the grayscale outrider was again, far from home— approximately three days, she guessed. this time she'd weaved her way through the mountains she'd come to become familiar with and had found herself in the middle of a wide valley. nice.
as she emerged from the trees, she spotted a small lake, and decided to stop for a rest. crëyr placed a paw on the thin layer of ice that had formed and forcefully pressed it downwards, so that it broke and made a suitable hole for her to drink from. as she dipped her petite silver crown to lap at the water, she then became aware of the distinct squawking that only grew louder as she continued to quench her thirst. geese. she rolled her eyes. looked like the place wouldn't be hospitable after all, unless she wanted to face a bunch of loud birds while she had her stay.
unless...
she looked up then, her cerulean orbs zeroing on one or two of the birds, the ones which were particularly plump or particularly loud. those were her targets, for now. crëyr began to back away, so that there was a good distance between herself and the birds that were yet to be her prey. it would be most effective if she had a partner to hunt with, but sure she could take some down herself.
In all the time since she'd arrived in the Teekon Wilds, that raven colored wolf had yet to explore the mountain range. She'd been born and raised on a mountain range, and had settled at the Glacier due to how familiar is was to home. So it was odd that she'd yet to visit the rocky terrain only a few days travel from her home—until now, that is. She'd caught sight of the peaks for what felt like the millionth time during her visit to Duck Lake and, acting on a whim, decided to head towards them. The terrain was like home, letting her know just where to place her paws to keep from tumbling down, and she enjoyed it. Sen actually enjoyed climbing mountains.
The trek had still been a long one, despite her memory of how to navigate such a land form, but it was all worth it. As she started to descend the mountains, she soon reached a rather nice looking place. It looked as if it had several watery depths to it, though each had a thin layer of ice over top; save for the places where other creatures ha broken through to hydrate themselves. Sen hadn't needed to walk very long, either, before a sound entered her ears. It sounded like a... honk? To say she was annoyed would be an understatement. She'd disliked the Lake so much because of the noisy birds, now here she was in a space that held even more noisy cretins.
Sen had been tempted to chase them, she really had, but something stopped her. A scent. It was familiar, but she couldn't put a face or name to it right away. Still, she knew she'd smelled it somewhere before, that she'd met the owner of the scent before. Turning about quietly, she scanned the area with her amber eyes, but stopped when they landed on a grey scale body that looked to be backing away from the living noise-makers. The grey scale girl... There was only one who fit both the scent and the look, and it was the wolf who had shared a space with her back around the time she'd first entered the Wilds. Oh, what was her name? Sen had to think for a moment, trying to remember the day a storm had decided to appear out of thin air. Crëyr! That was it, that was her name! The dark lupine was glad to have remembered, and slowly made her way towards her long-ago savior. “Crëyr?” she inquired quietly, not wanting to seem like a fool if she was wrong, or frighten off the geese the other girl seemed to be focused on.
it wasn't long before another scent drifted into her nostrils— this time she knew she'd smelt it before, that it belonged to somebody she knew. the sterling girl couldn't exactly place a finger on it, though.
her attention diverted, she turned to the approaching, familiar dark figure, her suspicions confirmed. sen spoke her name, a soft question, and crëyr grinned. the swarthy female had been the wolfess she'd had an encounter with much earlier, when they'd been stuck on the beach when buckets of water had been pouring relentlessly down on them. they'd sought shelter together, and had parted ways ever since.
"sen!" she whispered, ecstatic to see one of her first-ever friends. "it's been a while! fortunately it's sunny today," crëyr said, a joking tone tainting her voice.
another annoying squawk pierced through the air, and the grayscale outrider was yet again reminded of her to-be meal. two heads were better than one, so she asked, while quietly observing the birds. quickly she began to formulate a plan, for two. she would have to dispose of it if sen decided to decline her request. "hey, i was planning to take some of these down. you wanna help?"
“Yes, it has been quite some time, hasn't it?” she whispered back, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Had the sun not been out today, then I would have been forced to assume that our meeting was just not meant to be.” Of course, Sen was joking. She wasn't one to be superstitious, nor did she believe in the thing know as 'fate' and 'bad luck'. They were just plain words to her, and despite knowing how strong they were to some, she often make crummy jokes and mocking references towards them.
The raven colored wolf was glad that the lighter lupine offered her an opportunity to help out. It would be an excellent way to get payback on the stupid birds, even though it had been ducks who annoyed her before, and not the honking geese she saw now. That fact did nothing to change her mind, however. “I would love to help out,” Sen responded, her small smile turning into a wide grin as the words left her mouth.
she let out a small chuckle when sen deemed that their meeting that day wouldn't have been meant to be if the sun wasn't shining today, which crëyr promptly offered words of agreement. "yep, it's been about time. it's a great day to see one of my first friends again."
the amber-eyed female accepted her offer, and the petite grayscale wolfess responded with a grin that matched hers. "awesome! alrighty, here's the plan. one of us run towards and scatter the geese, the other jump from that bush—" she raised a paw and gestured towards one of the scrubs right of the lake, significantly closer to the geese than the scrub they were lingering around right now. "and take as many down as possible. anything to add?"
Mentally, the woman shook herself free of her thoughts, focusing on the words of her friend instead. The plan she gave seemed simple enough, and could even prove to be fun. Chasing the geese, even if it was only to scatter them... The idea was alluring to the geese-hating lupine. “Nope, nothing to add,” Sen stated confidently, having seen no errors in the plan. The only thing that came to mind was the possibility of the geese flying away, but she doubted that happening. They always appeared to enjoy mocking predators and making fools out of them, so there was no way they would just fly off without having some fun first. “I could scatter them, unless you wanted to?”
crëyr grinned as sen told her that she too, said it was great to see each other once more. following that she declared she had nothing to add, which allowed a nod from the silver-grey wolfess.
"i don't mind, of course you could," she replied at sen's request to scatter the birds. they would probably fly away if sen barrelled full-speed towards them, but if that happened crëyr would leap and possibly take one or two down from the air.
giving her hunting partner another smile and a nod of her petite crown, she began making her way towards the shrub she had mentioned, and concealed her lithe frame within its snow-covered branches. her cerulean eyes were bright, alert, spectating the flapping geese and what kind of technique sen would use to scatter them. the birds seemed to be wary by now, for they were swivelling their heads back and forth, quizzical looks in their beady eyes.
The feathery creatures didn't do exactly as she wanted, which was nothing Sen hadn't expected. If she tried to get one to move one way, it'd go in the opposite direction, until the wolf started moving with it and getting each goose away from any others. Some acted as if they were going to fly away completely, but ended up just flapping a few feet away before landing again and walking. From a distance, the sight would be almost comical. The female tried to steer some closer to the shrub, though they didn't wish to cooperate so easily.
the swarthy female lowered herself close to the ground and began to attempt to round all the birds up, though cooperation was probably the last thing on their minds. well, if they were smart enough to know that some would turn into two wolves' future prey.
probably not, for they were dawdling around, giving occasional flaps of their wings. or maybe they simply liked to attempt to piss their predators off.
sen was trying to lure a few closer to her hiding place, though the birds had different plans in mind. when she'd had three or four wandering close enough, crëyr sprang out of the bushes, leaping towards the birds, snagging one by its neck. once it dropped to the ground, she turned on her second one though this one was unwilling to go just like that— there was a great deal of flapping of wings and screeching before it dropped motionless, its neck punctured with holes.
the rest were flapping off, and the aspiring sterling gamekeeper leapt to pursue them before they all flew away. managing to make an unclean blow to the third, she jumped for the opportunity for a fourth. her fangs had only touched the end of its leg before it slipped away, ascending high in the air with its companions, out of crëyr's reach.
she turned back to her pile of three geese, beaming, her blue eyes sparkling like they always did after a fair hunt, and threw a look over her shoulder to see whether or not her amber-eyed companion had also managed to take a few down. "teamwork!"
When the voice of her companion broke through the air, Sen allowed for her tail to sway momentarily. “Guess teamwork will always work better than hunting alone,” she added, leaning down and picking the two geese up by their necks as she finished her sentence. She walked over to where the greyscale wolf stood, dropping the dead birds down once she'd reached her. “We did a pretty good job, don't you think?” A small grin appeared across her face as she looked at the bodies that once held the lives they claimed. She was glad to have removed some gross creatures from the earthly plane, and even more glad that someone she considered a friend had gotten some, too. It was a good day, in Sen's mind.
"yep, we did. we should do this more often!" the sterling huntress brightly agreed to her companion, nudging a goose's fallen body with her nose. quickly she ran her tongue across her lips, her cerulean eyes hungry on the pile.
"i'm hungry right now. do you wanna split one, so we can bring an even amount back to our packs? or we could eat however," crëyr mused out loud, and paused to wait for sen's response.
It wasn't until the topic of eating them was brought up did Sen realize that she was a bit hungry. Not starving, but in that state where she could go for a snack if one was available, but could go on for awhile longer if one wasn't. “I think we should split one,” the woman said. “Then do as you said and split the remaining ones evenly. That way both our packs benefit from this.” It would be the first time in a long time that she would have actually taken the time to contribute to the pack's caches. During her travels, she would usually just kill what she planned to eat at the time, and then be on her way. Bringing stuff back for the pack was a rare thing for her to do, as she often spent more time outside the territory than within it. It would be a nice change of pace to actually do something helpful for her home.
sen agreed to her suggestion, so with a grin, crëyr went on to split one goose for both of them to snack on. the sterling female dug into her meal, devouring her part quickly. they had earned it.
when they were about to speak their goodbyes and to depart the scene with their evenly split geese, grayscale girl looked up in realization once she had finished and when sen's scent was less intermingled with the one of the geese. she did definitely recognize it. "are you from duskfire glacier, sen?"
from what she knew, the pack was relatively close to her own and it wouldn't take long to meet up so they could go for lunch together again.
“Yeah,” the darker woman answered, an invisible eyebrow raising quizzically. “Why?” She didn't know much about the Bypass, or even that it was relatively close to the Glacier. Then again, she also didn't know her friend was apart of said pack, as she'd never visited the lands to be able to catch a scent. This left her with no idea as to why the other woman was curious about what pack she was in. There had to be a reason though, right? There was always a reason to questions.
crëyr rolled a slim silver shoulder. "i've got a friend in duskfire, scarlett. looks like i have another one!"
after that did they finally say their goodbyes. hauling fair game over their shoulder, the sterling girl gave her friend one last smile before departing, heading back to the bypass with a meal for her packmates.
Sen gave a smile at the mention of her having another friend at the Glacier. “I've met Scarlett,” she told her. “Perhaps the three of us will cross paths together sometime.” She didn't quite consider the albino a friend, more like an acquaintance, but it could still be nice to have the three of them together. It could even be fun, depending on what they would choose to do or speak about. Whether that would happen or not was something to consider, but she did look forward to seeing the grey woman again with or without Scarlett.
Once their goodbyes had been given and their geese claimed, the two departed from one another. She considered going on with one of her journeys, but knew the geese would not last long enough for her to. So, instead, she set out towards home, in no real rush to return to the Glacier. Her meeting with Crëyr had left her in a good mood, and so she held a small smile on her features as she trekked back to the snowy land.