Icy toes and Ice Floes

In his travels, he had encountered many wolves, among them souls who seemed... not quite the same. They used odd expressions and mannerisms and most of the little, minute things in their body language went unseen, as if they had a form of slight autism that excluded the nuances of the slight, small things, as if they didn't quite understand canid or wolf but tried their best to imitate. This one, this female, she seemed to understand. Her relaxed, unconcerned demeanor soothed something that was wound tight and rattly, like a poorly hung mast which directed its ship errant. He did not count the number of times when his eyes glanced her direction, but they were few, and seeing her laying down passively gave him a sense of calm. He would not be surrounded, attacked, beaten, and forced into indentured servitude like before. He allowed himself to breathe a deep, cleansing breath. But it came out as a cough; he still had a bit of meat in his windpipe.

He had cleaned his muzzle, asked a question, and she had answered. His tail curled behind him as he sat. His eyes, his facial features, everything about him revealed that he was thinking, which might appear that either he was thinking much too hard on such a simple matter, or that his poker-face was quite terrible.

He had not been gone long from the place he had come and he did not imagine that the nameless, leprous empire had suddenly named itself in a matter of days. Splitting branches, yes. And the inadequacy of any competition to be called its rival, yes. It could have had happened, though. Or, perhaps it happened in the past and what she knew were the beginnings, the antiquities of the modern epidemic. Which meant that his empire - the great one that came and slaughtered and took and incorporated like a great commercial industrial machine - that empire was still out there, and could very well be on this land. If there were more than one, though, the land had to be vast.

"I have travelled in a circle.", he said to his front paws, gazing at the granules of mud that had worked its way between his toes, examining the fine details of each dirt particle. He had come from north of here, travelling south, to get someplace that was considered very, very north. His mind tried to map out the spacial geometry of such a consequence, but wolves were bad at math, and he was no exception.

He looked up after a little while. "To stay away from them.", he said simply. He lied. He untrusted. He bit his tongue. And despite his earlier revelation of his non-existant facial confidentiality, his face betrayed none of this. What he wanted was to warn the ones who were here, to find his family, to stop it. But there was no stopping of that blood empire but by more blood and he was sick of fighting. So in a way, he understood that the largest part of him, the part that wanted it all to end, was not willing to do anything more than lip-service to what mattered most. It troubled him and stuck in his throat.

"I wish now to beseech a heal-all, to work off my debt to that service, and to rest some place safe until I have recovered.", he looked at her now, but not in the eyes as challenge.

"Is it safe her..... no, don't answer that.", he interrupted himself, and his voice took the tone of a direct order, though unintentional, and somehow empty, as if it were a child trying to lead a kingdom that knew he was not their king. "You seem safe enough, so this place is safe enough. But we never really are safe with the likes of them around, are we?", and now came a choking, hateful, self-loathing tone of sarcasm, and not sarcasm at all.

"Lead the way, lady.", he neither implored nor asked, and there was no politeness in these words except for the last one, not used as gender or noun, but as if a royal title. It was, perhaps, the first ounce of respect that he had shown her beyond neutral indifference.

There was not a thought of suspicion that there might be a danger in the woman, who she was, where she came from, or what she wanted. He was like a child who had never seen rain and expected every day to be bright and shining, not realizing the ferocity of a storm, or how wicked and cruel it could be, how unfeeling.