Magnolia, she could have anyone in the world

It was 'Golden Hour' as they called it, named so after the golden color the sun gave everything as it made it's way closer and closer to the horizon to sleep.
Iona stepped out, golden touched herself and more-so now, with a mouth full of coneflowers hanging from her teeth. She would stare in awe at the field and the elk in the distance. They were gorgeous.

Iona would carefully place her paws forward, where she would pad further out into the field and get a better view. The golden color of the sun made her glow- and it was so warm. 
She placed the flowers gently at her feet so as not to ruin them, before returning to watching and observing.

The elk didn't seem to mind her, though to be fair they still had a decent enough distance between them that they wouldn't have to pay her any attention. Appearing much more focused on eating and feeding their calves than anything else.

What a wonderfully pleasant evening.

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Taikon had been following the tracks for what felt like a long time. They seemed to go on forever, a vague memory of a forgotten past. Somewhere in his mind, he recalled the noise of the man-made beasts that crawled these lines. They brought with them earth, animals, dust, and all manner of horrible things. Though the wisened male couldn't find any trace of one coming through recently, the ground seemed to shiver under him.

As he was led through to sunset, he could see the outline of a wolf and an elk. The scene was picturesque. Taikon licked his lips, imagining the taste of such a beast. It had been a very long time since he had eaten anything larger than a rabbit. The summer had been cruel to him. His coat was scraggly and his frame thin, as though someone had taken a much older wolf and thrown rags on it.

Lonely though he was, the broken prince only chuffed a small "I am here" so as not to startle the other. He continued his trek, paws grazing over the clover and flowerless violet that had overtaken the railway.

He glanced out of curiosity in the wolf's direction, and closer up, her appearance made him freeze completely. As if a spell had been placed on him, the meagre hair along his spine rose. His nose flared, and his tail tucked under him.
Dog.
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Her ears had flipped just behind her, first at the subtle noise of footsteps, but mostly at the call of a greeting chuff. When she turned her head to eyeball them, she was met with the very tattered form of a wolf. She would stand, unsure of herself now, and face him.

They appeared rather confident at first but, now they gazed at her as if she was some kind of monster or beast. The young woman visibly shrunk under their gaze.

There was a tension, an unease that tainted the beautiful peace of the morning. Her ears flattened against her head in fear. She never did respond particularly well to strangers, especially ones that did not even bare the scent of her pack. Iona was beginning to regret giving in to the eager curiosity that led her out this far from home.

"What do you want?" Her uneasy voice crept from her lips, almost a whisper as she hesitated to speak at all.

If she ran would he chase her? Would he kill her if he caught up?

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If it had been possible for Taikon to view himself in that moment, he would have placed a gentle nudge to him to snap the fearful wolf from panic. There were many times in his life when he had been able to break free from his emotions. This time, and many times like it, he was being held hostage by something deep and old, something that clung like a parasite to the blood in his veins. It was an ancient fear. Some had it for snakes or spiders. Taikon and many in his family felt it for dogs. He remembered what dogs could do, recalled their brutality, and knew that they held the most powerful ally of any animal on earth.

This one frightened him more than usual. From afar, she had looked to be wolf, like him. It had only been on closer inspection that she it held that broad chest, the fur patterning, the tell-tale slope of the back and belly. He knew what it was.

The beast was large for a dog, but it was not the first he had encountered in these lands. Usually, he avoided them, but usually, they were much easier to spot.

When it spoke, the voice was shaken, but soft, like tattered silk. His ears moved forward to catch the words. He gripped the ground with his toes as though afraid he would fly off, or merely be blown away by the hunter hidden somewhere he could not see or smell. Carefully, he studied her, shocked by the brilliant gold of her lupine eyes and unnerved by her shape as one might be with a reanimated corpse.

“A trickster cur,” he breathed back at her, still barely above the whisper she'd given him. Taikon's tail was still curled beneath him, but had softened to a pitiful droop. “I know what you are,” he hissed, raising a lip. Confusion and discomfort gnawing at him. The old male was frozen to that spot, unwilling to move, feeling as though doing so would be suicide.

Her scent. It distracted; had she somehow found her way to a wolf pack? What madness was this?
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"What..?"
Her paws made shaky, uneven steps backwards and away from the stranger. Caught like a lamb to a beast, she sensed she would be swallowed hole by this one if she lingered. The gaping maw opened for her and spoke words she could hardly understand. "I know what you are"? What did that even mean? She was nothing else but herself- her father's child. What else could this wicked canid mean?

There was such a malice to his words. They cut like knives into her heart, made her feel as though she stepped onto broken glass. 

"I don't know what you mean..." She tried to be nice as best she could. Hoping- praying to Him that it would cool the rage in this one and grant her pardon. The lass thought to howl or to call reinforcements but, she feared she was much too far away from the safety of their forest for anyone to be at her rescue in time.
"Please... leave me alone. I mean no harm." Still she pled of her own innocence, without having the guts nor grind to defend herself. It was the stranger that brought upon this tension- their fault to bare, not hers.

No matter how hard her father had tried to teach her strength during times like these, she waned like a weak flower. Easily plucked from the earth and squashed by passing monsters. 

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He was still quite some distance from her, only close enough to see the feminine outline of her figure, but enough to view her distinctly domesticated features. To a human or even the ignorant among wolves, she may have appeared just as any other. But he was no fool. He knew that the bipedal demons had long bred their kind to become closer in form to his own. He did not know why; there were legends of the northmen who pulled heavy loads with small, stocky animals that were coated among his own kind.

This one did not bark, nor did she seem to relent to Taikon's instistence of her trickery. Instead, she did something the old male was poorly equipped for: she wilted.

Taikon kept his head low and his ears pulled back, stepping forward a mere two paces to try to judge her lie. But the more the silence fell between them, the more he second, and then triple-guessed his assumptions. Still, he refused to trust in her display of confusion and fear. It rivalled his own, but for wildly different reasons.

“Drop the act — I know your two-legged master must be nearby,” Taikon answered her, his voice raising slightly to the kind of stern note he might save for a youngster in deep, deep trouble. He had no real plan if he was right. He was in prime range if he was right to be attacked by said master. He'd never be able to outrun her.

He blinked, and not thinking straight, he looked left and right, and even behind him. The hairs all along his spine twitched in sequence like an electric shiver. His stomach dropped, his throat felt dry, and for a moment he was certain he would hear the legendary clap of thunder and die.

But that didn't happen. Instead he just stood there, waiting for a strike that never came. “You are a dog,” he said, but it was more in confusion than anything else. One ear came forward, and he tilted his head, suddenly puzzled.

He had encountered other dog-wolf-things before, but never one-on-one and never when he was in such a state of frazzled loneliness. He was at a loss, having no script for this.
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