---

---

likely loosely backdated, searching for Yakone but all are welcome | roughly 11 months/a year

It did not come wholly as a surprise. Trygve aimed not to smother the muradoii orphan with his presence; and he was used to living either alone, or at a distance. He told himself he was more comfortable at arm's length, and kept himself busy practicing his hunting, his foraging, and harassing foxes and scavengers away from his meals - sometimes shared with the red-eyed aurora, flitting like ethereal mist over the moors, sometimes not.

There was an unspoken understanding in their companionship he'd never felt with another - not that he'd had many opportunities to, but nonetheless, it was novel and wholly comforting; sniped insults and the occasional bared fang rolled off like water off a duck's back.

And then she was gone. The similarities to Akira did not go unnoticed, but unlike the frail, mahogany woman, Trygve held no such immediate understanding and whole-hearted belief of her abandonment and its righteous reasoning. Instead of a forced resignation, an effort to bury whatever feelings he had about the situation, Trygve got to his paws and set about looking for the girl. She was lost, or playing games, or hunting, or hurt, or lost. He did not entertain abandonment - his mind would not allow it, flinching from the concept like a hot stove.

Akira had left. Yakone was different. Trygve's paws carried his body with easeful, lengthy strides over the open, rolling fields. His nose brushed through the grasses, and he tilted his muzzle into the breeze, but he did not expect to pick up her trail that way; his tracking, he thought, left something to be desired. He looked instead for signs - carcasses or blood smeared on blades of yellowing wheat, wildflowers, tufts of silver and sable caught on heather bushes. Nothing, as if she'd dissolved into seafoam.

Trygve sought out the scents of other wolves, after days of other hunting methods and still neither hide nor hair. He refused to settle for the obvious opportunity to leave dead weight behind. Perhaps she had crossed paths with another of her kind. He would ask have you seen a girl, eyes like a blood-red sunrise, dripping with as much venom as a cobra? I need to find her, I need to find her, I need to know she's alright. Perhaps, he mused, it was a ruse - intended purely to pry such embarrassing admissions from him.

He would hate to give her the satisfaction, but he'd hate all the worse to leave her out there, alone. Or maybe he just couldn't bear the thought of leaving himself alone out there, on the seemingly endless moors and the strange whispers in the mists. A shameful thought, one he refused to face as much as he refused to admit the idea of being left behind. Again.

He didn't know anymore. Trygve lifted his head above a thicket of sage, casting his gaze across a flourishing view that did not hold the one thing he sought. Frustration - and fear - brewed within his breast, cowlicked pelt tousled in the brusque autumnal breeze.

---

It was the bird that caught his eye first; a dark raven, and he recalled a similarly iridescent black feather adorning the aurora's sable-flecked fur. Trygve watched the bird cross the clear blue sky, until his gaze landed on the raven's target.

A girl his age, colored like a cardinal, viscerally bright against the muted sage and verdant tones of the fields. The boy's brows furrowed at first, wary as always when first thrust into interaction with strangers. His first instinct was to retreat, but he'd come this far hunting his own kind. Here stood one, who might have the answers he sought. After his initial hesitation, Trygve moved with ease, crossing the distance between the yearlings. Hello. He said plainly, and halted at a comfortably far distance.

He felt horribly awkward. Hello? He wished to crawl under the sage-bush and stay there until the girl forgot about all of this and went home. But he had a mission.

---

Hey. She sounded like she was speaking through gravel, voice hoarse from disuse. Scars marred her cheek and foreleg, and no other scents marked her pelt. What was this, then, the fates sending him another little lost orphan to use her teeth and tears to crack open his shell?

Too little too late, Trygve thought - Yakone seemed to have reached in and scraped out whatever pearl had formed within him. He didn't really want it back, necessarily - just wanted....wanted to know it hadn't been him. That it had been her muradoii duties, or her own doubts, or some other whimsy that had gotten him discarded like so many licked-clean clam shells. He wanted to know she'd take care of herself, that the fragility in the weapon of a girl he'd seen on the beach in the misty-eyed dawn would survive a world he knew wouldn't pull its punches.

How....pathetic, a sentiment. His pride seethed at the sting of it.

I was...wondering if you might've seen somebody. He did not have much hope she'd seen Yakone, let alone anyone, for a while now. um...She has red eyes, goes by Yakone. Silver fur, with some darker markings. He paused, gaze flickering over the other girl. She wears a raven feather, too.

---

The girl's face twisted, from awkward neutrality into something that warned Trygve long before she spoke it was going to be only words with teeth and venom. He'd thought he'd been ready for it, too. Something about his height - not short by any means but he stood even shorter than this girl - or his too-pretty face, or his freakish split-coat, or some other thing. Maybe this girl was a witch, like the other one, and would tell him some creepy nonsense about the North and impending death.

Maybe she'd tell him Yakone was dead.

Instead: lover's spat?

Trygve's expression wrinkled into a confused sneer, tilting his head. Silky, cowlicked fur tumbled against his cheek. Lovers? Like Akira and her absent Lodgepole?? Like Yakone's mom and her weird boyfriend?

Gross, and absurdly insulting to be put in the same realm as any of those wolves. And then the currant-red girl went on to offer herself as a replacement, and Trygve huffed sharply with distaste. D'ya really think you're all that? Just gonna swoop in and take somebody's place, no questions asked? The boy lowered his chin a little, glared up at the girl's sour green eyes through his lashes. His muzzle wrinkled, mocking arrogance dripping off his tone. Pretty desperate.

---

The girl grinned, toothy smile inked in madness. The giddy, razor-edged mania prickled beneath his pelt uncomfortably. The boy's instincts warned him: caution. Honoring what had kept him alive this long, his claws dug into the loam beneath his paws, his stance braced for anything to come his way.

She only went on to caw like her raven, about Yakone, about their 'spat'.

To Briar's credit, the encounter was not ruined just yet. To Trygve, traded insults and sneered efforts to cut down the other was just how he made friends. She'd rather you had beat me to death with the stick. He retorted, with an exasperated huff.

The girl bent into a playbow, tail over her hips. Trygve snorted and a smirk curved lopsided on his features, until, at least, Briar made the mistake of calling him 'pretty boy'.

Pretty...?

The boy gruffly snorted, lifting his chin to look down his nose at the stranger. a night, she said, not death do us part. Call me 'pretty' again - who's to say that they aren't one and the same?

It's a threat, wrapped in the most cursory of a lighthearted edge. Down his spine, a bizarre mingling of two-toned guard hairs threatened to lift.