When There's Something Strange In Your Neighborhood... [AW]

Sterling tried to prepare herself for when the attention of the others would land on her. She saw the grin on Pyralis' face, and it put her on edge, even though she wasn't sure she needed to worry at all. Why did everything about everyone else always make her tense and paranoid? It was probably nothing, yet she drew meaning from the gestures, movements and words of every wolf. She was startled when the woman exclaimed in delight at seeing her again. Her paws shifted nervously as the woman said she'd grown since their last meeting. Well, she supposed that was true. After all, she'd been just a yearling back then. She'd thought she was all grown up, but clearly that was not the case. Even now, she hardly felt comfortable in her own skin.

Her attention was captured momentarily by the boy who spoke with an interesting accent. She took in his name, trying to remember it for later. She tilted her head as he exclaimed suddenly that Pyralis reminded him of someone named Ashiel. Sterling shrugged, not knowing who it was he spoke of.
Her head turned back to the Abraxas woman as she asked the two of them what they were doing in these haunted woods. "Wait, they're actually haunted?" her voice came out nearly the same time as the boy's. She looked to him as he expressed his doubts, but she wasn't sure if she believed it. She was sure she'd felt things since being here that didn't seem natural.

Emerald eyes shifted to the woman once more. "Well, if you know this forest's haunted, why are you here?" she questioned, her gaze shifting around the shady woods for a moment before fixing back on the face of Pyralis, "Aren't you... worried?" She wasn't sure what it even meant for a forest to be haunted - all she knew was that it gave her the creeps, like she was being watched and hunted, and she didn't like it!