I gave myself in that misty light

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"Adda!" Was the call of a younger Druth, his deep baritone echoing through the dense foliage of his riverside home. He was not worried, not immediately, when his daughter had not responded to his initial summons; the girl was a year old, and it was natural to reach for greater independence at such an age. Reluctantly he would allow her to wander through the afternoons at her leisure, sure to set clear boundaries for her, and she had proven herself to be a good kid who didn't want him to worry. So while her silence disturbed him a little, he figured she might have simply strayed a little too far and was working her way back to him.

More than anything, he wanted to trust her. It was all Adda had ever asked of him.

As the sun set, however, he grew concerned. The dark-furred rogue ventured from their rendezvous and made to follow the steps of his wayward youngster -

Dream interrupted, the old wolf woke with a start. The first thing he grew aware of was that he was violently shivering, then the muffled sound of another's voice. He twitched his rugged paws and felt the bitter cold, the stiffness of his muscles. As awareness crept back into his being, Druth became uncomfortably aware that he must've fallen asleep beneath the snow and, in an effort to writhe free, the surface cracked. From that he emerged with a gasp, popping suddenly up from the ground like a really ugly daisy and, unknowingly, directly in front of a strange young wolfess' intended path.


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Following that first gulped breath, Druth's tongue snaked from between rugged lips, keen to sweep snow clumps from invading his nostrils before he inhaled. His eyes cracked open to see only blinding white all around him, and it was unpleasant so he squeezed them shut again as he drawled a long groan. The young she-wolf went unnoticed, for not only did she blend seamlessly with their surroundings but his ears were so stuffed with snow that he didn't hear her exclamation of surprise.

He tried to pull a paw free of the snow, but his body was not what it used to be. With the beginnings of arthritis creeping into his joints, the aging wolf did not cope well in the Wintertime. Cursing some obscenity that was sure to offend the delicate ears of the companion he was not yet aware of, he managed to yank a stiffened forelimb free to reach for the snow that clustered his crown.

"Hng?" Druth, at last made aware of the presence of another, blinked up to find a pair of bright eyes studying him from above. "What? Fuck," he barked, startled by her proximity, enough that he pulled himself up and out of the drift despite the screaming ache in his old bones, "yeah, ugh-" He shook out his rugged pelt, keen to trap air to warm between its layers, "it's freezing out here, huh?"


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"No idea," was his immediate answer, accompanied by a casual roll of a peppered shoulder - both in a shrug and an attempt to loosen his wearied muscles. "I don't even..." he trailed off, and a charcoal lobe splayed backward as he glanced over the head of the pallid youngster before him; the whole world was so damn white. Was it Winter? He couldn't remember it being Winter, whenever he'd settled to rest. 

He huffed to himself, confused, and furrowed his brow. For all his ailments and failings, Druth could always rely on the sharpness of his mind - so what the hell?

The old rogue frowned deeply, returned his hazel eyes to seek the face of his young acquaintance, and studied her for a quiet moment. She was a lovely thing, fine-boned and with a kind face. "Where, uh... what is this place?"


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She did not have the answer, and it bothered him further to learn that she had found herself in this place in much the same manner as he had. Disturbed, Druth cast his gaze aside again, peering out into the bright unknown for a sign of anything even remotely familiar, but all he could see for many miles was white.

For a wolf who favoured solitude, he could not deny the relief he felt to not be alone on this occasion. He squinted back at the pallid she-wolf, took a moment to wonder why she'd parted ways with the comrade she claimed to have located, before he turned the consideration away. It wasn't his business and he supposed he didn't much care; he had to get out of there, sooner rather than later.

"That's odd," he commented before pressing, "where are you headed from here?"


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What she said brought Druth's rugged ears high atop his crown, cupping forward in surprise as his expression darkened somewhat. His thoughts turned without warning to Adda, his beautiful Adda, to the day he'd called out to her in the woods all those years ago and how he'd received no response. He could remember exactly how it felt: the crippling anxiety that wove its way deep into the heart of him, sickened him to his stomach. For the first few hours of his daughter's own disappearance, the rogue had tried his best to maintain a cool exterior despite screaming with worry on the inside.

He wondered if this young mother - Reiko, as she introduced herself earlier - might relate to that need to be brave. He wondered if she could feel the dull, constant ache in her soul to be apart from her offspring, as he still did.

Druth pursed his lips, cast grim contemplation of his own misfortune aside, and turned focus once more to the present. "Well," he started, because she silence was awkward, "damn." He struggled for words, fumbled over them in his mind; his heart was unprepared to speak of his own experience still. "I definitely wanna get outta here. I don't wanna to slow you down, but... maybe we can help each other?" He blinked, unsure how he - an old, half-crippled fool - could be of any use to her search. Druth simply knew that such an offering would be in his best interest, even if it wasn't entirely honest of him.


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Reiko's enthusiastic response to his offer enhanced the overall sweetness of her, and Druth at once felt the stirring of an unfamiliar discomfort within his breast. Truthfully, his suggestion to tag along on the search for her cubs had been primarily for his benefit. He would look for as long as it took to find a better place to roam, somewhere that would be kinder to his old bones, when he figured he would quietly remove himself from her company.

He was a terrible, selfish creature. But who wouldn't be, having faced a life as cruel as his had been?

Druth offered a hint of a smile, though it failed to reach his eyes as he parroted, "right." While he didn't entirely agree with her comment - no one had protected Adda from her fate, after all - he lied in agreement without any suggestion of shame in the shine of his hazel eyes. "M'name's Druth, by the way," he tacked on as an afterthought, more ready than he ever would be to get the hell out of this frozen wasteland.


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