constitution... But in the end, the effort was futile.

He mewled as he wandered, cried out in to the dark with the slim hope that something would stir and wake. He hoped in his desperation that the winter would be kind to him, but having been born at the harshest time of year, Skaro knew better. He could not trust the winter the same way he could not trust the mountains, or this foreign river he now trailed.

With a resounding crack, Saena's forepaws broke through the ice built at the river's edge. The curvy juvenile quickly withdrew them, holding one and then the other aloft and shaking them. The chill of the water would soon crawl up her arms, but by then she hoped to be jogging once more. She lifted her head, shivered, and then dropped her snout to lap at the liberated water that trickled by.

When she rose her head, it was to spot a dark-haired beast traveling quickly along the other side. Saena fanned her ears forward and watched his progress. The male was strangely thin, with a ribcage that seemed to slope more than an average wolf's. He was larger than her, but there was something off about him as well, as if he wasn't entirely whole.

He was the first coywolf Saena had ever seen, and she found him bizarre for reasons she couldn't pinpoint. Spurred by an Outrider's curiosity, she began to tail him on her side of the river with a loud rumble in her throat, meant to gain his attention for a moment so she could study him more closely.

He flitted between the trees, eager to cover as much land as he could. When a sound caught in his ears, Skaro stopped. He lurched and almost stumbled in the deep snow, turning his ears and then his pointed face as he tried to ascertain the origin of the call. His tail tucked against his hocks even before he spotted the caller; and, while his instincts were reacting, he bayed a low wuff across the snow-scape.

The sound had barely passed his lips when he went silent, and simply listened. For the time being Skaro's head was raised and his hooked nose wiggled with anticipation for a potential meet - but he didn't notice Saena as she stalked him. All he heard was the stillness of winter, wherein even the breeze in the trees was silent. Skaro stopped alongside the river and bowed his head to drink - but that was when he saw the ice, and was refused.

She crossed quickly over the icy river, each step producing a crackle as the ice underfoot shifted and the snow ground into it. It was strong enough to hold her weight and require a good hit to break, but she wouldn't have wanted to see a bear walk across it.

She met the responding woof with another, as well as the flagging of her copper tail. She caught back up with the strangely angular wolf at the edge of the river, on his side now, with his head bent to the surface. Saena stopped a respectable distance away, as she was unwilling to invite his wrath by encroaching. She was poised on the tips of her toes, ready to turn and flee if it turned out he was unfriendly.

"It breaks if you hit it hard enough," she said loudly to draw attention fully to herself at last. Her ears fanned out as she spoke, then pointed straight once more, as though she was unsure whether it was better to appear relaxed or alert in the presence of a stranger.

The bundle of black did shiver when he heard an echoed woof, but he did not lift his head; his ears slicked back against it, and his tail went from his hocks to his belly. Skaro hungrily sniffed at the surface of the ice, flicking his tongue across his lips - filled with anticipation perhaps, or nervous confusion - and then, when the stranger gave him some pointed advice, he finally lifted his head to look upon her.

She was... Odd. Not in the same way he was odd. A mutt could always identify other mutts, but this wasn't one of his kind. The girl was more adept with the wiles of winter than himself, so he was happy to defer to her knowledge. Skaro took another look at the ice, placed one paw and then the other side-by-side upon the slippery surface, and gave a little hop. There was a crack, but it did not give.

The boy would not be disheartened by the difficulty, or the cold. He tried again, swooping down upon the same location with the same two-paw punch, and a segment of the ice finally broke away. The river flowed freely beneath - which Skaro greedily lapped up. Not a word was spoken to the young stranger, no thanks and no greeting, for he was too busy drowning his thirst.

Skaro said nothing in response. Saena readied herself to be dismissed by placing one forepaw back, but then the coywolf brought his paws together at the edge of the ice and hit it. The sound echoed across the flatlands, and when he hit it again, he was rewarded with a deafening crack and the appearance of fresh water.

While he fell upon it with the vigour of a man who had just left the desert, Saena watched casually. Nothing about him had yet revealed what she found so bizarre about him. His features were weird, but she couldn't place a finger on why. Deciding to employ another tactic, she took a slow step forward and said, "I'm Saena. I live over there," and indicated "over there" with a flick of her snout.

"Where do you come from?" she asked, hopeful that his answer would shed some light on what was so different about him.

He didn't know what to expect from the girl - but really, Skaro wasn't thinking about her at all. The boy was concentrating on the water, up until the stranger spoke again, and he was spooked in to remembering. Briefly the wanderer sputtered and gagged upon the cool fluid, and he pulled his head away from the small hole he had cracked in the ice; Saena's words were met by a brief spray of water as he did this, and then it was only dripping from his mouth, while his tongue lay panting from its gape.

Where do you come from? The girl questioned, her tone beguiling. Skaro couldn't tell if she was trustworthy yet, and so he only answered with the vague little riddle, Nowhere. Everywhere. Then, as he slurped his tongue back in to his head and shook the water from his ragged chest, he took an interest in her.

A quick series of long strides had him close the gap between them both; it was fast enough to be seen as a threat, but as soon as he was within snapping distance, he ducked his head instead. The boy's hooked nose roamed; he sniffed at the air around her, attempted to inhale the scent of her fur, and nearly managed to bump her cheek with it as an act of deferral - or maybe thanks - for the advice about the water. Between his fidgeting, Skaro muttered.

Why? She smelled like pine trees and fresh snow, so really, not very different from his current surroundings. You travel all alone? When he said alone his ears popped up, no longer hidden against the blackness of his head, and fanned forwards. He could smell something more upon her though - the aroma of wolves. Many, many wolves. And this made Skaro abruptly recoil to give her space and save himself any further trouble. You travel alone but you come from many.

Not safe. His mind sputtered at him. Not safe!

Nowhere. Everywhere. seemed like a rather ambiguous place. She'd had almost nothing in the way of backstabbing in her life—her overly dramatic belief that her whole family had abandoned her barely qualified—and so she couldn't quite understand the need for vagueness. Perhaps it was simply something he took pleasure in, or maybe he really didn't know where he came from. That thought was depressing; Saena felt that the Plateau was a big part of her identity, and couldn't imagine being separated from it and unable to recall it.

Skaro was moving quickly forward now, snapping her line of thought with his swift motion. Her hackles prickled instinctively until the moment his nose ducked down, when they flattened back out and she lifted her head just slightly. Few wolves at the Plateau had the good sense to step aside for her ambition, which rose by the day, so she was happy to accept any hint of submission from anyone at this point to feed her confidence.

But then he was skittering backward, commenting on her scent, and she was perplexed. "I'm an Outrider," she explained, "travelling alone is what we do. But I belong to Blacktail Deer Plateau. It's that big ridge." She flung her head in the general direction of home, not even turning to make sure the ridge was visible. "You don't have a pack?"

She didn't get an answer, for Skaro turned skittishly away and began to walk. For all intents and purposes he was fleeing, though it didn't seem like it. She watched him go for a moment, found she was indifferent where normally she'd be irritated, and then went back to loping along the river toward home.