So many colours of sound, so many changing moods

For @Eloise

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The herd wandered further North than it normally did, and Aldritch couldn't help but wonder why they were guiding him this far, why He was telling them to move North, further away than their normal grazing grounds. Though he was curious, the boy would never question it. Instead, he was the ever watchful eye on the herd and alerted the lead buck should there be danger lurking near by and as the herd settled to rest and graze, he locked eyes with the lead buck and understood it was time to check the periphery.

With a curt nod he understood his task and wandered away. Taking his time to sniff out any fresh marks that might indicate someone's hunting grounds, as well as any possibly lone Elk that might be looking for safety with a new herd. What he found was something else, beautiful as it stretched out as far as his young sunken in eyes could see. A large semi-circle lake that was as calm as a breezeless night.

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The scent of something absolutely terrible -- contrastingly -- pulled Eloise closer to it. It was water by the smell and sounds of it and the crashings against rock had the Wren's ears dancing upon her crown like satellites, picking up every splashing nosie and making her all the more curious.

El had never once seen the sea before and that much could be told by the way her nose wiggled about in search for these mysterious waters. She was a woodland princess, afterall; cooped up in the comfortable jail bubble that was her homeland and pack for all her puppy life. Never once has she'd gotten to experience traveler's bliss or sights and terrain other than soil, pinecone and the ten-thousandth deciduous tree that she passed.

Though lost, confused and slightly lonely without the guidance of her parents, freedom was freedom. Now Eloise had the luxury of living the dream her eldest brother had always gotten to live while she suffered the weight of following a queen's footsteps.

and what an ever curious sight in her adventures: an elk herd.

The young Wren had never seen a herd so upclose and personal before -- what huge beast they were. Grazing and bidding nearly no mind to her own being. Other than a particular tall one that eyed the young dame with caution as she waltzed by, perhaps the herds leader. The Eloise grew intimidated by this eye contact, and in turn lowered her posture and flattened her ears with a sheepish smile towards it as she made it her mission to slink away as quickly as possible. It's okay Mr. Elk man, I'm no harm to you. Pleasedonttrampleme...

What she'd come across next, just further downhill, was a sight she stood to grow absolutely mesmerized by. Within the floors of the earth lied an imperfection -- a glorious one. Tides crashing between the cracks of a cliff, eroded by time with water. Ellie's nose crinkled in a similar mannerism to before -- the water still stunk. But her dark paws couldn't tear away from the sight that reflected from her bright olive visionaries.

The boy, she'd notice as well, though being too enraptured in the sight of one of nature's many mysterious beauties, El did not greet him with the simple hello she had planned. Instead she would walk slowly towards the edge, and settle her feet beside the boy till they stood next to each other. Still engrossed by the enchanting sight, and wishing to share that moment with a newfound stranger...

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The boy didn't plan on staying here long. The beauty of the cliffs and smell of sea water didn't strike him as interesting enough to keep his attention for longer than a few moments. The boy's belly growled angrily, reminding him it had been a few days now since his last meal and that perhaps he should see if there was anything near by that the High Elk had brought him to to eat, or if his test of patience and resolution would last longer.

Just as he prepared to move, someone else came and sat next to him. Leaning away from the new body in shock, he was too tired and weak to move fast and away out of surprise. She just sat there, and he stared. Looking the young woman up and down with a frown only to soften ever so lightly, someone with such a blessed coat had to be good. She was an adorable little brunette, she was roughly his size in both height and weight which made the young prince, for once, self conscious in his appearance. How she might see him.

“What do you want?” Defensive over his own self consciousness, he spoke to her pointedly. Still keeping his body leaning away from her. It wasn't often he met with strangers, especially not those who were blessed by Him in colour.

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Maybe it was the sight of someone around her age that excited the young wern and made her eagar to greet them, but she supposed it was rather creepy to straight up sit beside them without any context or so much as a "Hello" without warning. It was written all over his reaction -- the way the boy leaned away from the corner of her eye and visually checked her in distrust. Eloise supposed she should've expected such a reaction, and in turn the girl grew embarrassed. The dame wanted to strike up conversation surrounding this strange source of water, but it seemed more necessary to apologize first...

"Ahh..." El begun to speak, slowly turning around to face the man with a sheepish, apologetic grin -- but became....distracted by something else to have caught her attention; his eyes. A soft peach color -- one that reminded her of a muted marigold. A shade of color she had never seen in the optics of another and they were further complimented by the shades of his dark fur. This boy...

...he had...lovely eyes....

She had noticed it all -- the tired look on his face, his frown of displeasure, and the general picture of malnutrition that painted his thin frame, but it was the young boy's striking gaze that had Eloise staring the most....for a little too long, it looked like. Once El had became self aware of her leering, she'd blink, tilting her head to the side and opting to look towards the sky instead whilst twiddling her forepaws.

'What do you want?' He demanded to know.

"I.....wanna look at the.....lake?" she answered honestly, yet her wording was so akward her actions might as well have been suspicious. Suddenly, she would become defensive herself and huffed through her nose, pouting rather childishly and, if she had arms, she'd definitely be crossing them right now. Cheeto doesn't know how to write the "wolf" version of that, so instead we can just sit here and imagine it.

"Why? I can't look at the lake? You were looking at the lake too, weren't you?"

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She was looking right at him; and the boy's heart raced uncomfortably. He couldn't help but stare in return like a deer in headlights. Her olive eyes were so soft while his were struck in not only awe, but fright at the fact he didn't know what to do and what and why this was happening.

It made his head light and paws sweaty, a feeling he had never encountered before which made him panic. Was this one of the High Elk's tests? If so, what was the purpose of this? The boy couldn't make heads or tails of this while his head was spinning and heat rushed to his head. Why was she staring? It had to be because she had never seen someone with a coat like his, blessed by Him she must be horrified by a shadow of them.

The lake? Of course she can look at the lake. “There's a whole shore, why next to me?” He shot back, perhaps a little quicker than he normally would have. With his head spinning he couldn't think straight, couldn't keep a level head. He was flustered, panicked, awkward. Not to mention his previous encounters with their own species were either of cursed ones, or his siblings who were less than pleasant.

He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself finally. One... two... three — “Sorry... I'm just... not use to it.”

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She, too, was flustered & confused -- and in face of a direct question to further indulge her own actions, Eloise only became even more defensive. "Well-!" The bird snapped her head from the sky and back to him, hopping to her feet with a tail pointed upward and her feathers aptly ruffled. She was aimed and ready to defend herself in a situation that was most definitely her fault in which the other party had every right to be upset for -- yet El turned only to be distracted by his peach hued eyes. Again.

Even to be darkened within a glare, they still captivated the Wern -- locking her into a cage of her own creation. This time, El's body didn't only react by staring, but she could feel her heart start to thrum, her cheeks start to flush and her tail begin to wag like a dandelion swaying in the wind. A dandelion, which she would immediately tuck underneath her belly to stop its motions. After the short pause of yet another staredown, the young girl opened her mouth to speak again, yet this time, speech somehow felt harder to come by than it should've. El was stuttering.

"I-I-Is it a crime to want to sit next to someone and s-strike a conversation with them!?" Ellie blurted, mean mugging the monochrome boy with that same pouted lip, and drawing her face closer towards him to further instill the notion of 'I am glaring at you and therfore have the upper hand in this argument.'

This...proximity though....

El pulled her face away and tucked her chin into her plush chest, with a face that was even more flushed than before.

The semi-heated argument cooled though, and the expectation for him to talk back in retaliation ultimately died. He was apologizing? For what? Sure, Eloise was making it all the more difficult to straight up say it was her fault in the end, but she was still aware it was her fault. Had El ended up pressuring the boy into thinking the fault was actually his own, then?

Her pinched gaze softened in assumption of this, and she whined softly in response.

"No." The girl finally admitted.

"I guess it is rather peculiar to approach a complete stranger without announcing my presence, I can see why you'd be startled....you have no reason to apologize." and to add onto this, her head lowered to admit defeat and a paw placed shyly on her muzzle. This time she gazed upon him with a soft, apologetic smile. "It just isn't often that I come across other wolves that look my age. Perhaps that's why I became a little too excited to see the stranger that stood by the cliff. I'm sorry..."

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Her tail was wagging for a moment, slow as though caught by the breeze and he thought little of it. He wasn't accustomed to most wolf body language, often either left out or he excluded himself after a while from all puppy activities because he was the literal black sheep of the family. Really the only times he saw the tails wagging coming his way, and his memory of it was quickly fading, was when @Calhoun would hurt him (rough play rly but Al is a bit of a fragile boi), and more often than not associated the gesture with pain. So he recoiled slightly, ready for the impending pain to come.

But she didn't. Her tail tucked itself somewhere back there, and she too held herself back. Tucking her chin to her chest made the boy... comfortable. He managed to sit comfortably for once instead of leaning away as if the wind was about to carry him off like some typhoon uprooting trees. Gathering himself, paws held tightly underneath him while that raggedy tail curled itself over his toes, he was taken by surprise that she had apologized to him.

No one had ever apologized to him. Not in earnest at least...

She was also excited to see him? Even if they were just strangers and someone could be seen as better than no one, he was still starting to get a little overly stimulated by the sudden surge of positive being tossed his way. “No one's ever been excited to see me...” He says almost disbelieving the words he uttered. While she shrunk, his eyes averted. He was at a loss, confused. He supposed @Teodora might have been excited last they met, but it could easily be excused as by duty. She still held the Queen of Elkshire close to her heart, and so he was just an extension of that woman... nothing more. Nothing special. But this girl, the one who lacked Elkshire upon her coat, didn't know who his family was.

“Aldritch.”

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It looked like El's attempts at good terms was working well, and that the boy didn't seem nearly as bothered to see the dame as he did at first. Eloise slowly took a paw off her face to get a better look at him, and saw that he wasn't leaning drastically away as he was before to bring distance between them. It felt like the tension was finally beggining to draw away and Eloise took it as a sign to calm down herself with a slowing, steadying rise and fall of her breastbone.

'No one's ever been excited to see me' -- the girl tilted her brunette crown at these words and frowned in confusion. El wasn't sure at how to respond to such a bold statement -- surely, the shadow cloak had freinds or family of his own that would've been excited to see him on any given day. Everyone did, afterall; though El lacked freinds, her family (ecspecially her brother) gave her the company she'd needed that would prevent her from thinking such a thing.

And what a terrible thing to say, too....

The wren assumed that she had just been revealed something that she shouldn't have been revealed. To further elaborate on the fact that she really didn't know anything about the stranger infront of her. 'What was going on in his home?' El thought to herself worriedly -- because surely, this boy didn't look old enough to be without family already....was he lost? Was that why he looked so skinny?

He spoke again, and Ellie's ears pricked at the sound of something unfamiliar -- new -- reaching her ears. Aldritch....

"Oh! -- Aldritch -- is that your name?" The young Wren asked. Practically blurting the question out in excitement to have been given an introduction. In return she'd settle on her haunches again to address him with rounded, inquisitive eyes and a warmed smile. All the while her tail beat against the earth.

"My name is Eloise. Eloise Firwood"

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She too, calmed as he felt more comfortable now. Coming to terms with the possibility that someone had come to see and meet him for once as opposed to just approaching out of duty, or him questioning them and trying to draw them away from Celnes and into his righteous path. How long would her interest last until she found out just how insignificant he was? Tall blackened ears tilted back in shame, feeling highly inferior to the brunette who had been so kind to approach him as she did.

He nodded to her inquiry at his strange introduction. Just blurting out his name randomly, sluggishly and he nodded just as slowly and shyly. Where were the adults to help guide him through social interactions? Where were his lessons to be "normal", or was he so insignificant to Celnes and the rest of the pack that he was shunned from such basic necessities that he was now struggling to figure himself out now.

Eloise Firwood. Her name sounded so regal as well, she must have come from the High Elk as some kind of blessing.

He had to do something more than just sit here and stare awkwardly. But what could he possibly have to offer, anything of interest to her? “Did you... did you want to see something cool?” Grasping at straws, he only had one thing really. He wasn't even certain if "cool" was a way to describe it really, but he tried his best to be as "normal" as he could and his young brain latched on to anything it could before she grew bored and wandered off.

Getting up from his seated position, bones and spine rolling beneath the soft, plush skin of his youthful figure as he turned a fatigued but inviting glance over his shoulder to see if she would come with him. Despite being a skeletal form of the boy he once was, there was still a certain air of regal grace he held. Poised, calm now that the panic had subsided, he nearly pleaded for her to give him a chance.

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Unbeknownst to the greycloud lad named Aldritch, Eloise probably wasn't going to loose intrest in this interaction anytime soon. In fact, she was too busy trying to seek the very gaze that had caused butterflies to form within her chest to even think about leaving. The boy had a mysteriously regal air about him that tapped into Eloise's ever expanding curiosity, and a sharp, yet gentle colored gaze that would cause any girl that fell underneath it to begin fanning their face (in El's perspective). So, unfortunately for Ritch, Eloise was probably going to become a tick to his side until.....well, an 'until' was not something the Wren's now entrapped attention could even see right now.

Eloise was starting to develop an intrest for the cliff side boy who had peach eyes and smelled of elk fur -- one that she could only dumb down to finding a possible new friend, yet this intrest was noticeably a bit stronger than it should've been for something like that. She simply had the urge to be near him like some lost puppy, and did not question the urge further.

and follow him is exactly what she did; when he offered to show Eloise "something cool", her large eyes seemed to sparkle with intruge and her tail only moved more feverishly. Like a spring, the woodland girl hopped to her feet and silently snaked towards the boy's flank without as much as a peep from her lips. A talkative bird the Wern was, but to ruin whatever suprise Aldritch had in store for her was not Eloise's goal.

What was he gonna show her? Should...should she be closing her eyes right now or something!?

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His tail didn't wag, but there was that same dim glimmer of enthusiasm that shone in his eyes, hoping she would take his invitation. Eloise may be the first friend he had made, and perhaps the only one and if he didn't put any effort into it, he might lose this only chance. She didn't say anything, which for a moment it concerned him... brows arched with light anxiety - already accepting that she might regret all of this and turn down his offer.

But there was a look she gave him instead, one he had immediately understood. She was interested, and he, in turn, smiled softly. There was still anxiety hidden just underneath the surface, worried that his "cool" was just lame, but he would show her anyway. There was no turning back now. “Come on.” His voice hitched like the excited child he was, uncertain how to feel about this sudden excitement that twisted his emotions in ways he was not accustomed to. Neglect, hatred, judgement, pity - that is what he was accustomed to. This was different, and he... liked it?

Trotting back to the herd, he kept glancing over his shoulder to see if Eloise was still following, only slowing his pace as the smell of Elk - of home - announced their arrival and carefully he slowed his pace in respect to the herd. “Do as I do.” He said with hushed tones, stopping just long enough for her to understand and only once she was ready did he move again to slowly make their way into the middle of the herd.

A few of the cows and bucks raised their heads, suspicious of the new wolf that entered. Aldritch, not wanting to concern them, kept his calm. Head low, respectful, eyes down and away from their gaze, and eventually they recognized the lost prince and returned to grazing. A moment of silence was taken to watch the Elk wandering around them, peacefully grazing as one unit, and the two yearlings now a part of it all. “This is my herd.” Casting a glance to her, he would again wait with bated breath on her judgement.

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