Night had come quickly, leaving Aoibhe alone in the long grass. Stars had slowly wriggled their way into the inky blue overhead, and the moon turned her pale face onto the girl who had dozed her way through sunset and dusk. Fall had arrived and a cool breeze slithered along the ridge until it passed over the girl’s pale, curled form. Lifting her head slowly, her nose was twitching into the zephyr from the second she brought it out from beneath her bottle-brush tail. Rising and stretching she peered over the grass and off toward the horizon—away from Moladion—considering the direction from which she had come before turning and bounding effortlessly down the slope. Heading east and further into the crater, knowing it was the direction her sibling had chosen.

Her gifted nose would have taken her right to him, the brother who had left her behind in search of the darker things that stirred his interest. Aoibhe could not know the sort of creature her litter-mate was becoming. Perhaps it was fate then that the scent of a stranger in the darkness kept her from pursuing Orpheus. She was a bright girl, knowing that she could not hold her own against a fully grown canine with malicious intentions. In the blue dark, she crept carefully through the trees, her unusually thick pelt a white beacon in the glow from above. Aoibhe was not terribly fast on her feet, and she was certain if she broke and ran she might be chased and inevitably caught. The life of a loner had chosen her for now, with her family group dissolved and no place yet to call a home it was for her to wander and hope that no one decided to do her harm. Reconsidering the idea of locating her brother overnight—the strangers smell growing stronger the further she traveled—Aoibhe decided to hunker down in a thicket of low hanging dogwood branches that were going red with fall. Not a moment after she slid in amongst the leaves a trio of grouse panicked and broke cover. The scent of their feathers and fear filled the pallid girl’s nostrils and she lunged after them—foolishly breaking through the other side of her hiding place and into a lone adult male’s direct line of sight.
In the dark her gold eyes reflected the moonlight and took in the image of a scarred muzzle and unfamiliar bearing. Aoibhe froze, a woman-child who was just startled enough not to growl a warning, but rather stared stupidly at the man she had unknowingly been hoping to hide from. Young Aoibhe was as thickly pelted as a winter-wolf, almost bulky with the thickness of her fur and the general stockiness of her build. Her face was unmarred, youthful and accented in black at the eyes and lips. Finally, after a pause in which the titanic could have sunk, she gave a wave of her tail and spoke a hopeful, “Hello.”