it's a melody; it's a battle cry

The voice that came distracted Irin from her thoughts with ease. The female jumped slightly, ears twisting back in the direction that the voice had come from and slowly, Irin took a deep breath. The wolf didn't sound threatening, did he? The voice was definitely masculine, Irin noted absently, but she couldn't detect anything other than that. The wolf sounded neither happy nor mad, so with another deep breath, Irin responded lightly, voice quiet in the air. "There are a lot of strange things here." Irin fought to keep the anxiety out of her voice. She wasn't exactly good with strangers. "It's certainly mystifying." and with that, Irin turned carefully to face the other wolf.



He was a very large wolf, compared to Irin. But that wasn't anything new to the female. She wasn't the largest wolf around, to say the least. It was rare for there to be wolves even close to her own size. He was black, a sharp contrast with his icy surroundings, and had interesting red markings, with orange-y eyes that, if Irin were entirely honest, looked pretty creepy. Hmm. What could explain that appearance?



Maybe he was a night wanderer, something other than a pure wolf. Maybe he was born of the night, with no family to call his own, forever cursed to haunt the snowy expanses until he managed to find another wolf, one that he could pass his curse onto, forcing them to wander while he finally had a chance to live, to join a pack and maybe find a mate, while the other wolf (maybe even Irin herself) was forced to wander like he had been. Irin shuddered, stepping back quickly from the black wolf. She didn't want to be forced to wander the world for the rest of her life!



Of course, there were other possibilities too. Like maybe he was just an ordinary wolf. But that was boring. Still, the thought of that was enough to make Irin relax, the tension melting from her frame as she cocked her head, examining the wolf. "Have you ever seen anything like this before...?" Irin asked, glancing thoughtfully over her shoulder at the trees. Maybe this river and the world that it hid was something that had been repeated a thousand times over, criscrossing this continent and hiding a sprawling world of creatures who moved far beneath the ice.



"speech"