MOST HAVE LEARNED

THAT THOSE WHO PLAY WITH FIRE

SPEND THEIR LIVES ICING BURNS

For weeks now she had spent much and more of her time weaving in and out of Iromar’s borders, her curiosity getting the best of her and her continually improving slyness somehow having only resulted in one run in with an Iromarian wolf. She’d not roamed so far into the territory since that day, instead sticking to the edges of the pack land, coming and going as she pleased. She often rested her head north of the pack lands along the Aplos River. It had taken her some time, but she had finally realized that though she sometimes thought of her parents and wondered how Berke and her two younger brothers were fairing back in Diveen, that wasn’t home to her. Though she thought fondly of the large oak beneath which she had denned for two years, she now rather enjoyed sleeping beneath the stars in a different place every night.

With her recent forays into Iromar’s outer reaches not resulting in anything all that interesting, Dessa had decided to turn her ventures to the east. Grey legs moved in a long, flowing jog as she paced across the plains, putting the moors behind her for the first time in weeks. Soil turned to stone beneath her paws but her stride never changed. She merely began to move up rather that across. Jogging along a long shelf of stone, her black ears rimmed in chocolate brown flitted to and fro, listening to everything around her. When a howl echoed off the stony playground, she did not so much as flinch. But ever the curious thing, she leapt to higher ground and made her way towards the source of the open invitation.

Her dark hues melded her with the shadows of the overhand of rock on the opposite side of the waterfall from the tan marked male that lounged idly by. Hardly lingering for a moment she emerged from the shadows, silently watching him as he taunted the squirming mouse she only just noticed. Her weight shifted ever so slightly onto her right side, giving her the slightest of angles as she lowered her hindquarters to sit across the way from him. It was a habit she had acquired to give her left ear the best chance to hear all that was spoken or done when she was stationary, as her right ear was useless in that regard. Honey eyes flecked with green blink once, watching as he clapped his paw down upon the mouse once more, before she remarked, “Eat prey, love.”

Dessa

three | maddox x elowen | alone