Familiar as a Stranger

A spattering trail painted over with the wisps and drags of tail that wouldn't stay still. The lazy wag back and forth betrayed the interest of the traveling wolf - that and the fae - that and pricked ears tilted forward so far that snowflakes came to rest on their backs. She paused just once, this stranger, to heave a hot breath across the land - watching it swirl and ghost visibly before her eyes. It twisted in the air; an invitation that couldn't be denied. The she-wolf managed to contain herself for exactly six seconds more, before lounging forward - bolting after the vapors, twisting and leaping - hitching up first her hind end then her fore, bounding across snowdrifts and barren stretches. She twirled like the fae she was in more ways than one. Fangs, white despite age, even snapped out at the puffs of breath that followed. The once clear sheen of snow was churned again and again and again - like a herd of deer might have passed with less sign.

Erratic as her movements were, there was a grace, a dance to them. And they ended with a seat in a fluffed up heap, as sudden as it was soft. Orica breathed deep, closing her blue eyes to the frozen world, drinking in the scents of snow and ice and stone that never failed to remind her of home and hearth and childhood. Blessed were those days. Days of danger and love, of sages and saints and sinners all rolled together in the struggle of one pack. Of one family. Dear gods above how the time had passed. She had a family of her own now. Beautiful pups that had grown into beautiful adults. Dear Yona had agreed to follow her into these new lands - and no doubt she'd be along when her journeys allowed. In the mean time Orica kept moving.

Well... except when she had to dance.

Her heart trilled happy and light in her pale breast. Her frame heaved and shook with excitement, but there, below the cliffs striped with such beautiful golds and silvers and whites, she sat for a time. She made those paws - still so pup-like and ready to run - hold themselves still for a time. Everything about this land was somehow familiar and yet so strange. In her time with the nomad pack that had taken her in, Orica had learned to call any land home; learned that all that makes the difference between a den and a hole in the ground is the heart you bring into it. But this? This northern air awoke something in her. Something akin to a happy sort of homesickness. She had to be close. She'd come so far.