The quiet, slim hunter padded along on top of the snow with no particular destination in mind except to take stock of the prey remaining in the territory. Winter ground on, terribly cold. This was the sort of cold that caused trees to explode from the pressure of frozen moisture in them; he had seen it before, in places where there were more trees than this prairie-land. It meant that prey would be scarcer, since they would most be hiding to find whatever warmth they could, in a time when the pack needed more calories than ever as their bodies expended more energy simply to stay warm. Hares were common prey for solitary hunters, but the ultra-lean meat wasn't going to cut it during the winter when they'd need to keep their fat stores up or they'd freeze or starve to death. Beavers would be next to impossible to get this time of year. There was no way around it, he would need to gather a group of the hunters and seek out larger prey or the pack would not make it through the winter healthy. To that end, he was tracking the movements of the large prey that still remained here despite the deep snows and killing cold. There were pronghorn here still and mule deer, and he thought he might still find a few small bison herds that hadn't made the trek to higher elevations when the snows set in, but that was unlikely. Pronghorns weren't very well adapted to the unusual amount of snow the prairie was getting this winter, so perhaps they'd make a good choice to focus on.

Pausing, he lifted his dark head to sniff at the air for any scents that the wind might be carrying to him. The cold stung his nose horribly, but he persisted anyway. Tracks didn't last long anymore, with the constant snowfall tending to fill in long before anyone came across it, so he was relying on scent to find the prey, and as he learned these herds he would be able to lean on his own observations to learn their habits so he could predict where they would be found.

Heavens above, it was cold. Solveiga wasn't used to this, not even a little bit. She'd been born and raised on what was basically a tropical island, and winters had always been very mild. But this was something else. And Solveiga wasn't exactly a big, hardy creature. Just stepping outside her alcove and into the bitter wind was enough to chill her to the bone. But she pushed through it. She felt too restless when she was doing nothing at all productive, and with snow covering the ground there wasn't much for a healer like herself to do. So today she left in search of something, anything at all. She wanted to make some sort of contribution to the pack, especially now when so many were cold and just a little bit too hungry. Could she maybe catch something to bring back to her fellow pack members? Besides rabbits, what else would she be able to bring down on her own? As she walked along, trying to pretend she wasn't shivering, a scent caught her attention. So she followed it. And moments later, she came upon another member of the pack who seemed to have the same idea she did. His name was... with a frown, she realized she had no clue. But she had seen the male around, once or twice. "Excuse me," she called out to him, and she really hoped her chattering teeth weren't noticeable in her speech. That would be a bit embarrassing. "Were you planning to hunt for something? Perhaps I could help, somehow," Solveiga said, offering the darkly colored male a smile as she tried not to sneeze from the wind biting at her nose. This would be interesting.

Mask endured another icy blast of wind that seemed to cut through even his woolly winter undercoat, but through the prickle of cold at his nose that wind carried another scent to him, prompting him to turn to face the approaching wolf despite the chill wind. He studied her quietly a moment. One of the pack's healers, yes? He knew little more than that, having not made a concerted effort to get to know any of his packmates before winter's cold set in and he'd had to concentrate all his energy on hunting. "Buongiorno signora," he greeted politely. "I track herds now, but maybe it may being that we can together be hunting." He was doubtful, but too much the consummate gentleman to allow that doubt to creep into his voice - she was, after all, a healer rather than a trained hunter, and might not be as much help on a hunt as he would need for decently sized prey. Instead he turned his dark face back to the trace he had been following. "It is perhaps to be the pronghorns we be finding," he offered, gesturing towards the scent of the mixed-sex winter herd that had passed there recently. "We could be to trapping an elder into deep snows."