Ghosts of yesterday

The silence was deafening, though comfortably so. It had a way of dampening her senses and quieting her mind. The sudden arrival of someone else in her world was almost alarming, despite her senses being acute - she was alone and wanted to stay that way, but all at once she became aware of the sound of someone approaching. It was easily distinguishable from the eerie sounds of the subterranean world that echoed around her, the clear sound of canine paws against the stone floor of this ancient underground structure. She felt some annoyance flare up in her chest at the prospect of company, but in her older age she found herself much slower to anger than she once had been. She cared about few other than her own family and, to some extent, her packmates - with little energy left for anything else she rarely found herself reacting in the extremes she may have once channeled - so she was quiet and still as she waited for the stranger to continue along, whether toward her or away.

The greeting, which really was hardly a greeting at all, earned an dry snort from Ásvor. "Depends who's asking," she responded without hesitating for longer than it took for her to open her mouth. Faintly, hardly visible at all, she could see a figure up ahead - was that the gleaming white of his skull she could see, or was her vision finally beginning to fail her after all these years? Her movements were slow as she took a few steps closer to him, maintaining a careful distance still. "Why do you ask? Find something of interest, perhaps?" Mushrooms of some kinds definitely piqued her interest but she wasn't sure it was for the same reason this kid might be interested in them. At least he sounded young, though most wolves were young in her eyes, at least relatively speaking.