[I’m not like them but I can pretend.]
[Kurt Cobain]

The world around him felt old and shriveled, and as he walked it rubbed its dying heads against his paws and pelt while the wind sang laden with soft laments. The whispers pervaded his consciousness, manifesting themselves in the cloudy white cobwebs of Lady Time’s creation foggily multiplying at the edges of his mind. When he moved, he moved like stone. Each turn of his head stretched muscles that had long since lain unused and wasted against his bones; there was pain in every crack as they distorted his body. The statue woke slowly and with a dry, unused humor, greeted the light of day with a wink and a slow, automated stretch that fought to tear the limber body back into some semblance of fighting shape. It did a poor job, and he slid off with a mental limp, despite the apparent grace of his physical movements. Noche felt something he refused to acknowledge: old.

When he’d first come to Munashii Gekko the world around him was teeming with mystery, so dank and dark that it curled around the trees with a possessiveness that he gave himself over to willingly, blindly happy to have found a family. But it had been no family that he’d met, only wolves that moved as dreams do, in and out of the splendor of the world while he fought for sleep and drowned in the darkness.

His caramel-laced orbs lanced toward the terra with a new appreciation as he tried to look past the tremors emanating through his pelt at the immediacy of the death around him. He’d matured, though he looked much the same, sporting the thick gray pelt disrupted in many places by pearly white scars with the airs of a blood-thirsty titan waiting for his prey. Different, though, was his motivation to seek the kill; it had been immortalized in the amber that was his life, but would never again break free. Age made the heart grow fonder. His heart, like a dear wine, beat a darker, bloodier red each day; he could feel it burning a hole through his pelt.

Today it prompted his impromptu jaunt back to the lands he had once tread, his bleeding heart aching for the familial ties he’d forfeited to circumstance. He was uncertain whether or not he intended to rejoin...submitting had been hard enough the first time. But what was that? Now she might make his decision a little easier. Noche hadn’t forgotten Miya, just as a healthy wolf rarely forgot a scent, and somehow healthy he’d remained ever since coming to Blossom Forest. Her silence was uncharacteristic of Miya--he remembered her bubbly and somewhat invasive of his personal space--but the thought made him smile. Drifting up to her, he slipped softly on velvet pads to stand at her shoulder, looking over the new scent line. His nose wrinkled in instinctive response to the new markers there.

“Hello there stranger, name’s Ala Noche; what’s yours?” His teasing came in a quiet tone; he couldn’t quite place it, but the girl seemed different. Frailer. There was time still to look into her eyes and rage at the damage done there, but for now he just stood next to her, waiting for her reaction. Maybe she didn’t remember him. Or worse yet, maybe she had succumbed to this dying place, and she too heard the cries woven in the wind. What misfortune, that he would never have expected upon first lying eyes on this spunky little thing, her words so warm, her every movement excited. There was so much in the stillness that it took his breath away.

[ooc]
I hope this is okay! Kind of just intruded on her thread here. :o