She agreed to come with him, and for some reason, he couldn’t stop laughing, couldn’t stop smiling. He was not a pup who had developed manly feelings early on… He had yet to have a crush before now, and not not yet begun to see females as beautiful nor attractive. But Missandei changed all of that - the magical waters had done their duty and instilled in him a sense of love… Something he had not truly felt before. Not just the sense of being in love. But love at all - their litter had been abandoned by their birth mother, and their father seemed too busy to be able to spend any sort of quality time with them. Perhaps in some ways, Hondo felt love for Kahlan, but it was only because she provided milk for him, not because she cared for him. It was more of an appreciation. And also his siblings? They were competition - competition for time with his father, competition for the sweet white sustenance that came from Kahlan’s mammaries. He saw them is more of a nuisance than anything else, and if he had his way they wanted to see this. But Missandei? She was perfect.

He watched her as she scampered away from him - there were still no sexual thoughts, he was too young, too innocent, too kind for that. His mind had yet to be marred by the smuttiness of elder wolves. There was no swelling of his staff, there was no urging in his loins… But there was a sweet warm tension in his chest that nearly made him gasp for breath, yet also clinched his heart tightly causing it to gallop forward. Hesitantly, he stumbled to her, and then laughed as she ran away just to soon as he reached her. Hondo Obataiye never played games with his siblings, not really thinking of them as friends. But here, in this time, it was different. It was to be a game of tag, only Hondo was the one to always be chasing. For hours they were like that, laughing, running, Missandei always just that one more foot ahead of him so that he never caught her. Until, at last, he finally did, his nose touching just the tip of her rump, and when he realized she wasn’t going to lurch forward into another chase, all four of his paws scrambled to stop his momentum so that he would not slam into her, and so it ended up with him landing in a heap of swamp water and mud drenching his whole. Missandei asked if Hondo knew where they were going, and that gave him pause. The stumble had turned him around, but even if it hadn’t, he had not been keeping track of where they were going - his focus has been on her and solely her. He stood and wiped from his eyelids the greasy chunks of mud that had landed there and blocked his sight, and he looked about. There were no tracks before them or behind them - but there were a track of pawsteps to their left, and it looked to be paw prints about their size. Had they been coming just this random direction? At what point had they changed from the way that Hondo had come in from? His gaze shifted to the right, but there was nothing there other than pied moss, mud, and water - just like the rest of their surroundings.

“I… When did we lose the trail? Fucketies.” By this time, they had spent hours potentiallu going in the wrong direction… But that only meant that they would need to backtrack and hope that they could find Hondo‘s initial set of prints. Or perhaps… Perhaps there was another way. “Can you climb trees? Or… Let’s look for a spot of higher ground, and see if we can see above the trees. Maybe we could find a landmark to tell us which way to go - a set of mountain chains that one of us recognizes, or perhaps a body of water… It’s worth a shot so that we don’t have to backtrack, isn’t it?” The bruteling looked at her expectantly yo see if she would go along with his idea or if she perhaps had a better one.