The Name we Bear

*Orica* · 01-04-2017, 08:28 AM

It was raining. The sort of rain that only comes in spring; big, fat, plopping drops of cool rather than cold water. It could give life to otherwise barren earth. It could turn a grey world green. Or it could sweep down in sheets and torrents, causing overflows and flash floods were there'd been nothing but dry creekbeds before. Orica had never seen these lands before. The faces they wore for the different seasons were unfamiliar, but she'd learned to greet strange places with the same manners and optimism with which she met strange wolves. Optimism... and caution. For today she was about to do one of the most dangerous things a lone wolf could do: Approach the claimed lands of a pack.

She hadn't found any scent markers (though it wasn't easy to tell in the rain). She'd crossed no borders, and was probably still a good ways away from any, but the smell of other wolves was thick in the air, in the very roots of the grass she tread upon. Many travelers come to and fro, many hunts, many trails, may pawprints now unseen beneath the mud of the new year. Her own stood out well enough - a small trail of pebbles for any that could follow. She kept to brushy places whenever possible, trying to avoid any swamps that might suddenly spring up in a land that didn't look like it was used to an over abundance of water. Grasses here were many and tall - mostly of brown and yellow hues, but there was new growth at their bases - green spears poking up out of the earth. New beginings, Orica thought to herself.

And as she did, a wind came up out of the far west and tussled through her fur - flinging her large tail out like a flag. It was enough to sway the path of the rain for a moment, and then it died away as quick as it had come. One breath and it was gone. Orica stared after it as though she could see some retreating figure. Some creature that galloped off into the tall grass.

A moment standing on the brink of indecision, and then she pounced down deeper into the stems - running across the grassland, headed deeper into the plains and closer to the realm of the unknown pack. Something had called the old wolf.

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