[private] I will shield you from the darkness when the walls around us quake;

[Wolfbane]

It was a restful, lingering night that kept Wolfbane asleep long after the first rays of the sun had touched the cold earth. He burrowed deep into the soil as a blind mole, seeking the warmth of dirt not yet touched by frost or winter winds. There, in the quiet darkness of a different world, he slept and didn’t wake until the resounding quake of thudding hooves shook him from a pleasant slumber.

What the hell? He thought at first, picking himself up off a woven bed of dry grasses and shaking loose crumbles of black dirt from his even blacker shoulders, “There’s never any peace in Beqanna.”

With an irritated shuffle he squirmed away from the now-empty nest and scuttled through the tight passageway he’d built towards the riverbank, nosing the air and the roots with a soft wiggle of his pink, star-shaped nose. He smelled water and then jerked back, away from the sudden opening and the bright flash of daylight that hurt his nearly-useless eyes. Shifting into a new body this early in the morning could be a hassle, and the idea made him almost turn around and head back for the warm nest again.

But antagonizing the loud-foot who disturbed his sleep in the first place? He thought it over.
Worth it. He shrugged his little, furry shoulders.

Seconds later a long, svelte snake glided out from the hole set in the banks. He slithered down between the exposed roots of greedy little water plants and curled in hidden safety among the reeds, rising after a cautious moment to see the tail-end of Briella as she made her way past. Through two beady eyes he watched her disappear, then Wolfbane sank down to the earth and sped along after her. He trailed nimbly through the many layers of fallen leaves like a black satin ribbon, tongue flicking out to follow the trail of heat she left in her wake.

She was unfamiliar to Wolfbane by sight alone. After all, the first time he and Briella had come across one another she’d looked… very different. But her smell is eerily recognizable to him, enough that he exhausts himself by shifting again - this time into his natural form, fangs included.

“Pssshh.” The pegasus stallion blew a hefty gust of wind from the corner of his mouth, rolling his amber-green eyes mirthfully as he stepped from the copse and out into her line of sight. He hadn’t heard that name, Dovev, in quite some time.
He’d also never thought he’d be mistaken for that ragged bag of grandmother-humping bones.

“Apology accepted, even if you did just try to call me an expletive.” He sighed through a half-cocked smile, stepping gingerly and with near equal amounts of savage grace through the trees. His shouldered wings brushed aside bare saplings, not yet grown above his withers, and Wolfbane came to rest at a comfortable distance to the girl. He considered her and considered the fact that she knew him, but he had no idea who she could be, and decided to play ignorant of that fact for a minute or two longer.

“What did you think?” He urged her on curiously, twitching both his golden ears forward to hear the frosty mare’s reply. The way she’d said that vagabond scum’s name… sounded almost hopeful. Did she want him to be Dovev? Clearly. But why? The only horses he could associate positively with the broody, confrontational character had been Heartfire and a few younglings he’d brought to the Pampas long ago.

Hmm. The Pampas.

@[Briella]