as if you were

he’d been following close behind his heda potential @Thuringwethil when it happened; perhaps too young to be her wocha but he’d persisted and argued until finally the wormana relented. it was conditional — he had to keep up with his training still but with the honor of the position hrimfaxi would’ve agreed to anything.

what, hrimfaxi couldn’t be sure.

one minute they’d been pursuing their quarry and the next …well. the redwoods, oaks, birches, maples and pines mixed a strange concoction of smells — absent the telltale tang of salt that hung over the neighboring territories of seageda — that cause hrimfaxi to awaken with a start. he startles to his pause, hackles bristled along his spine and prickling at his nape; lips curled back in a low snarl that the fog weaved back at him.

it is not a thick fog but he knows with an ice cold realization that he’s not home. his heart beats rapidly, like the ceaseless thrum of a hummingbird’s wings within his chest. questions like the angry buzz of a disturbed wasps’ nest fly around his mind and he, ( perhaps wrongfully ) assuming he is alone, cannot grasp them. the only one that buzzes the loudest, that remains ever the more persistent: where was she?
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Thuringwethil did not look back when she started running. It did not matter where the emaciated wolf and their snake went. It did not matter whether or not Thuringwethil was in the right or whether or not she even knew where she was. She knew she had to get out of there and get out of there fast. She could figure out what the hell was happening later when she was in the sweet embrace of safety.

 She burrowed through the forest with speed but it was evident she was getting tired. Her pace started to slow and though she offered a few bursts here and there, the wolf was only a child and could withstand so much. When she felt she was a safe enough distance away, she began to curve her route and look back, looking for larger, aggressive wolves on her heels and luckily there were none. She slowed to a stop, heaved a few breaths, and staggered forward until she felt she could rebuild her reactionary time should someone pop out of nowhere.

 The child let a few moments pass while she came to, shaking out the anxiety that riddled up her spine. It was then a familiar scent, finally!, came to pass, but there was something else mixed in that did not give her a good feeling.

 “Hrímfaxi?” she called, clearing her throat. Soon enough she moved, catching him cross paths up ahead. “We gotta get out of here,” she barked in their native tongue, scooping with her nose to urge him out. “Wolves are trying to settle here. We need to get home.”
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hrímfaxi’s heart nearly skipped a beat when he heard a familiar voice splice through the fog; like the guiding beam of a lighthouse guiding him back to shore. thuringwethil ! as she sought him, so too did the feverkissed woch op seek her. “thuringwethil!” he barks her name in return, hoping that the fog did not distort it as it had his snarl earlier.

he lets out the breath he hadn’t even been aware he’d been holding when their paths finally cross. “what —” hrímfaxi stutters as she barks at him that they had to get out of this mysterious ‘here’, that wolves were trying to settle here and they had to get home. the last, he agreed with… but struggling to wrap his mind around the other news when he wasn’t even sure where ‘here’ was or how, even, either of them had gotten here leaves him lagging mentally.

“where even is ‘here’?” he asks, though gives no objection as he falls into step with her. “how did we get here?” he wasn’t necessarily looking for an answer; just asking to ease some of the anxiety that has taken the place of the aggression — his natural instinct to fight rather than to flight — that had initially washed over him at somehow, impossibly, finding himself in a place that was …not where he last remembered being.

“i can’t smell the sea.” he says; quieter, almost a whisper.
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Thuringwethil was far too concerned in the moment to see the confusion on her guard’s face. He was young and they were certainly thrown for a loop but the bigger matter at hand was the other pack encroaching on their territory. Hrímfaxi didn’t know what she was just chased from, he didn’t know the threat at hand. She couldn’t remember a time Seageda had been threatened like this. Most wolves on the seaboard knew better than to flex their muscles too close to the cliffs.

 They have to get home and tell the Heda. They have to bring together their army.

 Where even is here?

 Thuringwethil knit her brows together, mouth agape to say something but she quickly clicks her teeth together.

 I can’t smell the sea.

 Those words hit her like a ton of bricks. Her jaw clenched, her nail dug into the ground. Everything was tense. She fluttered her nose and tried to draw in the scents. Scents lingering on her and Hrímfaxi’s were muted, she was far too used to the smells there, but he was right. The sea was gone. The thick salty air was nowhere to be found and she slowly began to look around, really absording her surroundings. There was a weird feeling but she chocked it up to the fact she’d never been here, no matter how much it made sense. These weren’t the same trees they were hunting in, that she’d scoured miles and miles of when she was training in tracking.

 It wasn’t home.

 “Then we find it,” she said, throwing her nose over her shoulder to lead him away. “But first we have to get out of here.”
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a quick glimpse of glacial gaze in her direction tells him that she is tense; though if it is from the general situation they found themselves in or his words, hrimfaxi cannot be sure. he feels as if he’s swallowed a whole chunk of sea ice; chilled with dread and panic held at bay by a very thin and very fraying line. she cannot, of course, answer his questions — and in truth he hadn’t expected her to. he had merely been asking them aloud, giving voice to the angry wasps nest of never ending questions swarming ‘round his mind; ceaseless.

“yes,” hrimfaxi rumbles, echoing her words “we find it.” though the new swell of determination he siphons off of her emitted energy is not enough to ease the tension in his own muscles, nor smooth down the soft bristling of his guard hairs. he keeps pace with her but crooks an ear back, eyes furiously scanning forward, left and right; a arrow notched onto a tautly pulled bowstring; ready to fly. “do you think the wolves trying to form here will follow?” he asks; either way, he keeps a keen eye and ear out for any approach just in case.
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Her guard agreed with her. She didn’t expect him not to, most of the time he did. He was a young guard, given a special task for the fos goufa. Each of them had a guard but she was young and, typically, someone older would watch over her but Hrimfaxi operated under another with close supervision. But they weren’t home anymore, it seemed, and she had to rely on him for everything and that included following orders. She wasn’t Heda yet—nor was it guaranteed—but in the absence of the others, she was the next best thing. It was her duty to lead, no matter way.

 “I don’t know,” she said and shrugged her shoulders. It didn’t matter if they were going to follow them, they had to be safe anyway. “We should cover our tracks anyway.” Thuringwethil turned on her heels then and began to trot off in the distance she’d been running. She had to put distance between herself and the other wolves and get out of the forest. Then they could focus on making their way to the sea.
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i don't know didn't exactly soothe the worst of his bristling anxieties but what else was he to do about it? his ear swivels back and takes a small but guarded measure of relief that he didn't hear following footfalls chasing after them. perhaps they were the sort of wolves that if the warning worked saw no reason to given unnecessary chase. “once we're out of their territory.” hrimfaxi agrees. he doubted they would waste the time or energy of chasing them further but then again, knowing nothing about them ...couldn't say for sure.

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