Post by Pavane on Jun 11, 2011 23:38:34 GMT -5
The crackle of thunder fills the air, and dark storm clouds are quickly scudding closer. Niyt is racing along the open grasslands, heading for some sort of shelter from the approaching rain. It promises to be a rather mighty one, to judge from the flashes of lightning behind her - and she's gone just far enough from her usual wanderings that she's not entirely sure where that shelter is to be found.
Len is scrambling for shelter as well - while she is a fan of rain and storms, the electric crackle in the air sets her fur on end and urges her into the little alcove she had carved out of the hill. She's quite proud of it, if she does so so herself - took her nearly a week. However, as she rounds the crest of the hill, headed down the other side, she spots Niyt and - noting panic - tilts her neck back and howls for her.
Niyt perks her ears at the sound of a howl, coming over the rising wind, and though she doesn't answer it, she does turn her course in that direction. The slender wolfess flies over the ground like a small, paler stormcloud being chased on the same winds carrying the bigger ones after her, coming near to Len and then slowing. Only then does she answer, as her quick pace moves to just a trot. "He-" And a rumble of thunder drowns out the rest of her words.
Len's ears flatten at the thunder, her entire body twitching to bring her closer to the ground. "What?" She calls, missing the last part with the peal of thunder, but as the storm noises continue to roll and echoe thorugh the hills, the point of conversation in the open is lost. Slipping to the blind wolf's side, Len noses her shoulder gently in the direction of her hidey-hole, beginning to trot in that direction.
Niyt doesn't even bother trying to answer just now. She sways her tail gently in a greeting, then tilts her head, turning where guided, and follows after Len, keeping close enough that the thunder can't drown out the sounds of the other wolf's motion entirely, or the wind snatch away her scent too fast for Niyt to keep up. The den itself is imperceptible to the senses she has - but she trusts Len to guide her to someplace suitable.
Reaching the dip of the hill Len stops to push Niyt - gently - to the opening. As lightning forks the sky above she jolts, a nervous whine escaping her throat - no so much for the sound and electricity, but her anxious thoughts of new puppies, packmates, and mate; scattered about in the mayhem. She shakes her head, trying to clear her eyes and nose of the rain before slipping inside the den herself, panting.
Niyt steps forward into the den, unhesitating. Her eartip brushes against the slightly crumbling dirt of the roof, and she lowers her head, stepping forward. She moves with graceful steps, nudging ever so gently against the walls and turning herself, until she reaches the back and turns herself against it, head facing back out as she tilts her head to try to place Len - harder, in this den that smells of the wolf all over, where her footsteps are muffled by soft dirt.
Len follows quickly, resisting the urge to shake off, as it would be rude with a guest in the den. While the din outside is still rumbling its own angry rumble, the den succeeds in muffling it and removing the buzzing of rain against one's ears. With her side against the wall, Len sits, rocking slightly in the anxious worry she is working herself into. Distraction, distraction, distraction - oh, guest! "S-so what were you saying?" See? Totally casual. Totes cash.
The voice helps Niyt to figure out exactly where the other wolf is, and she turns her head in that direction. Instincts die hard, even if she can't really have proper eye contact. She smiles. "Thank you for sharing your den with me," she says. "This storm..." she trails off, and shakes her head. She's not used to the suddenness with which the weather can change, here. Not after growing up in the desert!
Habits and instincts die difficult deaths a like, for Len still nods her agreement before vocalizing it. "Yes... it came on rather quickly. The weather grows very tempermental, especially in the summer its -" she pauses for a louder clap of thunder "-all twisty turny. The weather goes wonky." Yes, she has the vocabulary of a scholar, this one. Repressing a shiver, she pushes herself more securly against the wall. "What were you doing so far out?"
Niyt nods back. She still has the gestures of a sighted wolf, though she can't see them for herself now. "Twisty. Yes." She laughs. "The wind can't decide if it loves the water or the earth more. It's so restless, here. So easily distracted." She sighs, and slowly lowers herself to her belly. "I was searching. Trying to make sense of a scent trail before it faded."
The weather had been acting dark towards them recently, and dismissing it as an oddity, not an omen, Len had been able to proceed happily in life. Cheery as usual. But now, with the storm raging and drowning out the possible cries for help...She shakes the feeling off, praying that a gust of wind can scoop the anxiety from her as easy as it can a baby bird from a nest- OKAY STOPPIT. "Yes, but, hey. I try not to argue with the weather, I rarely win." She cracks a slightly smile, keeping it steady through another roll of noise. "Ah...scent trails..." she flails for a subject of continuity, but loses track of her coherant-conversation making to a lapse of silence.
The rain is just pouring out there. The low places, the valleys and gullies, are going to start filling up with water if this keeps up. Puddles? More like flash floods, the way it's coming down. Hopefully the rest of the pack has found shelter somewhere. Niyt smiles at the weak joke, though she still seems distracted. Then she sighs. "Too late, in any case. There won't be anything left of the scents, after this."
One thing that Len had taken into account, but hadn't counted on, was flooding. Her den is dug out of the bottom of a hill...oops. It does not seem likely to flood for some time yet, though, and /surely/ it will stop before it gets /that/ bad? She'd never seen it flood here before. "That's not entirely true...now you get to enjoy um...wet scent and...wet wolf and wet grass...wet dirt...wet self."
Niyt tilts her head as Len starts. Not true? But the rain will wash away those trails, those odd scents, and she... ah. She can't help but laugh. "Any scent you like, so long as it's wet?" The water hasn't started coming in here, yet - at least, not more than a few stray windblown drops - but there are little rivulets in the grass outside. "I suppose so. Perhaps this will calm the weather, at least, and make the wind turn more sensible for a while. Like a puppy that has to frolic out his energy before he'll listen."
"Wet smell is still a smell. I like my scents, er, soggy." Len chooses not to worry about the mini-streams now trickling by her den, mainly because her back is to the opening and such things are out of sight and out of mind. This is, actually, a good thing as she is an unnecessarily excitable worrier. "I hope you're right...and the puppy just needs to shut up and go take a nap with mum." Len grumbles, though good naturedly (if there is such a thing).
Niyt sighs, but she nods. Wet smells certainly are smells. Of course, the smells she was most worried about were the ones connected to a certain disappearance - maybe Zuphi just got cold feet and snuck off, but she doesn't want to believe that. Especially not with those strong, musky scents she couldn't recognize criss-crossing the area where she last saw him. She can't escape the feeling that something has happened - but what? This rain is closing off one avenue of her investigation, and the restless, capricious nature of the wind here makes another difficult. The wolf doesn't know what to try next - but she's certainly not willing to give up. "It works for my siblings," she says, trying to distract herself for the moment by continuing conversation. "Run and run and run... and then they're asleep so hard a thunderclap probably couldn't wake them."
Len, free from the agonizing mystery of a missing loved one, is free to fret about Alaqua and the pups, Tariro and her old friends on the hilltop, even having the time to spare a concerned thought for the racoons and rabbits tucked away in their dens. Lucky her. "Puppies...hm." Once more, Len watches her grasp on the conversation trickling by with the flow outside the den and snaps up the first continuation that pops to mind. "SO! What did it...smell...like?"
Odd, that's how. Niyt pauses for a moment, trying to think of how to describe it. "Musky. Like... the weasels that go darting through the grass, or a fox. Only not really." She shakes her head. "It's nothing I've smelled before. Something from the forest, maybe? We're closer to it here than before. I though maybe I could follow it, find out where it went, find some answers, but... it went to a rocky place, and the going was slow. Then the storm blew in."
Len's ears pin back. She doesn't much like the sound of that mystery smell. "You don't think it could be something like a bear could it?" If that's the case, Niyt, a blind wolf, should not be going after it alone - though Len keeps this to herself for pride's sake. "Or..." But 'musky' doesn't strike up many chords in her mind. Coyote? Dog? Skunk? Bear? Rabbit? Bear? It sounds dangerous, and close to home. "Or one of the..." She searches for the name, having heard it once or twice but not accompanied by sight or scent, "Cougars. They live in rocky areas, I believe."
What she should do - the sensible course - hadn't much entered into Niyt's mind. Not surprising, given what emotions can be like - especially in a still-young wolf. Perhaps this storm is actually a blessing in disguise, keeping her from running headlong into danger. Not that she's likely to see it that way. "It could be?" she says, considering. "I don't know the scent of bear, or cougar. Perhaps I could ask..." But even if she asked, what could she say? The scent is gone, now, and it's too late to get a more expert nose to sniff after it. The best she could hope for is to find a similar scent again, and figure it what it was, too late for that to do much good.
Len is still in her anxious, nervous stupor - with mystery vicious animal smells now added to the mix. "Well - ah - I guess we just have to wait this thing out and s-" She is cut off by a deafening roar of thunder, and Len quite shamefully cowers to the floor. Hey, she's small and she's nervous. "-seeeee wh-what happens. I've met one bear s-so if you find the smell again I can tell you if its -" Thunder. Flatten against floor. "Bearornot." She sputters out the last three words, by that point to merely spit out her sentence for the sake of speaking uninteruppted by insecurity fueled by a driving rain and roaring thunderclap. In a similiar, yet calmer manner, she mamnages to squeak out: "Maybe-try-to-get-some-sleep?"
"Yes," Niyt says softly. A long roll of thunder makes her disinclined to speak more - but she half-rises, and slips a few paces closer to Len, settling down again with her body against that of the other wolf. A warm body, and closeness, is a good thing - whether for heart-loneliness, or fear of storms, or both at once in some combination. "Just wait it out," she adds in a gap between thunderclaps, nudging her nose gently against Len's shoulder and then lowering it to her paws. If not sleep, at least resting while her mind lopes in circles.
Len is scrambling for shelter as well - while she is a fan of rain and storms, the electric crackle in the air sets her fur on end and urges her into the little alcove she had carved out of the hill. She's quite proud of it, if she does so so herself - took her nearly a week. However, as she rounds the crest of the hill, headed down the other side, she spots Niyt and - noting panic - tilts her neck back and howls for her.
Niyt perks her ears at the sound of a howl, coming over the rising wind, and though she doesn't answer it, she does turn her course in that direction. The slender wolfess flies over the ground like a small, paler stormcloud being chased on the same winds carrying the bigger ones after her, coming near to Len and then slowing. Only then does she answer, as her quick pace moves to just a trot. "He-" And a rumble of thunder drowns out the rest of her words.
Len's ears flatten at the thunder, her entire body twitching to bring her closer to the ground. "What?" She calls, missing the last part with the peal of thunder, but as the storm noises continue to roll and echoe thorugh the hills, the point of conversation in the open is lost. Slipping to the blind wolf's side, Len noses her shoulder gently in the direction of her hidey-hole, beginning to trot in that direction.
Niyt doesn't even bother trying to answer just now. She sways her tail gently in a greeting, then tilts her head, turning where guided, and follows after Len, keeping close enough that the thunder can't drown out the sounds of the other wolf's motion entirely, or the wind snatch away her scent too fast for Niyt to keep up. The den itself is imperceptible to the senses she has - but she trusts Len to guide her to someplace suitable.
Reaching the dip of the hill Len stops to push Niyt - gently - to the opening. As lightning forks the sky above she jolts, a nervous whine escaping her throat - no so much for the sound and electricity, but her anxious thoughts of new puppies, packmates, and mate; scattered about in the mayhem. She shakes her head, trying to clear her eyes and nose of the rain before slipping inside the den herself, panting.
Niyt steps forward into the den, unhesitating. Her eartip brushes against the slightly crumbling dirt of the roof, and she lowers her head, stepping forward. She moves with graceful steps, nudging ever so gently against the walls and turning herself, until she reaches the back and turns herself against it, head facing back out as she tilts her head to try to place Len - harder, in this den that smells of the wolf all over, where her footsteps are muffled by soft dirt.
Len follows quickly, resisting the urge to shake off, as it would be rude with a guest in the den. While the din outside is still rumbling its own angry rumble, the den succeeds in muffling it and removing the buzzing of rain against one's ears. With her side against the wall, Len sits, rocking slightly in the anxious worry she is working herself into. Distraction, distraction, distraction - oh, guest! "S-so what were you saying?" See? Totally casual. Totes cash.
The voice helps Niyt to figure out exactly where the other wolf is, and she turns her head in that direction. Instincts die hard, even if she can't really have proper eye contact. She smiles. "Thank you for sharing your den with me," she says. "This storm..." she trails off, and shakes her head. She's not used to the suddenness with which the weather can change, here. Not after growing up in the desert!
Habits and instincts die difficult deaths a like, for Len still nods her agreement before vocalizing it. "Yes... it came on rather quickly. The weather grows very tempermental, especially in the summer its -" she pauses for a louder clap of thunder "-all twisty turny. The weather goes wonky." Yes, she has the vocabulary of a scholar, this one. Repressing a shiver, she pushes herself more securly against the wall. "What were you doing so far out?"
Niyt nods back. She still has the gestures of a sighted wolf, though she can't see them for herself now. "Twisty. Yes." She laughs. "The wind can't decide if it loves the water or the earth more. It's so restless, here. So easily distracted." She sighs, and slowly lowers herself to her belly. "I was searching. Trying to make sense of a scent trail before it faded."
The weather had been acting dark towards them recently, and dismissing it as an oddity, not an omen, Len had been able to proceed happily in life. Cheery as usual. But now, with the storm raging and drowning out the possible cries for help...She shakes the feeling off, praying that a gust of wind can scoop the anxiety from her as easy as it can a baby bird from a nest- OKAY STOPPIT. "Yes, but, hey. I try not to argue with the weather, I rarely win." She cracks a slightly smile, keeping it steady through another roll of noise. "Ah...scent trails..." she flails for a subject of continuity, but loses track of her coherant-conversation making to a lapse of silence.
The rain is just pouring out there. The low places, the valleys and gullies, are going to start filling up with water if this keeps up. Puddles? More like flash floods, the way it's coming down. Hopefully the rest of the pack has found shelter somewhere. Niyt smiles at the weak joke, though she still seems distracted. Then she sighs. "Too late, in any case. There won't be anything left of the scents, after this."
One thing that Len had taken into account, but hadn't counted on, was flooding. Her den is dug out of the bottom of a hill...oops. It does not seem likely to flood for some time yet, though, and /surely/ it will stop before it gets /that/ bad? She'd never seen it flood here before. "That's not entirely true...now you get to enjoy um...wet scent and...wet wolf and wet grass...wet dirt...wet self."
Niyt tilts her head as Len starts. Not true? But the rain will wash away those trails, those odd scents, and she... ah. She can't help but laugh. "Any scent you like, so long as it's wet?" The water hasn't started coming in here, yet - at least, not more than a few stray windblown drops - but there are little rivulets in the grass outside. "I suppose so. Perhaps this will calm the weather, at least, and make the wind turn more sensible for a while. Like a puppy that has to frolic out his energy before he'll listen."
"Wet smell is still a smell. I like my scents, er, soggy." Len chooses not to worry about the mini-streams now trickling by her den, mainly because her back is to the opening and such things are out of sight and out of mind. This is, actually, a good thing as she is an unnecessarily excitable worrier. "I hope you're right...and the puppy just needs to shut up and go take a nap with mum." Len grumbles, though good naturedly (if there is such a thing).
Niyt sighs, but she nods. Wet smells certainly are smells. Of course, the smells she was most worried about were the ones connected to a certain disappearance - maybe Zuphi just got cold feet and snuck off, but she doesn't want to believe that. Especially not with those strong, musky scents she couldn't recognize criss-crossing the area where she last saw him. She can't escape the feeling that something has happened - but what? This rain is closing off one avenue of her investigation, and the restless, capricious nature of the wind here makes another difficult. The wolf doesn't know what to try next - but she's certainly not willing to give up. "It works for my siblings," she says, trying to distract herself for the moment by continuing conversation. "Run and run and run... and then they're asleep so hard a thunderclap probably couldn't wake them."
Len, free from the agonizing mystery of a missing loved one, is free to fret about Alaqua and the pups, Tariro and her old friends on the hilltop, even having the time to spare a concerned thought for the racoons and rabbits tucked away in their dens. Lucky her. "Puppies...hm." Once more, Len watches her grasp on the conversation trickling by with the flow outside the den and snaps up the first continuation that pops to mind. "SO! What did it...smell...like?"
Odd, that's how. Niyt pauses for a moment, trying to think of how to describe it. "Musky. Like... the weasels that go darting through the grass, or a fox. Only not really." She shakes her head. "It's nothing I've smelled before. Something from the forest, maybe? We're closer to it here than before. I though maybe I could follow it, find out where it went, find some answers, but... it went to a rocky place, and the going was slow. Then the storm blew in."
Len's ears pin back. She doesn't much like the sound of that mystery smell. "You don't think it could be something like a bear could it?" If that's the case, Niyt, a blind wolf, should not be going after it alone - though Len keeps this to herself for pride's sake. "Or..." But 'musky' doesn't strike up many chords in her mind. Coyote? Dog? Skunk? Bear? Rabbit? Bear? It sounds dangerous, and close to home. "Or one of the..." She searches for the name, having heard it once or twice but not accompanied by sight or scent, "Cougars. They live in rocky areas, I believe."
What she should do - the sensible course - hadn't much entered into Niyt's mind. Not surprising, given what emotions can be like - especially in a still-young wolf. Perhaps this storm is actually a blessing in disguise, keeping her from running headlong into danger. Not that she's likely to see it that way. "It could be?" she says, considering. "I don't know the scent of bear, or cougar. Perhaps I could ask..." But even if she asked, what could she say? The scent is gone, now, and it's too late to get a more expert nose to sniff after it. The best she could hope for is to find a similar scent again, and figure it what it was, too late for that to do much good.
Len is still in her anxious, nervous stupor - with mystery vicious animal smells now added to the mix. "Well - ah - I guess we just have to wait this thing out and s-" She is cut off by a deafening roar of thunder, and Len quite shamefully cowers to the floor. Hey, she's small and she's nervous. "-seeeee wh-what happens. I've met one bear s-so if you find the smell again I can tell you if its -" Thunder. Flatten against floor. "Bearornot." She sputters out the last three words, by that point to merely spit out her sentence for the sake of speaking uninteruppted by insecurity fueled by a driving rain and roaring thunderclap. In a similiar, yet calmer manner, she mamnages to squeak out: "Maybe-try-to-get-some-sleep?"
"Yes," Niyt says softly. A long roll of thunder makes her disinclined to speak more - but she half-rises, and slips a few paces closer to Len, settling down again with her body against that of the other wolf. A warm body, and closeness, is a good thing - whether for heart-loneliness, or fear of storms, or both at once in some combination. "Just wait it out," she adds in a gap between thunderclaps, nudging her nose gently against Len's shoulder and then lowering it to her paws. If not sleep, at least resting while her mind lopes in circles.