The ever-wandering minx might have been perfectly content to abandon him, to leave this fumbling pack youth to the darkness of which he seemed so fond. It was no matter for her concern if he should be hindered by the crippling vice of his own apprehension, this lingering dread of the darkness and what lay beyond it. It was in moments such as these that the fallacy of practiced nonchalance was peeled from the raw and naked truth of one’s mental fortitude. Fear would always separate the worthy from the weak. This moment, if ever there had existed one, was for him to prove that his vigor, his vitality, was more than just a farce with which he could entertain himself.

She ventures forth, as silent upon the ground as if she were floating, as if she were some ethereal smog writhing through the crevices of this darkness. The clattering of nail against stone and the gasp of forfeited breath draws her from her intellectual quarry, cranium swiveling around to peer into the darkness from whence she had come. Maud can feel his struggle just as much as she is given to hear it, the increasing desperation of his frantic scrambling echoed in the electric pulse of his anxiously throbbing heart. It is hard to discern why it is that she makes the decision to move towards him; he is of pathetically little importance to her, the need for his survival should not have registered upon her emotional radar. At yet… perhaps it is her youth, the shard of innocence still lodged within her blossoming mind, that dictates her movements. She has yet to adopt the irrevocable disdain for all creatures that is her sire’s trademark, his fervor for suffering and turmoil. Youth sees her aide him.

The charred vixen is at his side in a flash of amber and coal, no time spared for whatever jibe dies upon her tongue as the cage of her ivories clamps around his scruff. Ribbons of muscle tense and coil around her skeleton, her lithe figure forced backwards in an attempt to salvage his carcass from the wanting mouth of the abyss. Maud is small, undoubtedly smaller than her male compatriot, whether by virtue of gender or genetics, and so his struggle becomes hers. She could aide him, loan him strength and steadiness where his was waning, and yet he must also aide himself or risk the snuffing of two infant flames instead of one. Her dainty paws grabble with the jagged earth, slender spires of shattered rock digging deep tents into the relatively tender bulbs of her pads, threatening to split the infant flesh with their merciless ridges. For a moment, one gut-twisting juncture in time, the young whelp believes that they, the two of them, might count themselves amongst the defeated in this fight… a single paw slips over the looming edge of the precipice, a shower of pebble and stone sprinkling into the deathly hollow that awaits them.

But then, whether by merit of the anxiety that coils around her innards in some glacial vice, or purely because she is every bit as stubborn as her dam, a low growl rumbles away in the recesses of her chest. With this the youngster gives one last attempt, the muscles of her legs constricting as she finally succeeds in hoisting the pack dweller up unto the stony ledge, at once releasing her vice-like grip upon his nape. She retreats but a few strides, amber eyes blazing in the cool and depthless dark, slender frame heaving as she attempts to regain some of the energy that has been pilfered from her. ”For someone who talks of mysteries the way you do, you don’t seem to have done much adventuring,” she quips, her tone almost matter-of-fact, bereft the judgment of earlier times. ”Always push off at the very last moment otherwise you’ll fall short… every time.” Maud eyes him levelly for a long while, considering this stranger and his myriad peculiarities before inclining her dainty cranium onwards. ”I think I hear water up ahead.”