roar like an open fire

This season was a difficult one for her, the season she had lost her beloved Lanse in. It had been easier at first, being away from the places she had spent so much time with him in, in surroundings familiar from her childhood. But all that meant was that it was able to sneak up and hit her all at once, the Sudden bleak knowledge that he was GONE, forever, and all this was just her, alone, waiting in solitude for the day when she would pass from this world and join Lanse again. She had woken up this morning feeling perfectly ordinary, stepped outside of her den into the chill of an early winter morning... and it had struck her so hard it took her breath away. That ache in her chest, the constant feeling that she was missing a part of her. A leg, or her tail... or her heart.

She had struck out blindly away from Celestial's lands, not feeling at all capable of interacting with any of her packmates today. It wasn't a side of her any of them had seen, or needed to ever see. She was a competent, practical wolf, not this creature consumed by the past and her own depression. Even if right now she felt like this was all she was and ever would be capable of being.

For a time she simply wandered, head low and paws restless despite her inability to drag herself from her apathy enough to actually do something productive. Hunt, or patrol, or... something. No, she simply wandered uncaring.

Something made her lift her head and gaze, though the only sounds that had reached her for some time had been the monotonous crunch of dead grass beneath her paws. The oak tree naturally drew the eye, but it was the form beneath it that had been what caught her attention. A scarred male wolf, his exterior as battered by the years as her heart felt, and for a moment she hesitated between wanting to reject interaction and the feeling of being drawn to a kindred spirit. In the end it was her own polite nature that drove her forward, because the hesitation made it far too late to pretend she had not seen him and continue on her way. Instead she approached him, with an empty shadow of her friendly demeanor. "Hello," she greeted him with simplicity, head tilted slightly as she waited to see if he responded in kind or if he didn't want to company at all. His scent was vaguely familiar, and after a moment she placed it as one she had scented on her patrols along the borders. He must have been living in the area around Celestial for some time, then, and despite her apathy she felt a stirring of curiosity about his reasons for doing so.