a change of tune

Morning spread in muted tones across the sky, but the light was just enough to rouse Fiadh from her slumber. She had dug out a shallow yet serviceable den to seek refuge within once she got her fill of aimless wandering each day, but it was the second such den she'd crafted - she lost track of the other one. A capable wayfarer she was not, but she also was not at all concerned about permanence and knew her paws would set her wayward at some point. Fiadh was not one to be kept leashed in one place for long. Soon enough, this area would have served its purpose as allowing her to get her bearings and she would be ready to move on.

This morning did not pose itself as the day she would leave the charming Plains just yet. As she extricated herself from her den and stretched to greet the day, she almost missed the figure cloaked in a night's sky descending a hill in her periphery. Rosy ears perked as she shifted her head to follow the form, eyes of lavender moonlight landing squarely on what she could only describe as night made terrestrial. It was as though the wolf borrowed its pelt from the sky, bringing stars and nebulae into itself. Streaks of color broke the expanse of black, akin to the aurora Fiadh had seen in the sky every night since she'd "awoken." How bizarre it was that she would find first a Star and now the sky proper - when night itself was fleeing, no less. Did he deign the balance of day and night?

Her feathery tail bobbed cheerfully behind her hips as she set off in the night-wolf's direction, overall carriage friendly and passive. One of these days she'd find teeth where she expected easy conversation, but that reality did not stop her from treating every meeting of a new face as one between friends.

"Dia duit!*" she cast her voice to him until she could draw to a more comfortable distance, provided he did not widen the gap. The closer she grew, the more abundantly clear it became that he was much larger than herself - but it remained more observation than warning to the tenderheart. "It is not often I can speak to night so directly."

* Dia duit = Hello in Irish