YOU'RE NORTH OF HEAVEN

The seas wine red; This is the death of beauty

this is the time and this is the place to be alive

. . .


Champion was wandering again. The harder she felt herself nailed down, the stronger her paws pulled her away. But no matter how oftne the excersion or how far the trail, she always ended up point back towards Newt at the end of it. Her sense of friendship was waging war with her inborn wanderlust, and it was playing tricks on her soul. She'd never had to puzzle about these things before now. Up until the fall of Amenti her duties in the pack had been different but she'd still found purpose and promise in them. She'd shone. She'd found peace with structure, and become perhaps what some would call a stronger wolf because of it. But she didn't know if that really was for her. She was a dare devil, a whirlwind - she felt no fear and would shrink from neither death nor pain. But when you attached yourself to others? Well, others weren't as ready for whatever fate had in store as the gold and white bear was.

It was a puzzlement.

But Champion could shake off her troubles for one day at least, as she went to go play in the snow. The dangerous, collected girl who had walked in there with a confident, warrior's waltz, suddenly dissolved into a pup: her curled tail wagged uncontrolably, her paws dances over the snow light as pixies, her tongue lolled out the side of a toothy smile. Champion started by chasing snow shoe hares around. She wasn't really interested in catching one - she wanted to race about like a nut. But then one lead her to an patch of snowmelt that had iced over. It was like a temporary pond - perfectly smooth and frozen thick as stone.

Without hesitation, the behemoth hopped out onto it. There was some slipping and sliding and skittering around on her mop of belly fur, but eventually she got the hang of the claw to pad ratio needed to keep her balance and control. She'd dig her claws in and start running down one side, only to dive into a roll and slide the rest of the way - bumping into snowbanks on the far end. It was AWESOME.

This was how Champion liked it: the world her playground and nothing more. Her last surf had taken her straight through a drift and out onto the solid ground at the other side. She lay there on her back for a bit before she caught the scent of wolf in the air and realized there was someone around. Her head popped up to see a grey she-wolf who stood about as tall and strong as a canine could before they went into the range of freakish like herself. How long as the other fae been standing there?, Champion wondered. No matter though. She perked her ears forward and gave a wide, half panting, wolf smile. "Good day, stranger!" she called.




. . .