Kaiya picked her way delicately through the damp forest, despairing at the thick mud that covered much of the terrain. It squelched and bubbled in disgusting ways, sullying her otherwise pristine ivory coat. She grimaced as one foot sank especially deep into the mire, and resolved to alter her path to head toward the river to wash off; surely by this time, though Spring’s grip was yet tenuous, the water would be warm enough to tolerate a quick rinse.

In truth, she had no real path to alter. She had been many seasons in Blossom, had visited most of the territories within the forest’s borders, and yet remained a wanderer. To be sure she had met, and even liked, a number of the forest’s other wolves – though more than a few of those had been strange males with whom she had traded one-night affairs for a warm place to sleep or a free meal. She rarely, if ever, encountered them again; most departed before the sun truly breached the horizon the following morning. Such was the life of the lonely temptress, and such was a life that she lived without complaint. Closeness, intimacy – these things had never served her well. It was the souring of this very thing called love that had driven her, in a flurry of fear, to Blossom in the first place. No, for all of her days spent in Blossom, Kaiya had not a single soul to call friend nor foe; no pack, no mate, and for all of that, no worries.

She mused often enough how easy it would be for her to slip from the world, for there would be none to mourn her. No one, she thought, would even know if she were to fall down some ravine to her death, or slowly succumb to some disease. The realization did not bother her. She felt only a wry satisfaction that she would, at least, leave a pretty corpse. She paused, then, to shake out her snowy coat, listening with excitement to the dry rustling of the ruff of budding feathers that lined her shoulders and the nape of her neck. Itchy and irritating though they might be now, she knew that in a few weeks the feathers would burst from her skin once again in all of their shining blue glory. The girl had at first thought the feathers gifted her from the mysterious golden light a curse, a hideous aberration that made her a monster. But in the months that had passed she had seen the birds she had been made to resemble, dainty, flighty little things dancing in the trees, and thought them beautiful. She too, then, must be beautiful. She mourned the shedding of her plumage each winter, and resented not a little the knock she took to her confidence as it fell, but had grown confident that her magical mark would return each spring.

She broke from her reverie to find the forest had fallen silent around her. The spring birdsong had ceased, a sure sign that something was about. She snapped her slight head up to attention, light eyes peering intently into the shadows between the trees. She saw nothing, but then the underbrush was dense, and the trees here grew close enough together to hide many a creature. A light breeze stirred and she scented it eagerly, catching just the trace of another wolf. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief; it was not uncommon to encounter other travelers out here in the woods, and she could detect no scent of malice about this one, no hint of blood or sweat on the breeze. She carried on forward, stepping carefully on the driest patches of earth, interested to see whose path she had crossed.

She broke from a heavy patch of trees, ivory body materializing boldly from the under-canopy gloom, to find herself some paces from a large ashen male. She did not recognize him, but he was quickly forthcoming with his introduction:

“Hello, my name is Vladimir Tyrell, heir of Dierne Hrof. What is your name?”

The name Vladimir was meaningless to her but the pack, Dierne Hrof, was not. She had skirted the pack’s expansive boundaries on more than one occasion, sniffing around for her scavenger’s opportunities and developing her sense of the lie of the land. It would do to show this one some respect, she thought, and inclined her head demurely.

“Well met, Vladimir,” she said softly, her voice taking the slightly breathless quality she was powerless to control when addressing males of any attractiveness at all. “I am Kaiya, heiress to nothing, perpetual wanderer in this forest. Forgive me for intruding on your path, Sir.”

She glanced up at him through hooded eyes with this last, putting just a touch of sultry emphasis on the “Sir.” She could not help it; it was her temptress’ nature. Dangerous though he may prove to be, surely the heir to such a large pack would be able to offer something by way of a good meal or a warm den – and surely would be eager to give it to such a pretty, helpless, poorly connected girl. For what was she? Surely no threat. No one to be missed. Just a hapless traveler, encountered by chance on a lonely forest path. Save for they themselves, no one would ever know that they had met at all.

| . | . | Khett | . | . |