body bag

The dissolution of her family's pack had provided a rather unique opportunity for the Praetor bitch to go forth and stretch her metaphorical wings without obligation, but something within her told her that the time had come to grow up and return home. She'd had her couple of seasons living rough and taking care of herself, and now she felt the pull of her set-aside responsibilities to her father, to her siblings, and honestly to herself. She owed it to herself to put herself in a situation where she could excel, and that was here in Boreas.

Her steps happened to be taking her through the battlefield when a call rang out over the rolling grasses for an opponent. The lanky yearling tilted her head thoughtfully. She hadn't gotten her first set of real armor or weapons since she'd only recently reached her adult height and probably hadn't yet filled out to adult proportions (she wasn't sure, maybe she was destined to always be shaped like a scrawny messy scarecrow) so she'd be going into the fight unequipped and ill prepared after her travels, but maybe that was the best time to be sparring. Her skills in that regard were rusty, she knew, and it could be a good idea to brush up on them before returning to her father and his high expectations

So she moved to answer the call, stalking stork-legged to face the dark colored stranger. She took a beat to study him, see that he was only a little older than she and no taller but a good bit heavier, that he wore a skull on his head, bracers on his forelegs, and was accompanied by a fighting companion. So, it wouldn't be an easy fight, then, but that was good. She needed to challenge herself from the start, not start with baby steps, and she knew she wasn't so proud that losing would bother her.

She nodded briefly to the stranger and readied herself, relaxing into the fighting stance she'd had drilled into her head practically from the time her eyes opened.