Private Through the Woods We Ran

Moonlight glittered off cinnamon fur as a breeze ruffled thick, tall blades of winter grass. A vast meadow stretched behind her, and before her loomed grand trees, the likes of which she'd seen only in her woodland's thickest groves. It was nearly silent, aside from the howling around her, the howling within her. She'd scarcely felt so alive.

Flicker dashed through the fields, her great wolf paws beating rhythmically across the ground. She didn't feel their touch, though. Instead, she sped across the ground as though her feet never touched it at all, as though the moonlight had given her wings with her paws and she floated along with the wind. Soft fur, from cinnamon to cream, swirled over her canine body and glowed beneath the stars — the same ones from her homeland, if perhaps in different places. The same sky, the same wind, the same light, though she knew she was no longer on earth at all. Whether the sky was real or fake, for a moment, she did not care. It made her feel alive. It made her feel at home. That was all she needed to howl.

And so she did, as she gazed up at the nigh-full moon high above.

Moment later, she plunged into the tree-line, dodging roots and pits with practiced ease. Every now and again, another howl would break loose. Listen closely and it sounded perchance like laughter, or mourning, or song.

@Etlaayz

The faintest sound of a howl broke through the rushing of the wind and the blood in her ears. For a moment, she felt blind hope. Flicker slowed to a stop and listened, sniffing the air for familiar scents. Her parents, her brother, her niece, her cousins-- her kin. But it was in vain, for her parents were gone, and her people were thousands of miles and a dimensional boundary away.

But there was someone in these woods, and they spoke to Flicker in familiar words. They answered her longing howl with their own, and forever cemented their momentary link beneath moonlight.

The scent of another finally hit her bark-brown nose, and she set off again, swift as the wind, a hopeful sound ringing from her throat. Moonlight dappled her fur through shifting treetops as she called, running ever-faster in the direction of her kin.

The stranger's scent grew stronger and stronger as Flicker all but floated through the trees. At some point, she fell silent, for her kin was close enough that she need not speak out any longer. With time, it became clear that the other was, indeed, not selkie; she smelled of wolves and humans, but lacked the poignant sent of the woodland itself so characteristic of Flicker's people. She lacked the chatter of mice and squirrels, the roar of a bear, the bleat of a mountain goat, the whine of a fox. But where her scent was linear, it also was strong, and it was clear that her wolf scent was half of her entire being, whereas the selkie scent was more divided due to variety.

Flicker knew she was close as she approached another clearing, this one much smaller. She-wolf, her nose supplied, as her primal instinct pulled her closer and closer towards her power-kin. She emerged, slowly, from the trees, and saw her silver sister from afar.

The selkie returned the yip, and held up her own paw, a shifter tag looped snugly around her lower leg. With that, the proceeded slowly towards the other, moving cautiously despite perked ears and a gently wagging tail.

Flicker breathed in deeply, seeking the peculiarities of the other's scent. As she other she-wolf sat, Flicker continued to approach, slowly but confidently. The scent of chemicals caught her nose, further identifying this she-wolf as a shifter, though the washed-out scent of humanity that clung to her pelt would have been enough even prior. Finally, she sat down in front of the other, only a few tail-lengths away. The other's bemusement was not lost on her, but there was no way to ask about it yet.

However, at the prompting, Flicker, too, licked her lips, showing her thirst, and looked off into the woods for a moment. She then looked back, flickered her ears, and tilted her head with a small swish of her tail against the snowy underbrush below. There was a lake that way, off in the trees — would this she-wolf want to come?

@Etlaayz