You could lose yourself here.

Utterly lose yourself.

This is what Ra’s loved about the free life. When you wandered so far and traveled so often, the scenery never grew stale. You could be staring out over a dazzling oceanfront one day and perched on a lofty mountain peak the next. Spend two or three hours on the move and you were enjoying a whole new world.

Sure, he had heard about the benefits of a pack life. And he wondered what it was like to sleep in a den. But, since he was able to walk, he had lived life on the paw with his mother and her gypsy band. It was a part of him, something that was both nature and nurture.

Breaking off from his old band had been a difficult decision to make. As much as he loved the nomadic life, it wasn’t so lovely when you were alone. But he had to; he had to walk his own path and find himself just as every young man must.

Riopat was a blessing. He had split from his band merely a night before his angel ran into him, and boy had that been something! The moment he laid his spring green gaze on her, it was like a great magnetic shift. She was true north, his guiding star.

He hadn’t asked, would never ask, what she felt that day. It was good enough for him that she chose to stick around and he wouldn’t question it. But if she ever left...

He would cross that bridge when he got to it.

The muffled call of the stranger shook Ra’s from his reflections. A black ear swiveled back toward the male quickly followed by the turn of his head as he set his soft green eyes on the rusty bourbon wolf. A pleasant smirk pulled back one side of his face, good humor and invitation in his expression.

”Beautiful, wonderful,” Ra’s stood from his place in the shallows and shook off lightly, doing his best not to soak the red wanderer and his meal, ”and simply enchanting.”

Standing with his midnight fur in a spiky disarray, the white saddle that fell behind his shoulders in a temporary, wet mohawk, Ra’s surveyed the stranger with a quick sweep of his gaze. The male was shorter than him and a bit lighter, certainly older. At four years old, Ra’s had finally filled out his forty-two inch frame to it’s full one-hundred seventy pounds of lean muscle. He was a bit narrow of build, something expected of a gypsy, what with the long road always ahead.

Despite the toned body and all that height, there was something distinctly boyish about the ebon wolf. He held a breezy aura, as if nothing in his world was wrong or out of place. There was something sincerely friendly in those spring green eyes, though he had the Cheshire smirk of a mischievous youth. It all summed up to Ra’s, the lifelong gypsy boy.

”Here to enjoy a meal and a great view?” Ra’s asked the stranger, eyes traveling to the hare swinging from the male’s jaws and back up to the citrine eyes. Best not to linger too long on another wolf’s meal or they might get the wrong idea.

”If I weren’t waiting for someone, I would be happy to leave you in peace. You’re more than welcome to stick around, though. I wouldn’t mind the company.”

and I've been doing just fine