10/1/2025, 9:44 PM
Dried leaf litter crackled underfoot like dying embers as the wolfdog prowled toward the mountain ranges, moving with the air of one half hunting, half hunted. His pricked ears swiveled like satellites, registering the song of the wilderness, carried along with the fluttering of aspen-leaf. He wetted his lips and breathed quietly, inhaling with each breath the fragrance of a land both familiar and foreign- did it hold memory, or was it all a dream? To his indigo gaze the mountains looked the same, just...Older. Taller. Like a nephew he'd failed to visit, having grown in his absence to become a man.
Sunlight stretched in long, slanted pillars of gold where it could pierce through between the trees- more easily done, now, that Autumn had come. Golden hour came earlier and earlier each day but somehow more glorious now that the trees too bore the gilded hue. Cooler temperatures would summon frost any night now- the full moon approached and with it would come a frost. There was beauty in the change, but like any herald, these little charms came as a warming. Winter would not be far away.
He knew it was coming, and felt a pang of dread heavy within his chest, nestled alongside guilt and grief. He was forced to collect himself, and return to the last place he could recall having had any semblance of structure. Without it, he was as prone to peregrination as a loose balloon; a fit existence for an airhead, of course- but he longed for something else. Something he'd had, once.
He couldn't be sure who he'd find, or if he'd find anyone at all that might remember him. Why not start elsewhere? Because questions of his past might follow him, and he knew his ability to either withhold the truth or bend it was feeble at best. If there was a reckoning to be had for his actions, he might simply have to suffer through it. There was something magnetic about living in fear- and he would follow that urge as if the cardinal point of his own inner compass was drawn to the metal in the blood that had been spilled throughout his life.
Familiarity lingered in the scents in the woods; he knew if he drew too close to its source that he might find himself swiftly overcome. But here, he could dabble his toes in the shallows, safe in the neutral territory beyond a pack's claim...And yet, close enough that they might find him yet.
Sunlight stretched in long, slanted pillars of gold where it could pierce through between the trees- more easily done, now, that Autumn had come. Golden hour came earlier and earlier each day but somehow more glorious now that the trees too bore the gilded hue. Cooler temperatures would summon frost any night now- the full moon approached and with it would come a frost. There was beauty in the change, but like any herald, these little charms came as a warming. Winter would not be far away.
He knew it was coming, and felt a pang of dread heavy within his chest, nestled alongside guilt and grief. He was forced to collect himself, and return to the last place he could recall having had any semblance of structure. Without it, he was as prone to peregrination as a loose balloon; a fit existence for an airhead, of course- but he longed for something else. Something he'd had, once.
He couldn't be sure who he'd find, or if he'd find anyone at all that might remember him. Why not start elsewhere? Because questions of his past might follow him, and he knew his ability to either withhold the truth or bend it was feeble at best. If there was a reckoning to be had for his actions, he might simply have to suffer through it. There was something magnetic about living in fear- and he would follow that urge as if the cardinal point of his own inner compass was drawn to the metal in the blood that had been spilled throughout his life.
Familiarity lingered in the scents in the woods; he knew if he drew too close to its source that he might find himself swiftly overcome. But here, he could dabble his toes in the shallows, safe in the neutral territory beyond a pack's claim...And yet, close enough that they might find him yet.