ten cent man in a hundred dollar suit

Even though they had lived in the castle in northern Auster for most of a year at this point, he realized that he still had not traveled the whole length of Auster. The farthest north he had traveled was the canyon where they had killed one of the strange mammoths and where he had found Serenity. Anything past that in the southern continent was still a mystery to him. Things around the pack had seemingly calmed into an easy rhythm. The saber cat attacks had seemingly stopped and they hadn't seen any more of the massive larger than life dire wolves since the attack that had ended in Resin's death. The mess of his life with Aranea had ended and now he had fallen into a happiness he didn't know was possible with Eska. The fact that his children were growing older and beginning to find little crushes of their own was a concern in the back of his mind, but in the grand scheme of everything else they had experienced up to now that felt like such a small thing.

Even still, he couldn't get himself to fully relax. He kept thinking about the deadly creatures that had plagued them over the last couple of seasons and he knew he wouldn't be able to completely let go of their existence until he throughly searched Auster to make sure they were gone. It was as good of a chance as any to finish his exploration of Auster and he brought Ezra along with him to spend some time with his son so at least he could justify it for those reasons without feeling like he was being paranoid about predators. As they reached a grove of massive oak trees he split off from Ezra for a moment, curiously moving through the massive, ivy colored trees. They spread out to search the forest for any signs of those saber cats so he made sure he continued to listen just in case Ezra called for him.

As he walked, he happened to catch a glimpse of a tuft of fur caught in some low hanging branches and he looked at it with a tilt of his head. It was brightly colored, a mix blues and purples. With a hum he continued on, but it wasn't even a few steps before he saw more of this fur, seeing white and pink and gold strands mixed in among all the other colors. A male's scent was fresh through here and he made the easy assumption that whoever that scent belonged to was also the cause for all of this shed fur. Sure enough, as he continued to follow the trail the clumps of fur created he ended up finding a very audaciously colored man at the end of it. He was such a stark contrast from his own muted, earth toned form that he couldn't help but chuckle. "New to the warmer weather, huh?" he questioned as he drew closer, picking a tuft of fur out of a near by branch.

Ulric Adravendi