Miss Mysterious

The pain never seemed to leave. The only thing that seemed to dull it was the constant training, patrolling, building, and anything that required her to think of everything except her personal life. Even though her mother’s death changed so little in the overall dynamic of the world, with how long she’d been ill and barely conscious, it still felt as though someone had snatched their jaws into her breast and ripped her open to the bone.

When she let herself think, let her guard down, the whirling hurricane of emotions battled to overwhelm her. Fury, loss, grief, sadness, uselessness. She didn’t know how to let it go, or how to purge it from her system and wake up refreshed.

So, she worked herself to the bone through a Spring that seemed not to have even been born this year.

A howl broke through her training – a rather simple exercise of lifting heavy stones in saddlebags across her back until her legs sook and burned from the effort of repeated rising and lowering herself under the weight. If it was one thing Jupiter’s little visit had shown her, it was that she needed to be stronger, and hit harder. So that the next time she bowled a wolf his size over, it wouldn’t be because he let her.

Slowly, she rose to her full height, ten let her haunches drop, sending the bags sliding down her back end to the ground under the weight of the stones they carried. Shaking out her coat, she broke into a brisk trot that belied the weariness in her muscles, Aelloshir slipping ahead of her, Ayodele leaping to her back and plaiting her mane into one long rope and knotting it into a bun.

Aurielle was pretty sure she recognized the voice as Acere Praetor’s, and her interest, so difficult to kindle, was roused from the back of the dark little cave it’d been hiding in since she’d learned of her mother’s passing. What could the leader of Winterfell be wanting? Trade? The note of his voice hadn’t carried that cold edge of seriousness that one might expect if meeting a declaration of war, so she was reasonably certain that wasn’t the case.

The pale-based male came into sight as she neared the wall, and her gradated blue gaze swept over him, taking in the harness, and the packs on the two foxes backs. Trade, then. She considered the stores tucked away in the caves, and the small supply of wood. Herbs had been scarce this spring, but those gathered in Autumn and Summer, and last spring were still in good stock and condition.

She dipped her muzzle to the massive male as she slowed to a stop, standing in the passage of the wall and adding a nod to each of his companions before she greeted, “Acere. It’s good to see you well. Is all well in the north?” Had he lost anyone in the eruption?

Any astute wolf could take one look at the shadows haunting her eyes and face and know that she was battling her own trials, though her expression was one of warm welcome, typical of her usual demeanor as a leader.

Her head cocked as Ayodele bounded to the top of the wall to study the cargo Acere had pulled behind him, though the lemur didn’t approach further, respecting the items as goods that hadn’t yet been traded into Valhalla’s paws. Aurielle’s gaze flicked to the cargo as well as she asked lightly, “That’s an awful lot to have pulled such a way. What brings you and your companions so far south?”

It was slightly rhetorical, but not assumptive of her to ask, she hoped. With luck, she could possibly come away from this with an alliance to what was possibly a very powerful pack, if the amount of scents she was getting off his coat on the occasional breezes that wafted her way were anything to go off of. It was hard to patrol one’s pack and not come away from it smelling like the rest of your wolves.

684 words
1028/1500 words

Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Hear" ---- Think