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 Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 3:00 pm
"I...I guess so," she said, brow furrowing. She hadn't given it much thought. She wasn't even entirely sure what a human was. She'd caught sight of smoke curling up over funny-looking dens sometimes, but had avoided it entirely out of unease.
"You know, I don't think you told me your name," she said, suddenly changing the subject. "I'd hate to take somebody's food and not even know whose it was."
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Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 3:24 pm
"Hmm?" Ah, he hadn't. "Cipher. Told you my parents were weird." He gave a wry smile. "Guess you know that feel, huh, with a name like Ransom." It didn't seem like her parents, or at least her mother, had given much thought to it. Why name a child after a crime? Such high aspirations . . .
A minute later, he flagged his tail for her to stop, sifting around the dead leaves and brush surrounding the base of a tree. Some digging later, and he produced the remains of two snow hares, mostly eaten but still enough to comprise of a meal, however meager. He nudged them both to the she-wolf, snorting to remove some bits of snow still in his nose. "There we go~ It isn't warm, but at least it's preserved."
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Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 8:46 pm
"Cipher. That's interesting." She smiled at his comment about her name. She'd always thought it was a strange name, but she also didn't know exactly what it meant. Then again, did names even have meanings? What if someone were named Tree? They were still wolves, no matter what they were called. It was all just noise anyway, right?
As he unburied the hare, she hesitated for just a moment before falling upon it, consuming it somewhat voraciously. She didn't want to look as desperate and hungry as she was, but once food touched her tongue she couldn't stop herself from inhaling the rest.
When it was done -- bone, fur, and all -- she looked up, licking her lips a little sheepishly. Her ears flopped down.
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Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 8:58 pm
As she ate, Raz sat on his haunches with his back to the tree, another habit picked up from training. "Good, eh? So if you don't mind returning the payment for food now, I'm curious as to how you got here alone and starved. And if you say 'I walked', I'll make sure you eat the bones too," he added cheekily, grinning.
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 11:02 am
He needn't have bothered -- she was crunching happily through bones and nearly choking as she swallowed over-enthusiastically. When she realized that this was probably not a good idea, she flopped back on her haunches and started coughing, gagging on the shards of bone caught in her throat. Eyes watering and chest heaving, she finally managed to sort out the situation and glanced up at the wolf rather sheepishly.
"I...sorry." She coughed a little more and then swallowed. "You know how they say a lone wolf is a dead wolf?" Her voice was strained, and she took a moment to catch her breathe, tongue lolling. Note to self - don't eat bones. "Nobody ever told me that. So I thought it'd be a good idea to go out on my own and leave my family."
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 11:24 am
She . . . well now. Raz blinked a little when she had the gumption to actually try and swallow bone, knowing for a certainty now that he hoped he never sunk so low in the hunger department as to resort to similar. "That so, huh?" Note to self: joking with the starving was probably not a good idea. "I can tell ya it's a bad idea to go at it alone. You got friends to go back to? This place isn't exactly hospitable, and it can get pretty cold."
And it sometimes had humans about, but he didn't want to throw everything at her at once.
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 11:34 am
She shook her head. "No," she said, though she didn't look as sad or as worried as she probably should have. Perhaps the seriousness of his words hadn't sunken in. Maybe it never would. "I'm not even sure where my mom and brother are, or if they're together. And I don't really have any friends."
Truth be told, she had found traveling to be quite inhospitable. So few wolves were willing to share their company, much less their food. That made Cipher all the more extraordinary, didn't it?
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 2:12 pm
Hrrrm, no friends even? Raz was left with a conundrum. On the one paw, he had been raised decently and would not feel good leaving this lady alone after hearing her predicament; on the other, he didn't have the means to sustain both himself and another wolf - or at least, he didn't have a pack to help him do so. Morals versus logic, it hurt his soul.
His jaw moved a thought in thought. "Only got a few myself," Raz added. "Most've them older. S'nice to have young for once, even if it makes me feel old." More jaw moving. Damn it, this was not what he was asking for when he wanted something to do.
Guess he ought to be careful what he wished for.
"So you don't know 'bout any packs in the area?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 3:32 pm
She tilted her head. Was he calling her a friend? No, surely she must have heard that wrong. Clearly. "I don't," she admitted, to his question. "I'm not even entirely sure where I am, compared to where I've been."
That sounded so stupid, but it was true. She had no idea where she was headed, or why. She had no purpose in life. She was only existing, living day-by-day, and if she had been lucky so far then all the better. But surely that luck would run out.
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 3:45 pm
"This place isssss . . . Somewhere in the lower southwestern Telk area," Raz answered after a moment of thought. "Lots of packs around here I'm told, if you know where to look. Not sure if that's still true though, it's been pretty quiet everywhere lately. Or maybe that's just 'cuz of the cold. Bears sleeping, less humans around, birds sing less to keep warm, stuff like that."
Now he was just rambling and avoiding making the choice. "It wouldn't do me any good to let you go in the state you're in," Raz eventually said with a sigh. "Though I'm a bit directionless myself. Blind leading the blind, y'know? My den's not far from here if you need a place to stay the night though."
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 4:42 pm
Was he...? Not quite sure how to take his offer, she cocked her head at him, brows slightly raised in unspoken question. Surely he was expecting something in return for all of this niceness. She had an idea of what that something might be, but she would be terribly embarrassed if she were wrong.
"I'd like that," she said, finally. And then, because she couldn't help wondering, "...If you don't know where you're going either, how come you're so much better at finding food than I am?" She nodded to his much-better-fed midriff.
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 11:11 pm
Rather relieved that she wasn't questioning his motives (because God knew he didn't know them either), Raz responded easily. "Used to be in a good hunting pack up until about a week ago or so. Alphas decided to go awol or something, and after a while we all just sorta . . . drifted."
Okay, so he was fudging the timeline up a bit, but even Raz himself wasn't so sure anymore how long ago he'd really been on his own. Even when Tomkin was alive, he felt like the pack was beginning to break up. A slow, inescapable process, like a drifting ice block in the northern waters.
He added a shrug. "My mentor's adage fits it best: 'Give a wolf a fish and he'll be fed for a day. Teach a wolf to fish and he'll be fed for the rest've his life.' We've hunted - We've hunted in a similar place like this before, so it wasn't hard to adjust really." The male caught himself before he made a contradiction to his previous "didn't know where they were" statement. "If you want, tomorrow I could teach you some tricks."
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Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 12:52 am
"You had a mentor?" She asked, following after him. Well, this had been a very fortunate turn of events, and now that her belly was somewhat more full she was feeling much more satisfied with how things had turned out. Maybe wandering wasn't so bad, if you fell in with the right kind of strangers.
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Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 1:01 am
"Had a lot of things. Now I don't got very much." There it was again, the bitterness creeping out into the light; it tasted bad on his tongue. Raz huffed a sigh, then forced a smile back on his face as they walked. "But for now I found a den, have some company, and an agenda for tomorrow. I guess that's more than anyone can ask for," he said simply.
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Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 10:37 am
"It sounds quite nice to me," she admitted, following him after. She was still not utterly certain about his motives, but she decided she didn't care. He was being very nice to her, and she would give him whatever it was that he needed in return. That was the way the world worked, right?
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