Force of a Hurricane

He couldn’t say that this was the prettiest place he’d ever found… The muck that coated his legs, belly, chest, and even his tail, was pretty convincing of that. He’s traveled a good many places in his last year, never staying in one area for long, unless he’d found something new to learn; like the ever growing list of languages he’d avidly soaked up from various lands and communities. Thanks to his intuitive grasp for learning, and watching body language, he picked things up quickly, and his charismatic personality made it exceptionally easy for him to integrate into most any community or tribe he ran across.

This, however… This wasn’t so pleasant. It was cold, even if it wasn’t snowing, and it was mucky. He wasn’t looking forward to licking this stuff from his coat. As far as he could divine, he was on the southern edge of a large continent; he’d come across a land bridge from a large continent to the south. That land bridge had to have been one of his favorite sights, with its sparkling sands shimmering all kinds of rainbowesque colors. It had been a relatively long walk from Auster to this land. From there, he’s decided to walk the coast, heading eastward, and then he’d detoured north into this swamp…

He’d had some experience with swamps, and so he kept his eyes peeled for any signs of large predators, like the huge reptiles; crocodiles, or alligators. Not the friendliest of chaps, those. And despite being forty inches at the shoulder, Maelstrom was still a nice sized snack for one of those scaly, armored beasts.

He slogged through the muck and water, and finally came across a patch of solid land, a tiny hillock. Clambering onto it, he gave his lean frame a solid shake, sending mud and muck flinging in all directions from his fluffy coat. It was a good chance to take stock of his surroundings, get his bearings, and plan out his next course of action.

Amethyst eyes swept around the murky swampland, as he tried to map out his next path. He knew he wanted to go north, maybe northwest. He thought he could hear the distant hush of a river straight north from here; a sign he was nearly out of the swamp? Thus far, in his arrival to this continent, he hadn’t encountered more than a few stray loners, one or two had given him startled looks and hurried away as fast as they could. Kind of a shame, since he did enjoy meeting new wolves and making friends. Of course, with his looks…

He was based in the deepest of blacks, which wasn’t that unusual in itself. However, it was his markings that made some stop and stare. His face carried ornate swirls of cyan blue, on his muzzle, flowing from his eyes toward his temples, and on his brow points. As it that weren’t enough to make him unique, a thick swirl of the color encompassed the whole of his left foreleg, starting from the paw and stopping at the elbow. The lower half of his tail was dipped in the color, as well. That would have been enough to make any wolf stop and stare, only the heart of each marking was cored with an ice white center, and with how the cyan tended to fade out at the edges, it gave a rather convincing optical illusion that his markings were glowing.

He rather liked his markings. His family all had variations of them, in their own respective colors and hues, but each unique. And he cared about his family. How were they, he wondered? How were his newest siblings, that he was sure would have come this autumn. His parents had no intentions of skipping years, wanting to be surrounded with children. Pups were a soft spot for the midnight male. The sweet innocence and boundless energy was endearing. He didn’t even mind their needle point puppy teeth pricking his ears when he had the chance to sprawl out into a horde of them. It was a definite in his future that he wanted his own someday.

But maybe that was looking too far ahead. Better to focus on the more nearby future. Like where was he going to stop for the night, and what was he going to track down to eat. The sun was already sinking lower and lower toward the western horizon, and the already dingy surroundings were taking on that shadowy feel. He didn't like the idea of bedding down in a place where the wildlife was big enough to eat someone his size, so he angled himself northward and a bit toward the falling sun and slogged back out into the mud and murky water. He'd be lucky to get out before full dark.

Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Hear" ---- Think