The End of the World

He stepped closer, and she did not move back though her weight shifted slightly, one forepaw moving momentarily as if she might retreat before she lifted it and drew it forward, moving a few steps forward to meet him half-way. He smiled at what she had said - maybe she wasn't quite as rusty at pleasant talk as she believed herself to be. Still, even tonight Kuwindwa remained a little hesitant, all too aware she would move on again. Her heart had taken too heavy a blow and it healed into stone. Tonight was the first time in a long time she felt even a fraction of something. The tranquility helped remind her she had once lived for nights like this among her comrades.

"Do you think the world has an actual end?" Áki would ask, prompting a soft, thoughtful hmm from Kuwindwa. She did not respond immediately, preferring to let him finish on more pleasant notes about a home that might have been so very like Kuwindwa's own... although, she wasn't sure what a "reindeer" was. She would ask - though not just yet. No, she was interested in his more philosophical musing. Kuwindwa looked again to the sea, long enough to watch the surf break a few times before shifting her weight a second time, this time to face the ocean and the moonlight. This might be a pleasant meeting after all.

"I never thought about it very deeply until I came to this land... but there is seldom time for deep thinking," she said, her voice softening as she glanced at the red-marked man. There had been times she thought she would die; she would have let herself slip away deliberately into nothing. But something always spurred her on. Was it fear of death? That there would be nothing after all? Or maybe it was the opposite: she was afraid it would continue, unending? "When we are happy, we easily disregard what may be. I have lived 'in the moment' too long to-" Kuwindwa stopped abruptly as a thought seemed to strike her. Really she only wondered that she was speaking so easily. "...well. Surely it all must end one day," she decided, but she didn't seem certain. The glance she sent Áki's way was thoughtful, questioning. "The Pack would have laughed at such thinking. We- they were very pragmatic. There was no room for questions and thoughts like this. Was it like that where you were from, in the North?"

Kuwindwa was surprised at herself for speaking so freely. But he had asked the right question, in the right place, at the right time. She could never know it consciously, but a deep part of the wanderer craved a conversation with another wolf just like the one she was having now with Áki. Not just this subject and conversation, but any conversation. She was alone by choice, but that did not make it her nature to be alone and utterly isolated. It was a wonder she hadn't developed any more madness than her deeply shaken faith in others and the paranoia that often drove her to flee.