geez it's a lion

Aris stretched outside the den before bounding away through the tall grasses and onto her usual perching boulder, getting her youthful body limber for a day on the move. She didn't have to spend her days and weeks out in the world searching for her mother now that Zee had returned, but she'd gotten used to being constantly on her paws moving, she liked the way the exercise made her feel, so sitting around made her feel itchy. Borders needed patrolled though even if she wasn't officially anything approaching a warrior, so she still got her exercise in doing that among other more parkour fun shit and working out fighting with Tansy. It worked enough to keep her from getting too restless mostly, which was good because she wanted to spend as much time as possible near her mom now that Zee was back. Back, but weaker, too thin, less happy than Ari remembered. There was tension that she hadn't noticed before, and she wasn't sure if it was because she'd been a child then and hadn't noticed or if it was new. Either way, her mother's condition worried her, so she kept her wanderings to the pack borders.

Still, it wasn't as interesting as actually getting to explore, and she'd been idly considering tracking down her mom or bullying one of her siblings into doing something interesting with her - as she liberally daubed her purple-white-and-black form with mud and grass to prep for sneaking around - when movement in the grasses inside of the border caught her attention. A lot of movement... like, something big was moving through them, and a disconcerting scent reached her that was definitely not a wolf, let alone an Armada wolf. Unsheathing her claws and lifting her spiny hackles partly in threat and partly in excitement, she set herself to tracking whatever it was. She'd ambush it and drive it off by herself, of course, because what could possibly go wrong with that? Ardyn chased off bears all the time, and she was obviously the better fighter since she was in the Armada...