After only a few moments it would seem that the storm and the rain was something Eros knew he could endure, but what he didn’t know was how long he could withstand social interaction. It felt otherworldly to him, even unnatural and he couldn’t seem to calm himself down. Even when his question procured a brief and cracked smile from the wolf, it did nothing to soothe his soul. On the contrary there was a red-hot emotional reaction inside of him as he felt a shift to mirror that expression in her broken smile. Empathy to the point of physical pain was not something he was prepared for, much the same as he was not prepared for the direction of her answer. Her grim voice precedes her gaze, and he can feel the sorrow of her tones resonating in some deep part of his soul. He remains as rooted to the spot as ever, resolute beneath the look of recognition in her gaze. What she is seeing in him, he does not know, for there are far too many things happening inside for even him to process. I see. The words sound entirely numb to his ears and do not match the torrent he feels inside. Unable to sift through each individual emotion, he welcomes the storm still surrounding him in hopes that it may muffle or distort any one of his feelings.

If before there had been a red-hot reaction to her emptiness, this new reaction was a sensation increased a multitude of times. His insides felt molten hot to the point of burning through, at which point Eros felt a deep chasm well up in the pit of his stomach, threatening to swallow him whole. A fractured part of his mind quietly tells him that the other wolf is taunting him. How many times can one let go, and how many things can one let go of? He had felt let go of everything he had ever known in his life, and for years upon years it was a continuous daily routine. Did what she mean with her words differ from what he knew? He finds mild relief when she turns her forlorn features back to the river at hand, the true object of her observation. Despite the fact that he was soaked all the way through, his nerves continued to feel as if they were on fire and he could hear his own heartbeat almost unbearably loud in his ears. Even more relief greets him when she moves down the embankment, regardless of her last glance back upon him, and all at once her attention is on a gnarled felled tree. It must have happened sometime during their conversation because the bridge it had created was not present when Eros had first arrived. As detached as he was, he still managed to pay attention to some aspect of his surroundings, as sporadic as those observations may happen to be.

However, the stranger is halfway across the log before he even registers her actions, and when she stops to shout at him he is suddenly struck with a momentary sense of crystalline clarity. A new way to live. The way she had said it made it seem so simple, and like it would make perfect sense. The only fact of the matter was that Eros did not know if he knew any way to live, let alone a new way. Perhaps this was just that; an extreme learning experience, for the torrents of emotion and the depth to which they reached currently baffled him, as he had not known them previously. Regardless of his age it was as if he were experiencing his own intensity and self-awareness for the first time, and in truth he was. With Sore present there had been no room for him, she had made certain of that, and now there was too much room for him. Eros did not know how to contain himself, and he was currently the epitome of proof of that. The moment her paws touched down on the other side his large frame was moving mechanically, his tense muscles protesting from having been wound up without release for so long. He half slid half loped down the embankment reaching the end of the log fairly quickly. It was all automatic for him, and his glacial gazed focused on the task at hand to grant his large paws safe passage as the other wolf had done just prior. The river was relentless surrounding the log, and he could feel the buoyancy of the wood and the way it dipped further below the surface. Just as he was about to make landfall on the shoreline ahead, a large hunk of debris collided with the log and caused the makeshift bride to shudder.

The log didn’t move but he did, his paws unwilling to waver in their mission to ensure his safe passage to the other side. There was nothing graceful about his arrival, for while his front paws managed to find land, his back paws found water and the beginning of the fierce current. Still he is unwilling to let the river have him and he pulls himself up the embankment, breath coming in slight pants from the adrenaline coursing through his veins. His bulk shakes with the aftershocks of the experience and though he was wet prior to crossing from the rain, there’s a different wet chill to be felt that creeps up his hindquarters. While a lot of the engorged river gained its mass and momentum from the Spring rains, much of it also came from the melt waters of the snow in high regions and the result was typically an ice cold torrent that warmed as the season continued on. Almost as an afterthought does he search her out with his gaze, which had been considerably brightened to almost hysteric qualities after his intense experience. Silence was a natural quality in the air between them, but he had followed her to this point and the words she’d shouted from the log stayed with him. Have you lived many new lives? The way she spoke her words seemed as though she had intimate knowledge of the topics at hand, and though he stood nearby to her upon his arrival, he moved no closer. Once again an overwhelming sense of emotion was creeping up on him, and he wondered if it was something he would ever be able to begin to understand about himself.