The earth was uneasy.

Listless in its slumber, it had tossed and turned for decades, wrinkling the proverbial sheets of rock that overlaid it into great mounds, the tallest of which towered as large as fir tree. Cvijet felt the ground hum softly beneath her paws, and she moved quietly, lest she wake it from a peaceful dream. Her beautiful body glittered silver in the watery winter sunlight, coming up starkly against the dark granite of the crags, even topped as they were by a light dusting of snow. Above her head circled a pied raven, no doubt hoping she would make a kill. She glanced upwards at it as she went, her emerald gaze letting it know in no uncertain terms that she wished to be alone. Cawing unhappily, the raven flew higher, sensing the wolf was not hunting this time and searching for a more profitable venture. Turning her eyes back to the landscape, Cvijet concentrated on leaping from jagged rock to jagged rock, landing as gently as she could before taking off again. This manner of travel was sapping her strength, but it distracted her thoughts on dwelling too much. Her father's bones, bleached white by the sun, still haunted her even a few weeks after their discovery, the expression on Holo's face heartbreaking as he tried desperately to soften the blow. Needless to say, she hadn't taken it all that well.

To divert herself from the memory, she had moved into a part of Moladion she didn't know, a part where the terrain seeked to trip her up with every step, forcing her to channel every ounce of energy into the mere motion of moving forward. Her muscles bunched and relaxed beneath her supple, silver pelt as she went, her arctic bloodline not even enough to hide them beneath a thick swathe of winter fluff. She raised her svelte muzzle occassionally to test the scents, but the crisp, icy wind that blew, unhindered by any trees, scoured the smells from her nostrils. Every now and again, she would startle a small, foraging creature to its burrow, but she afforded these barely a sideways glance. Hunger had been asleep in her since the day she had first laid eyes on the skeleton, and she was gaunt beneath her fur, her hide stretched taut as a drum over her ribs. Often she had tried to snap herself from her stupor, calling herself all sorts of derogatory names and telling herself that life rolled ceaselessly on anyway, despite her pain. Nothing helped. Nothing except this bleak, toneless landscape shifting beneath her.

It didn't help, of course, that she had no outlet for her healing prowess. She had not yet come across a pack that was in need of her skills, each one already boasting a head healer, and she could not bring herself to serve amongst the others. Duty and ambition warred within her heart, almost breaking it. Twelve years old and she had little to show for it. A step-mother whom she didn't much care for, a brother who hadn't known her name till a few weeks before, and a pied raven that followed her simply for the carcasses her presence promised. No mate loped beside her, no pups rambled at a den, no wolf had her to thank for its life. It was as though she were a wisp, floating without much purpose or rhyme, a tiny blip on the radar of history that would one day be snuffed out and forgotten as easily as if she had never been.

A sharp pain in her pad roused her from her deep melancholy and she uttered an aggrieved yelp under her breath, surprise coursing through her veins. Red blood dripped from her pad, leaving scarlet drops glistening like rubies against the backdrop of the snow. A sharp piece of flint had sliced the tender underneath of her right front paw and it burned with pain and cold. Sighing resignedly, the female settled in a gully between two large rocks to lick her wounded paw.