tell me what you got away with

Sleeping was for dead wolves. V praced along through the darkness and cold, red eyes staring up at the moon. The sky was absolutely clear and she could see the stars for the first time since she'd reached this place. They were different from the ones she'd seen at home. Alien. Another sign that she was starting down a path she was never meant to take. Leaving Regieren; she really never would have imagined herself anywhere else a year or two earlier, and now she was in a land so far away from her home that the stars were even different. She must have traveled much farther than she'd originally thought. Through places where there weren't any wolves, and others where the wolves had really short noses and floppy ears and spoke weird languages. She'd been glad to get back to her own kind after that, even though none of them seemed all that friendly. There had been the white girl who wasn't good at jokes and the red-eyed boy. He was okay. She wouldn't be upset to meet him again.

Nothing seemed to be moving out here. No wind, no owls. Just cold and silence. Boring, boring. V had spent too long on her own; she was ready to find some people to hang with. Go on adventures. Steal stuff. Get in fights. Anything other than quiet and empty plains and, sometimes, a very very distant howl from another wolf. They never responded to her. She was too small and far away for them. They were looking for packs or whatever. She was lonely, but not that bad. Not bad enough to sign her life away to some people she didn't really know.

Besides, she could see the grass moving nearby, and since there was no wind it stood to reason that it was either an animal that she could chase or another wolf. V stared at the spot for a minute and suddenly took off toward it, lean frame blasting through the long grass, rocketing toward whoever it might be. Someone to talk to finally. Hopefully. Maybe.