wen kamuy

When the moon shone red, the ipetem gathered for the hunt. They rejoiced, and prepared, their spirits lifted in the cover of the long winter night. Once celebrations quieted, and duty loomed, they then set off into the mountains towards pursuit of their quarry—towards success, surely. They ran with their best hunters, some of their most experienced trackers, many of their fastest, too. Fresh-faced Irura sped eagerly alongside her fellows, striding close to her mentor when she saw him for a friendly nip, which he answered fondly. Her mirth was joyous, but every fiber felt coiled tight, ready to anticipate the looming chase.

The trails came, warmed, then cooled—but offered promise yet. Morale would not falter so soon. The hunters splintered into smaller groups when the elevations rose and the eerie forests grew more unfamiliar. They had hours to go before dawn still, and there was plenty of ground left to cover.

Thrumming on the high of camaraderie and the thin air, she focused on working the underbrush diligently, and did not see the overhead signs early enough when they came. Once realization set in, already, it was escalating, and startlingly fast. Snow flurries ushered along increasing winds, then thickened, amplified. Even the evergreens couldn't shield it away well before long as seconds slogged into frigid minutes. She couldn't see a thing. Absolute whiteout.

Irura heard the others howl, far away. She answered back, and at first, a reply found her. She changed course, now with a heading to chase. Others, too, seemed to raise similar alarms, some further flung than she could make out proper. Finally, the voice of their head called out from some beyond, below.

The ghost obeyed this law, and sheltered away until a relative break came, only to press forward into the next stretch of reasonable cover. At least then, the wind was not so fierce. But the snow was still dizzying. They needed to regroup, and this piece motivated her to keep going, until she didn't see the path's sudden drop, no matter how small. In conditions like these, dark and snow-blind, she fell, upturned, tumbled—even tried to fight it at one point, thinking she could grab on—and it went impossibly dark next, her body swallowed by the blizzard soon after.

The Ijiraq did not know.. but disoriented was a very real sensation suddenly, she could say for absolute fact as she blinked into a markedly different awareness. As her sights cleared, Irura winced and drew up onto wobbling legs, the burn in her fatigued muscles reminding her to think twice—that was asking a lot suddenly. A gust of panic came upon next, hissing a low snarl from between her teeth once she could try to coax herself otherwise; she didn't feel capable of a proper flight response right now, anyway.

She looked up and realized the snow was no longer blowing. The winds were quiet, really. Eerily so. That was when she realized the ceiling, and the dim light that pressed through.

The pale wolf blinked, trying to get a better feel for her surroundings, or perhaps force some understanding to take shape. Was this ice? A cave? Maybe she had fallen into someplace strange, somehow. It scarcely explained how she got here. Faintly she remembered losing her grip, and the rest was not her proudest feat. All too foggy to really recall past that, but the Ijiraq felt too far away from her fellow hunters to feel much else.

She had this looming sense that she needed to see open air to really get a sense of the magnitude here, so she tried out her legs again, more carefully... and soon could slowly stalk towards a hopeful exit. The deep blue of the ice hall was remarkably beautiful, but she was too uneasy about everything else to truly appreciate it beyond a loitering glance. More importantly than some frozen water, she wondered where everyone went, and thankfully turned a corner towards a chance at an opening.

Outside was.. too bright. She winced back at the white expanse of snowscape. There were light flurries still falling, and it was maybe morning? Afternoon? The breeze was gentle, at least, but Irura didn't know this place either. This was not at all like the mountains, or even their valleys. Had she hit her head that badly? She must've, and sat defeated with that idea. Maybe it was a wrong turn, she thought next, looking back into the ice cave behind her. Maybe in another hole elsewhere, she could poke her head into the right place.

That didn't sound right either.

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 The ice was thick and eerie all around him when he awoke from a common nightmare. Kicking and writhing in his sleep, he had startled awake, only to find that he was curled up somewhere foreign, cold, and blue.
 As his ears slung back, he exhaled a chilled, rattling breath. He could see the fog he expressed rising up toward the cavern's ceiling, dissipating in eerie silence. Taikon stood, finding his legs shaky and thin. He recalled an illness having taken him, and remembered a nasty wound on his neck. Yet when he looked over to it, it was no more than a vague scar. The warmth of loved ones escaped him. For a moment he thought he remembered the face of a woman, and then a young man, and then a child. Like a dream, the harder he tried to remember, the faster their faces ran from him. All that was left were blurred recollections, though the surface of his childhood and young manhood reached like threads through his being.
 Knowing that he could not stay in these icy walls, the wolf moved through a tunnel. As he did, he found distorted reflections of his overly thin body. His legs and joints hurt, as though from disuse. His mind was foggy. It felt as if he had been asleep for a very long time, so long that nothing seemed to work as it had before. The smells were all different from his memory, including his own.
 Hours passed. Every fork in the caverns he took seemed to lead to nowhere. Several times he found himself at dark dead ends where the light from the outside no longer sifted through. At least once, he tested an icy wall with his nails to see if it would give, but it did not.
 When at last he wearily found an exit, the world was covered in snow and the sky was bright and empty.
 As if by magic, or more likely absurd coincidence, a white wolf was standing in the quiet of the afternoon, apparently having just also exited the caves. Taikon blinked. They were mere metres from each other, but he did not recognize her. She was thin, like him, but smaller in stature. He took a step forward, asking, “what happened?” He expected that she knew him, and his mind was so broken from illness that he did not remember.

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When she couldn't muster the appeal to go back into the cave and try again elsewhere, she peered up into the cloudy skies. It felt hopeless, but she tried to search beyond with a squint. Instead of anything useful, she simply felt small again, then forlorn.

She startled out of it though, hearing something--someone, actually--and this brand new finding sent her reeling, skittering back a pace at least away from the bizarre new arrival, and in turn cave they had evidently both surfaced from. Who was this? Wariness prickling her, she had nothing to fight with but searched him over visually, desperately, hoping to piece it together.

But she couldn't. Nothing.

He was.. someone, though. Whoever it was, he made it so she was not entirely alone here--scratching that instinctive itch a touch. She might not know him, he didn't really look too great (not that she was any better), but at least he was a wolf, and he was here too.

Still with her ears flat, and expression only just dialing down from such fresh discomfort, the Ijiraq shook her head at him. There were no answers. “Don't know.” she croaked, and didn't like the sound of that at all. “It feels bad, and I can't recognize where this is. I think I just.. got here,” she drifted off, confidence in this answer flimsy at best. “I woke up in there.” Accusing glance at the eerie ice tunnel, then, and she licked her lips nervously at the foreboding thought about what led her there. “What happened to you?” she pointed her nose at him, eyes big.

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 His presence seemed to startle the woman. She, young but appearing almost fragile on her icy backdrop, regarded him warily. In fact, it was clear she did not know him. He thought this strange.
 When the girl began to elaborate, he nodded with a solemn frown, knowing now that his fear must have been true. When she asked after him, he considered finding some rosy lie and pretending that indeed he had been here all along, but that seemed more likely to breed cruelty than spare her from harm.
 “I...” Looking away from her, he gazed upon the abyss of ice before them.
 The smell of frozen sea ice was violently clear on his senses. The chill was terrible and shook him down to the anemic skin under his ill coat. Snow and beyond it, tundra, stretched as far as he could see.
 “I think we're dead.” This could not offer any comfort, but it seemed the truth. “I also woke in the caves, and I remember being very ill beforehand. Our waking is intentional.”
 Taikon had never believed in the afterlife. He had never believed in deities or religions or sacrificial rites and other such nonsense. There were things in the greater universe that were forever mysterious, but nothing that could not be explained in some way by logic and knowledge. This... waking — it turned everything he had known on its head. At once he wished to demand answers, and thought about going back into the caverns. The fear of becoming lost kept him from it, but he looked at their entry no less.
 “My name.. is Taikon.” He said it slowly, unsure even if he was still the creature with that name. He shifted his weight to the other side, uncomfortable and unsure despite his declarations.

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After a heavy pause on her end, the answer struck mightily. She only gaped, blindsided with the gravity of this idea that they had died. While it almost sounded like a working theory, she had nothing to argue it with. The memories were awfully fuzzy in places at a glance, some more distinct than others. Staring at him as she processed this, she chewed her cheek--nerves, again, while listening on further aligned their circumstances more. They had the ice cave in common, somehow. “Hmm,” she murmured, listening on.

He recalled an illness. She tilted her head and couldn't say the same though. She remembered feeling strong not so long ago, and bolstered by the company of the others. “We were hunting in the mountains,” she felt the flash of the old thrill, yearning for it back suddenly; they had been looking forward to it for so long, too. “It stormed. I think I.. got separated, then fell,” she shared back, expression falling flat and feeling like he might want to hear it--how she could suspect that maybe, she had met the end of her life there. A strange sensation lingered there in that unknown of what went on between that and now. “That could explain it,” she sighed, though it was only one piece of a greater mystery.

Our waking is intentional. he had said, and that stuck to her. He probably was not wrong, she could hope. But why?

She matched this strange name to him and took a beat too long to summon up her own. She couldn't help but flick through a few titles, searching for the right one before settling at “Irura.” Ijiraq, of Ipetem, she had newly considered herself with pride; she wanted to hang tight to the memory before it could get any hazier. “From Ruyanpe Kotan,” she added quietly, not knowing where that would be in relation to here. The world underfoot, viciously unfamiliar.

“So why here, why that cave.. I wonder,” she peered at him again, maybe a touch more relaxed than her initial surprised tension.

Why the both of them?

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 Of course, he wasn't sure. Taikon had vague memories. He remembered what he had been doing just before, but the people around him seem to fade more with every moment. It was actually she, this new woman, who had reminded him of an old life before his apparent death. She had the elegance and strength of his mother. She had the makings of the princess and then queen that she had become. A flash of that terrible childhood was all he saw before she spoke, and it was just as well. She seemed young. She seemed kind.
 Taikon at once felt sorry for his assumption that they had died. Yet the more she spoke, the more it confirmed the possibility. She had slipped while hunting and fallen. Neither of them had any memory of one another and had woken in the same, strange place. Though Taikon nodded, it was only half-hearted and slow. He looked away at the second nod, blinking, finding it difficult to focus. So he had died. So she had died. What, then, was there to do?
 There had long been great stories of the afterlife that he had heard. He'd never believed any of them. He had been taught and had always believed that death was death. That bodies were consumed by the maggots and fungi of the earth. His body would one day feed other bodies.
 Like any people of curiosity, he had always wondered anyway. It was clear this was not heaven. Nor hell. Perhaps it was purgatory, or something in between.
 Irura. She spoke her homeland. “That's very pretty,” he mentioned. “I am of the Faruka, but I expect they are beyond our reach now.”
 She asked why the cave, and he thought for a moment. “I don't know. Maybe we're similar in some way. Or maybe it was random. But I don't think we're meant to stay here,” he suggested, suddenly moving a few steps forward. He even walked toward her, as though offering her a way up.

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She breathed a reedy sigh through her nose, thoughtful now that she had shared her piece with him and left it up to him for further interpretation. All in all, it was a foreign, heavy weight to bear.. this new thought that she had perhaps, truly, died. Irura didn't remember it occurring to her any, which was strange and empty-feeling here in the evident aftermath. The chances had been ever present, always, so apparently when it had finally been her time, she didn't see it coming.

So then, was this a hell? A second try? She didn't know what to do with his new, eerie information. Was it good, or bad?

Hazed into the pale gray, after he spoke, The Ijiraq hmm-ed again with a furrowed face despite the compliment on her name. It was what it was. Then, Faruka did not mean anything valuable to her ears, not that she could remember right now. She tried for a moment, and still.. nothing. Most likely, her fellows were far too but the only thing she had to go on was a vague sense of unknown. Displaced. Lost. She didn't want to say more than that aloud, but decided that the implication was likely clear enough already; she had nothing, no one. Not right now, especially, except for him for whatever reason.

No matter what it was that landed them here to puzzle through this together, this much was clear: “I don't want to stay here,” she edged in quickly, very ready to agree with the idea that they weren't meant to. Caves had never bothered her before, yet the circumstance of this one here did.. and worse, there was nothing good to hunt here that she had seen so far. But beyond this, she had no heading to chase. Not even a trail. What was she supposed to be looking for? “What else do you think there is? Think it's all so frozen?” she watched him again. He was certainly older than her, possibly around the same age as leaders she had known in the last life. Ones more experienced, and worth trusting when they might simply know the world better. “Where do you think you will go?” Not that she could answer that for herself.

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 She was a very lovely thing. She continued to remind him of cousins and distant aunts he had once had. Irura seemed an abnormal, regal name. Taikon felt an odd need to protect her, at least through this strange storm that they had both found themselves in. Whether it be fate or divine intervention, he was here with her, and if he could help, he would.
 Irura didn't seem to resist him. She didn't shy away or have anything that suggested she might run from him. From the get go, his priority was keeping her alive. She agreed that she didn't want to stay, and asked a load of questions he didn't know the answers to.
 He waited. Taikon looked up to the sky, trying to gauge the weather. Then he looked west, smelling the sea past the cavern they had exited from. He looked north, and south, and right, and everything reeked of sea salt and ice. There was no true direction other than something in him that said not west, so he thought to creep south and east.
 “I don't know.” He said plainly. “But I will go as far as I can think to take myself until we reach something that isn't... this. You should come with me. I'll at least keep you safe for this shit portion of your journey, assuming you have better karma than I.” He walked forward, away from the caves and along what he did not know was the water-spine through the sea ice that curved from west to east through the Frozen Ground. He wanted only to get himself, and more strongly, Irura, away from this terrible place.

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It was quiet, then, in the wake of all her wonderings but she accepted it. She gazed into the distance too, catching on quickly enough to possibly almost understand. Even if he didn't know, it might not make much difference. Really, she didn't like what she saw, only reaffirming her desire to leave.

She breathed out, thinking about anyplace but here, what that might be “Alright. Yeah,” she agreed, to him, and to her it herself helped. She would go with him for now. Maybe some momentum away would do a lot of good. No telling until they tried. “Don't know about any better karma, but..” she shook her head then and started after him immediately, very content to let him set the lead. “Maybe.” Well, she wouldn't discredit it entirely as she made these first new steps into life after what could only be presumed as death. “Probably can't get much worse than this.” she tried, looking forward, ahead, and hopefully beyond.

Surely they could find better hunting grounds than these.

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 When she followed, he felt a new sense of pride and dignity. Her vague and new trust in him told him that he must keep her safe. It did not matter that he didn't know where she had come from, nor that she did not recognize his homeland. For the moment, his quest became that of keeping her alive, at least until she found something better than his poor company.
 The passing through time space had done little to amend his ailments. He had grown older than he remembered being. He felt his frailty in poor health and lack of food. So as they went, he was careful to keep his nose to the air. At times he bent it to the ground when he thought that he sensed something.
 But the icy land was bleak, and terrible, and windy, and yelled at them to return to whence they had come.
 Taikon decided to pass the time with talk. The wind had begun to die, though the light was also fading. They had come beyond the Grotto to a great crack in the landscape. Though neither of them knew it, they were standing on thick sea ice. Polar bears and seals roamed these reaches.
 “Your land. It wasn't like this, I'm guessing,” he prodded. He was trying to piece together why they had come here, why they had, assumedly, died. He made sense. She did not, for she was young and full of vigour.

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She fell into an easy stride, cherishing the little burn it started to ignite in half-frozen, unused muscles--though she might come to regret it later. There was comfort in the distance most pointedly, and before long, again, she had to be thankful she wasn't in this alone as nature made the road beyond awfully miserable. Like this, she mostly had to focus on following, all other overarching thoughts set aside.

The scene was bleak, wintertime in its fullest. Snowy and largely bare in all directions. Colorless, drab. Her ears slicked against her head when the wind bit at its worst, but she stayed determined to just go wherever this was going to take them. She hoped that they could find the end soon. Every time she searched the distant horizon with a watery-eyed squint, she hoped to see it change majorly, maybe inspire something. It had to let up eventually, or so she kept telling herself.

Taikon broke the silence when she was staring vaguely off towards the south. “Not entirely. More forests. Mountains.” she replied with a rough voice after some time to collect a thought. “Not this close to the sea, but.. near enough.” she offered for a similarity. There were fascinating hunters that came from places with a brine-scent like this one, though--that much she did remember distantly. “What was yours like, before..?” she asked him back. Before he got sick, of course. Or even more before that. She wanted to imagine the worlds he might have known before the ice caves, or try to better understand why they were joined together in this strange frozen land like this.

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Sindri's original plan had been to go to Banesteppe and stop her travels there, with a hopes to boil the blood in the strange wolves there for a fight against the walrus. Instead, all was quiet savor the howling winds of the high north. So she moved on.

Her exploration took her along the large gash in the high reaches of the tundra. Following along the cut she moved inland, watching the salty waters ripple and icy along the banks. Sindri thought of moving downward and to the waters edge but thought best against it. She wasn't ready to freeze to death out here in the open with quite a bit of distance between this place and home.

She turned her head, the mountains of Northfall unseeing from this distance especially with all manners of white and grey blended together. When she turned around and started moving along the channel further east, she spots a traveling pair out in the distance. She calls out, sounding her presence to them both.
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 The desolation generated no further hope in what seemed like a hopefully journey. He expected that there might not be anything more to this place than caverns and ice. He did not know where they were, but thus far, even as the sun began to lose spirit and fall, things seemed normal. It seemed to take a long time before he thought he could see the very distant rising of a mountain, somewhere in the distance. It seemed to fade with the icy winds that frequented this place. The snow obscured their view.
 He tried to picture what she spoke. Mountains. Trees. Some semblance of beauty that was not the snow crystals that plagued them now. Taikon could not. He could barely even recall the taste of food.
 “Somewhere dark.” He answered, inhaling as though trying to find the scent of where he'd been before in the nasty, icy air about them. He sighed. “I don't remember what it looked like. I never stayed in one place for very long.” He went on truthfully. He could vaguely remember the scent of the den. He recalled herbs that had been applied by someone. He remembered warmth, and, for a time, love.
 How cruel it was to have an afterlife where he could not remember his family, nor his loved ones. If it had been a god, or many, who had done this, he wanted to know why.
 In his thought, his paw suddenly crashed into what he thought was stable ice right through to his elbow. He stumbled and fell, pulling out his arm just as a voice called out through the snow. His leg hurt, and was wet. An ice fishing hole was left in its wake. Taikon winced, and let out an anxious sigh. He howled back to the voice weakly, but found that he needed to sit for a moment to relieve the weight from his foreleg.

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Somewhere dark, then. He probably didn't miss it much, at that rate. She nodded slow with some sense of understanding, peering absently his way for a moment while she further digested this. Her recollections were caught in a fog as well, maybe not as badly as his, but still, the sensation it left them with in this empty, cold world left very little to be desired. “We wandered often too,” she offered softly in return, the best she had at the moment--though it was all the same to her, mountains, fields, river, forests--wherever, she had been bright-eyed and eager to see it all; there was a place for them no matter where they went.

But now, that thought made her feel so hollow.

The sound of ice cracking snapped her right out of it. There had been a strange howl, too, that entirely caught her off guard. Very suddenly, a lot seemed to descend. She whined at Taikon first, closing distance nervously now--not interested in more ice trouble if she could help it, but he seemed to have it under control. The howl he sent back urged one out of her as well, just to add her own piece that she meant no harm but was here too. With it, Irura's voice was reedy and small, making her ears tuck back tight as she tried to raise herself to the winds back to whoever was out there.

Hopefully, not a threat, the Ijiraq thought as she scowled at Taikon's wet leg once her howl tapered. “You okay?” she orbited around his sit. “Hope they're friendly..” she jerked her nose in the direction of the caller, and lip-licked nervously. Neither of them were in a good place to argue but if nothing else, she tried to be prepared for whatever may come.

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In the distance and the winds whipping about snows, she could see one of the wolves fall to the ground but could not see as to why. How long had they been exposed out here, traveling together? How long since their last meal? Had thry awoken in this place? Sindri, having lived all her life in the north, was much accustom to these conditions and knew where her limitations lie. She couldn't imagine someone accustom to the temperate forests of the south or Mexican blooded wolves in the plains or coywolves being just 'blipped' into being here and doing well off.

As she thought of this, the swift little woman closed the distance between them at faster strides.  Ones voice called out weakly. The second, stronger but more urgent, maybe even nervous. Sindri began to run then.

When she reaches them, she is panting, her bright sunflower eyes darting between the two of them. One is tall and colored so like Ragnar. The other is pale with a deep scar over her face. They both looked scrawny, hungry.. With a young mother's approach, it could been seen that she assesses their health. “How long have you both been out here?” Plesantries could be saved for later.
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 Irura was quick to ensure his safety. He had fallen almost instantly into an almost guardian-like role, finding it necessary to protect her at nearly any cost despite her being a stranger to him. Taikon nodded quickly, his expression revealing some discomfort. He had been through worse, he was pretty sure.
 “What will be will be,” he said. “We'll deal with it as it comes.” As the strange scroll of their story unfurled, the caller drew closer. Taikon rose and stretched, trying to ready himself to defend them if necessary. He had not grown younger in his journey through death. His body felt as angry and relenting as it had before.
 The lithe woman slipped through the snow and ice quickly to them. Her body did not portray any hatred or even fear toward them, apparently acceptant of their good will toward her. Taikon stepped forward. Ice had already collected on the leg that had taken the plunge. It shook, but he did his best to steady it so as not to show weakness. He trusted no one.
 “Not long,” he answered. “We came from the caverns to the west, but were hoping for warmer pastures,” he answered the stranger coolly. His tail waved as he adjusted his weight onto the other leg — a habit he often performed when nervous.
 He glanced toward Irura, ensuring she was still close to him. Tired, skinny, hungry, cold, or not, he would not allow her to go into harm's way. The stranger did not seem hostile, but he had seen bands of wolves use pleasant-faced women like this one as bait, luring unsuspecting victims to doom.
 His mother had done it many times.

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Likewise, she swept his assurances in close, and held it tight. What will be will be. She repeated it silently to herself when the stranger neared on a quick, steady clip. As their alert rose accordingly, she stood beside Taikon, just behind. Their alliance was born out of circumstance and timing, but she appreciated it massively once again when he seemed to take to a heading here and she was happy to let him.

Watching the nuances of the exchange on her own toes, she sniffed, and squinted against the winds that seemed to spite the mention of 'warmer pastures'. “We do not know this place at all,” she chimed in with at the end, further clarifying that they were very misplaced somehow. Besides the obvious choice to head south to chase eventual warmth, they had nothing else to go on or operate with that she could perceive.

This was the first face they found beside each other, beyond the ice, and it sparked a fledgling hope that there were possibly others where she came from. “Do you live nearby?” she asked, with her nose still wiggling in the sun-eyed wolf's direction with a lot more questions than just that. They were too fresh here, and the Ijiraq didn't know where else to begin from her very humble spot here at Taikon's flank as they wandered away.

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The man stood tall, despite his tumble into ice. His limb might have quivered but he looked to Sindri with a cautious eye. They came from the caverns? The confusion shown on her features and she wondered if they had stayed within the shelter for safety- wondered if they were from an even higher stretch of the tundra. Then he mentioned their search for warmer pastures and the woman stating they did not know the place at all... “You are quite far north in the tundra, traveler...?” Her words were laced with questioning to match her knotted brows.

The woman then asked if Sindri lived near, ready and hoping so to get out of the weather as quickly as possible. “The Alpine Moors are directly south of here. There is much green and softer footing. The forest of my home is not far either...” It was not too often Sindri spared such kindness of offering her home to strangers for rest. But in times of war, good deeds could make for friends, friends would make allies. Whether these two stayed and called themselves Northfall wolves or if they only saw the northerners only as good wolves still meant that they wouldn't be at least on opposite ends of a battlefield. 

“Along with the Everfrost Forest far east, the Alpine Moors offer safe passage between the north to the south.” That is, if they could manage to avoid Dragonford wolves on the Brim. Northfall welcomed visitors through the Moors, as they were wolves of trade and also had plenty of room in there lands for more. It seemed the dragon wolves could not afford this luxury and needed a second land off limits from visitors and hunting, as their home of choice was a giant's hardened corpse.

“I am Sindri.” Her northern accent then rang, “Of House Stormborn.”
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 Taikon breathed a sigh, for he was unable to explain why they were this far north. At the very least, he now knew where north was in comparison to whatever else was out there. He prayed to no god that she might be able to give them better information, to tell them where they should go, to offer some direction beyond "away."
 “Alpine Moors...” he parroted quietly, noticing their southern direction and wondering if the valley through the mountains would offer them safe passage beyond this desolate wasteland. Indeed, that was exactly what she told them, in addition to The Everfrost in the other direction.
 Taikon nodded, “Sindri — your counsel is welcomed,” he offered as his only thanks. Bending deep and low, he gave what may have been an overly formal bow, tucking his wrist under him momentarily as his nose moved almost to touch the ground. He rose after a moment. “I am Taikon Yokoya Tse, and my companion is Irura,” he introduced them both, having always been taught that it is more polite to introduce others so that they may not have to. He didn't tell her where he was from. It wasn't relevant, in his mind, and his past would likely mean nothing here in this place beyond the death and deceit of before.
 He looked at Irura, waiting to see her reaction. While he had no interest in following a new face all the way down south to some random pack, he imagined the offer of shelter would be welcomed for those with less reservation.

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Their stranger seemed a touch perplexed about them, or their whereabouts exactly. Perhaps it was even worse than she imagined, somehow. Irura couldn't say for sure which piece was most wrong exactly, not beyond the fact that she wholly felt the part as an oddity. This all remained simmering quietly over a low thankfulness that the company that had found them showed them no ill-will yet.

But more than that, she brought them knowledge. Irura's ears tipped up, though the rest of her bearing stayed modest. There were titles for these places, just like any others, and the possibility of greenery that sparked a new hope in her. This passageway of Alpine Moors, too, struck a particular cord in her when it could be the gateway they needed. It sounded like they were on a decent track already, and now hearing this confirmation from someone as good as a native to her helped. “Iyairaykere — thank you, Sindri.” she dipped her snout, sounding a touch fatigued, but the gratitude evident enough to let them know it was indeed thanks.

She just wanted to go south. Thinking further ahead than that didn't come naturally. Someplace better, to a proper appetite then a warm meal, and to figure out what to do with her newly-alive-here herself there. There would need to come some sense of grounding in this new life, but not where the weather could bite so cruelly. Not right off the get-go. “I think we should head for those Moors,” she offered, a bit quieter, and aimed largely at Taikon. They could get there, regroup. Perhaps.. go on from there. Sindri could point them in a good direction. If he was up for it.

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Coming to a wrap up. Maybe my last one if it seems fitting? Say she guided them, showed where NF and FC was, whatev.

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The older wolf seemed thankful for the information which she had given him and in a rather formal way, bowed deeply before Sindri's little body and greeted himself and the woman at his side. It reminded her of the manner which the regal Archer might greet another. Though his gaze was less so judging and his air lacking the almost arrogant pride the Archer wolves wore. I guess she couldn't blame them. They did govern a whole Empire, despite how mad their last King had been...

Irura, as she was now known, was most thankful too. She was soft-spoken, polite though the language she had used was something Sindri could not understand and yet, felt like it sounded a bit familiar...

Her stating that she thought they should go along, Sindri shifted her attention between the two of them. She side-stepped and with a paw still lifted to her chest, “I can guide you there.” She offered and then added, “It's towards home anyway.” And she would do just that, head home.
the staff team luvs u