10/16/2025, 9:48 PM
The dark man's savagery ebbed away as he turned his attention onto the huntress. For her part, she remained with a bloody maw and a glint of the chase still in her two-toned gaze, mirth and query and familiarity all expressed within the depths of blue and gold. She had no other way to speak, and so Midge had long practiced permitting her eyes to be windows to her soul.
It was a kind of honesty that was impossible for her to turn off, and had dragged her into trouble too many times to count, but the alternative was a silence in her body the same as her voice. And Midge could not bear to not speak her mind, in one way if not all of them, so she let her teeth bare in a lop-sided and breathless grin in reply to Gekirin. He was glad they had found each other.
It was the kind of sentiment the lone she-wolf needed to hear, and she reached forward over the elk's carcass to bump her muzzle into his shoulder. Her tail swept through the autumn-colored leaves beneath her. It seemed she had caught him almost more off guard than she had him, but Midge was not sure if she'd say so even if she could. Instead, she swept her paw at the cooling body of their meal, an invitation and encouragement.
