I am on a curiosity voyage.

For @Rafferty plz

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The days were growing shorter, and Maral found herself looking forward to those when darkness dominated the world. She anticipated relief from relentless Summertime heat and the first frost couldn't come soon enough. The warm season had been especially draining, despite regular rainfall. A sodden pelt dried swiftly in harsh temperatures, and following it the air felt significantly heavier.

She was more than ready for Fall to arrive.

As dusk crept over Elkshire's claim and her little siblings were nestled to bed, the shadow stole away to seek solace among the neighbouring wisteria woods. She weaved her way smoothly between the flowing branches, dark eyes taking in their vivid hues. Maral wondered if Autumn would seep those colours from the trees, or if they'd retain them throughout the rest of the year.

She pressed on, oddly content. Maral breathed in the soothing scents of nature and lifted her gaze to observe the dancing of fireflies above.


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 The sun began a languid descent, slow to tuck itself behind the silhouetted horizon. Rafferty strolled, belly full and cautiously content. 

 Cresting a modest hill, a grand faction of willows greeted him with rubied wisps swaying in the evening breeze. Betwixt the crimson tendrils, he saw her. So much like himself - all dark chocolate hues with white accents. 

 He ran to her, calling her name. “Celia! Celia, it's me!”

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She paused to watch the fire bugs flit between the branches, and wondered what it was that made them glow in such a manner. Was it their diet, perhaps? Something in the water that prompted light to spark in their abdomens? Maybe it was simply the magic of the forest, blessed by the High Elk much like the heart of Elkshire's claim. Maral mustered a very rare smile on her muzzle, and twitched her tail as she prepared to settle in and study.

Just as she prepared to lower her haunches, however, a voice called out. The shadow lifted her ears in surprise as she pointed her snout in the direction of its source, mahogany gaze swift to locate a dark figure pick his way through the wisteria. He loped her way, calling something she didn't undrstand, and at once her muscles tightened. Lips curling, she manoeuvred to better face the stranger and display a wordless warning that he keep his distance.


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 Rafferty skidded to a halt when his desperate calls were met with the glinting sheen of exposed teeth. 

 Single eye blinked as he reeled backward. Closer now, he saw that the angles were all wrong, the coloring off just so, and the scent totally different. “S-sorry.” He began weakly, grappling with Celia's memory as he stared at the wolf who wasn't her. 

 “I thought you were someone I used to know.”

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There was a low rumbling deep within her breast as the brute drew closer, and her hackles lifted until dark fur stood erect along her nape and dorsal. Those coarse guard hairs did not settle even when realisation struck the stranger and he veered away, seemingly struck by surprise and disappointment that she was not whoever he'd been calling for.

Silent, she continued to watch him. The young wolf apologised for his enthusiasm and offered an explanation, which was enough to encourage the shadow to sheath her fangs. Maral's dark eyes swept over his face, marred and void of an eye, but it was the alabaster that pointed his ears and muzzle that she found most fascinating.

He was like her. She slackened then, tension seeping from her muscles, but she dared not take a step closer despite the sudden bloom of curiosity she felt for the rogue. “Who are you?” Maral asked, a velvet ear perked.


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 He watched the slow ebb of pressure, the tension between them letting out slow like a pricked balloon. 

 Like the rest of the wolves he'd found here, she was around his age. “I'm Rafferty.” 

 Sensitive to the stranger's comfort after such a hapless greeting, he kept the comfortable, spacious distance between them. “What's your name?” Since it definitely wasn't Celia.

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While Maral's posture had relaxed somewhat, she remained suspicious of the white-tipped rogue. She eyed him with silent judgement; her interaction with those outwith Elkshire had been few and far between, and she wasn't sure what to make of him. Naturally untrusting, they shadow was both curious and cautious. He answered her question smoothly, however, which... helped, she supposed.

“Maral,” she said in response to the question he returned, mahogany eyes searching the contours of his face. He was handsome despite his ruggedness, though the red of his remaining eye that mirrored too many of her siblings. Maral wondered if he was of the Nightwalkers, or if he too had ben a product of her father's desire to populate the world with spawn that he didn't acknowledge. “How did you lose your eye?”


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 Rafferty stiffened. Edith had teased, jeering at the hollow where his eye used to be, a cavern that couldn't echo back. But Maral simply asked how. 

 “I lost it protecting someone I care about.” He replied, refusing to use the past and proper tense. 

 He didn't move closer but rocked back to settle on his haunches. “Are you from Elkshire?”

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The rogue shared with her that his eye had been sacrificed to protect someone he cared for, and Maral gave a long blink before her brow furrowed. She continued to watch him with silent suspicion, aware of the conflicted feelings she felt for him right then when he answered her question. He was different, in a way that made her both doubtful and curious of his claim. The shadow simply observed as Rafferty lowered to her haunches before her and failed to follow suit, choosing instead to remain on all four feet.

There was something romantic about a boy who'd place his own life on the line for somebody he loved. Maral licked her chipped tooth, intrigued as to who that might've been; the aforementioned Celia, she mused, but she did not press him for information on who, exactly, she'd been to him.

She gave a single nod in response to his question of Elkshire, and twitched a velvet ear forward. “What do you know of Elkshire?”


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 “Not a lot, admittedly.” Rafferty replied, his voice falling into a relaxed cadence. There was something about the quiet she-wolf that put him at ease.

 “I know it's the pack Warwick and Edith are a part of, and that their mother is the Queen. I met Warwick once and I've run into Edith a few times.” Unfortunately.

 He looked at Maral again. “Do you like living here?”

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She lingered, still, hesitant. Several long, silent moments passed after Rafferty made mention of her golden boy brother and awful sister. Maral maintained a stoic exterior while she screamed on the inside, for she could not imagine that Edith had been in any way pleasant to the rogue. She saw her littermate as a girl filled with such hatred for those who didn't fit her idea of perfect, believing herself superior to all who were not part of their mother's favoured trio.

Particularly after the incident with Faust, Maral had allowed her own quiet frustration for Edith to be nurtured into something darker.

He asked if she enjoyed living among the crown, and her frown deepened. “Honestly,” she lifted her chin, feeling unusually bold outwith Elkshire's claim where her kin could not bear witness to such a confession, “no.”


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 Rafferty blinked, thrown and intrigued by the young woman's honesty. 

 His front paw shuffled, rolling a pebble back and forth against his calloused pad. “Do you have a reason to stay?”

 He did not bark out a question of why she lingered, for the one-eyed youth knew what it was like to root yourself in Hell.

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“My family,” she stated simply, because "family is supposed to stick together", apparently. Maral had always felt like the outcast of her siblings, the least favourable of the bunch. She couldn't remember those early weeks if childhood when most of her deep-rooted trauma stemmed from, but she knew enough to understand that her mother and feral siblings were to blame for what she'd become.

Maral harboured very little love for her littermates, though there were few that she could make time for: Warwick, who continued to try breaching her impenetrable walls; Rohesia, who would acknowledge her existence and even hunt alongside her. She felt protective over the newest Déorwine brood, having observed their neglect from a distance - and was especially fond of Faust despite not knowing how to show it.

It was all she had to offer in response to Rafferty's question. The cubs needed her to guide them where the Queen did not, and she wanted to believe that her mother appreciated her. Her life as an Elkshire wolf, however, was far from pleasant. “It is all I've ever known.”
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 “I understand.” Rafferty said, his voice an earnest tenor. “If I hadn't woken up here, I'd still be with my family.” Leaving them hadn't been his choice, even if it had been his dream. 

 “I'm sure I'll see you around.” He hoped so, anyway. With a gentle wave of his tail, he left Maral and headed towards the heart of Elkshire proper, looking for the Queen.

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