Get Along There

Mid-sentence, Asriel snapped his formidable jaws shut on his story of a moose kill the winter before. They had crested a rise at the same time a bark rang out along the border they traveled, bringing them face to face with a stranger, a stranger with odd markings. She was a young female, clearly a loner, chocolatey brown with markings of a blue like a river running through loamy earth, a shade he had never seen achieved with dye. And indeed, he saw at a closer glance, it did not seem to be either dye nor paint, but instead apparently her own fur.

Both cat and wolf drew themselves up in silent dignity, eyeing her quietly for a moment. As prearranged, Asriel stayed back a step as the silent and intimidating "body guard" as Enrico stepped up closer in that elegant, gentlemanly way of his. "Buonasera signorina," he spoke smoothly, confidently, completely unruffled as though he had not just been startled midconversation by her sudden appearance. It had always been something of a talent of his, to appear unphased by any situation. It may have gotten pushed aside for a few years when everything had been ripped away from him, but it was as much a part of him as his blue eyes and time had healed the wounds that kept that part of him from surfacing.

He tilted his head to regard the woman, while Asriel at his shoulder stared with narrowed blue eyes and twitching tail. "May I ask what brings you to Niente?" Though the tone was polite and quiet, it was clearly a firm command rather than a question.