_______________________caldera & buddy
____________________________nothing happens to you, it happens for you

Aja weren’t telepathic, but they did sometimes shout at each other inside their heads. Buddy snorted somewhat aggressively when Midnight reacted, arching his neck.

What are you, mud brain? He yelled mentally, not noticing the fleeting, surprised relaxation of his ker’s leg muscles.

Cal blinked, distracted for a fraction of a second from the wolf. She thought she’d just heard Buddy’s voice inside her head, but that was ridiculous. Neither of them were telepathic. She must have imagined it.

Alethea reined her steed back in, with no thanks to Buddy’s behaviour. Cal mentally tallied up all the words she would use to describe her aja when this mission was over while keeping her spitter trained on the wolf. Alethea was remarkable calm. What was wrong with her? Didn’t she know a wolf could take down a ker in mere seconds? One slash to the jugular and it was all over. She gripped the spitter tighter, feeling the mechanisms inside whirr as it prepared to fire.

She wasn’t at all prepared for the bombshell the pretty young woman delivered next, although later, in hindsight, she would suppose she should have guess. Buddy would claim that he knew all along. Her shooting arm lowered, along with her jaw, and a dumbfounded expression settled on her face. Professionalism was out of the window. Buddy stopped shunting around and stared up at Alethea, his electric blue eyes wide with disbelief. She was – she was so young. Cal had always thought that anyone who could wrestle a wolf had to be older than the usual questing age, although mythology did, of course, have its teenage heroes. And when Cal had pictured meeting a wolf-wrestler as a daydreaming child, she hadn’t imagine someone quite so… so… ladylike.

“Uhh… familiar?” She managed to repeat dumbly. “Morning?”

Alethea’s compliments shook one of them from their shared stunned state, at least. Buddy tossed his head and preened, standing up to his full height. It would have looked more impressive if not for the daisy chain still hanging from his left ear. Shaken from her reverie somewhat belatedly, Cal finally assumed a slightly less embarrassing facial expression: one of light scepticism.

“Er – yeah.” She still wasn’t used to hearing Buddy referred to as a ‘familiar’. “He’s allergic to compliments, though. They cause swellings in the head.”

“Cal thinks she’s funny,” he chimed in, tossing his head again so that her fingers loosened their grip on his mane. “I apologise in advance.”

At Cal’s suggestion, they started to ride across the neat, clipped grass towards the great wall which separated the civil castle grounds from the outside world. Buddy fell into pace one step behind Midnight, since Alethea was leading, but he didn’t seem all that happy about it. Any time the young lady looked his way, he pricked his ears and picked up his feet like a show pony, just to remind her who the incredible one was here. Cal was too used to this behaviour, and too preoccupied with the millions of questions buzzing around her head regarding the wolf, to care – or, indeed, notice the direction they were headed in.

Finally, when they reached the wall, she could contain it no longer.

“So you’re a few years since questing?” She tried to sound casual, while desperately searching for an opening to ask for Alethea’s quest story. “I’ve never actually met a wolf-wrestler before. Or a wolf,” she added, somewhat apologetically, to Leto.

“Yeah,” Buddy interjected. “What element even are you? Is ‘fluffy’ an element?”

“Buddy!”

“What?” He snorted as Cal poked him sharply on the withers, and muttered under his breath, “Just curious.”