Careless or Cocky?

Xinas adventurous fearless spirit drove her pads to move move move. She snaked her way across the borders, the smell of corpses fading away behind her as she found herself among quickly growing lush grasses. Nearly as tall as her this mid spring day. She had worked her way across the territory all morning and now the afternoon beckoned her beyond. Her heart leaped in her chest at the potential to find something new. Craving to sink her teeth into a fresh meaty bag of blood. Golden eyes scanned the swaying meadow of bright green shoots. Perhaps some prey was hiding between the blades.

Her dark ears flicked up as she heard something a little ways off, a squeak of a rat maybe? She lowered herself into a crouch and wove through the meadow, then noticed the world around her grew dim. The weather had suddenly turned. She looked up at the sky and saw a monstrous pendulous cloud growing in strength above the peaks of the mountain. She watched it grow with fascination. As it grew it began to deepen its perilous color into a deep dark purple grey. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the blue sky slowly disappear behind the ominous cumulonimbus and gathering clouds. They grew heavy with moisture. As the wind blew them against the raking peaks of the mountains she felt a large wet drop hit just over one golden brow.

With a huff, she pulled her attention back to the grasses around her. She sat up and looked beyond them. She could potentially trek back home, in the rain, no doubt end up soggy and muddy and weary. Orrrr....

She turned her golden fire gaze to a large opening at the base of the mountain. It was similar to a larger gaping den, it had to be safe. It'll be fine. It was much closer than home anyway. One stumbly toddler stalked her way toward the cavern, determination set within her golden eyes to figure this new place out!

Raindrops startled to fall steadily around her but her she paused at the entrance. She sniffed at the curious double railing leading deeper within. New smells entered her nose at a breakneck pace and she had to take a real moment to study each one and catalog them against what she knew already. It had the strange twang of blood to it but without the meat or the blood! Rotting wooden boards were laid underneath the strange iron railing as if tying them together.

Her dark nose lifted to let her golden eyes peer into the gloom beyond. Half in and half out, her rump started to get soaked. She looked back outside as determined -yes- the weather was not going to let up soon. With the way her tail was already dripping she'd be much dryer and healthier within. Besides this new cave had such interesting smells! She picked her paws carefully over a curious item. A long wooden handle beneath a rusted iron pickaxe, the wood barely more than splinters. Her nose was pressed over the ground as Xina pushed inside the cavern. Pack wolf scents, stranger scents, creature and prey scents, stranger scents, familiar scents, unknown scents-oh my! Her nose was overwhelmed by the cornucopia of scents her tail began to sway excitedly. Her white paws become sooty as she presses with energy onward.

Deeper and deeper in the cave she pressed on. The darkness is ignored and forgotten as her nose is filled with a buffet of knowledge. The scents changed the landscape within her mind. The musty dusty soot gave way to half damp rich soil thick with mycelium. The walls held twangs of that strange not blood but blood smell in places and other blood but not blood smell in other places with a different tone! Copper? Iron? Bones.

She passed several abandoned camps, unbothered by the implications of others not making it out. She had no supplies, no food, no light, and yet she continued. Her nose pressed to the floor, her eyes barely seeing even though they were half open. All her energy is in moving and smelling. Not making it out of this winding maze of new scents never occurred to her. She was an emotional no-holds-barred middle child, she wasn't born with an innate sense of fear, she was born with an innate sense of move, move, move, touch, feel, it's never enough.

Her footfalls were flat and hard on the stones, the sound echoing against the walls, her claws tapping announcing her presence as easily as if she had shouted. Was she careless or uncaring, bold or just reckless? She liked the way the sounds bounced back to her.

The scents shifted along the ground, the wolf scents narrowed down from many to few. There weren't a lot that made it down here and she noticed that the scents typically went one way but not the other. Her paw kicked a pile of old bones and she went to work observing what it was. The sinew was picked clean, and the bones showed marks of teeth on them. She carefully picked up a smaller bone, a knuckle of the victim before her. Then she came over the skull, its nose long and the teeth similar to her parents. Was this a wolf? Just like her? How'd it die? She reobserved the carcass with a new fascination, Placing the bones in places where she thought they should be when they were alive. Like a puzzle.



w: 924
Solo nav exploration, under 1 yr