Navi did not miss the movement—a perhaps slow intent of pursuit—as she ungracefully stumbled over the thick pine root, and, as she righted herself, she put equal intent in the razor lift of fur along her spine in warning. In her puffed state, the ridge of her self zipper-backed higher as she squarely faces the wolf several times her person, she looked quite the feral animal, the sparks of gold in her eyes nearly setting fire to their deep red bed. At the lumbering old wolf’s apology, the creases in the girl’s face shifted, turning from rage to a weary confusion of sorts.

A wolf so old—and Navi knew “old” was, in fact, the right descriptor by the gray aging his muzzles and toes and the air of rheumatic frailty, relatively speaking, in the slowness of his actions—should not speak like a toddling pup. Even as she cut his words clean and continued to berate him, Navi’s thoughts were beginning to churn, her embering gaze cooled with reason to a dull-hot glow as it roamed over the massive, aged wolf. The chocolate and cream of his coat, though dulled in years and peppered at the edges, spoke with vague familiarity. Her mother hadn’t been one to speak of such things as the kindly reflection of another’s eyes or the gentle way of a voice, but the tangible things—those very structural things—she had recalled in great detail.

The girl was not, by any measure of the word, dull, and before he made his passive insinuations in that same broken speech—the product, she was told, of adopting the common tongue a bit too late—Navi had made the connections. So much like his daughter; so much like her mother. Even she wouldn’t deny there was a striking resemblance or near reflection of identity, and Navi could quite often be of a mood to argue a point for the sake of argument despite any abundance of evidence to the contrary. By the offer of food and home, the girl was appreciating the irony of her situation, having traveled all this way just to look for this old wolf, only to have him find her instead.

With a short snort of laughter and brisk shake of her head, the ebon child made an immediate change in her dynamics, her fur smoothing against her small frame and stance shifting from cautious to cavalier in an instant.

“She said you liked to take in strays,” Navi commented a bit petulantly, a smirk lining her muzzle as she met the old wolf’s chocolate gaze. “So, you’re my grandfather, huh?” In an easy, light movement, the girl hopped the raised root between them and jogged a circle around the crumbling tower of a brute, a critical gaze sweeping his every inch. Somehow, he seemed to lack the monumental glory she had been led to imagine, but… Age. It did things to a wolf, didn’t it?

Coming full circle before the old wolf, the girl turned to face him head-on, pausing for a moment in derailment. Navi and her mother had been traveling all this way so she could meet this wolf, her grandfather of sorts, and it had finally come down to the moment, but… So what? What came next? She hadn’t exactly thought that far ahead. In the end, and with a thought toward playing things by ear, the girl settled for the obligatory introduction.

“So, I’m Navi…”

So much for pomp and circumstance.