R growth happens at the edge of this comfort zone

[Mauti]

She'd woken to a silent morning, in the middle of nowhere, so deep in snow that she couldn't see until she lifted her head. Not that doing so gave her any more information — the tree lines were so far away, so obscured by the opaqueness of the snow as it fell, that she could've been in purgatory and not known the difference.

Disoriented, she struggled to her feet. The last thing she remembered was following that dark woman, of strangers and crashing water and the sun as it broke through the clouds. All of it seemed so far away now, long ago out of reach, and as Mauti looked around her further, she — she didn't know what to do. Where to go. Who she was anymore.

Something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye, something that drove fear through her as she leaned to examine it — blood. A small amount of it, splattered thinly over the crystalline snow, glistening menacingly in what little light there was. She stared for a long while, tried to put together a meaning. Checked herself for cuts, scrapes, bruises — nothing. She felt perfectly fine, alive, content. But as she backed away from it and from the Mauti-shaped hole in the snow, her stomach twisted.

[Magnus]

Oh, well, wasn't this an interesting smelly smell his nose was picking up? Not that it was easy to scent much-The chill was bad enough, but the snow was covering about everything. The lithe timber man could smell stronger water nearby, though, perhaps better for drinking than the snow, and a scent far from the clean petrichor of the precipitation.

A funny sort of feeling not unlike how he felt once about the Flock of the lost his savior had collected flickered to life at the scent. Protective, or something close enough to it. His tail was flagged, curiosity piqued, but what wisdom he'd develop in his years of life warned him of pursuing unusually scented wolves.

Not to mention, it wasn't his fellow kind he was hunting at the moment. But, there was power in numbers. He weighed his options with a tilt of his head, before giving a hoarse yip into the cool air, a query asking for an answer more than anything.

Yoo hoo, he was hereeeee, come out and play.

[Mauti]

// general content warning for imagery
// content warning for.. female inferiority?

Part of her wanted to believe that the blood meant nothing, that it was just a coincidence, maybe even a trick of the eyes. That innocent, young part of her brain that viewed the world through a kaleidoscope, perfect, lovely, safe. The one that remained hidden, locked away, too soft for its own good.

The rest of her knew differently; that life was not so precious nor forgiving; that it was cold, dark, and prone to poke at weaknesses. At wriggling and writhing its way through the smallest of deformities in the toughest of armors, a disease hellbent on bringing the entire universe to its knees. Mauti swallowed thickly as she walked, the only sound coming from the crunch of snow beneath her paws and the slow gurgling of a lake fighting the freeze. She could see its muddy banks, the snow around its edges eroded into ugly slush. But she didn't mind it as she ventured closer, for she was used to the uncomfortable sensation of filth that clung to her fur.

She'd been sitting peacefully for some time, looking out over the ghostly surface of the lake, its opposite bank hidden by the snow and fog that danced, ghost-like, in the wind. It had been silent, eerily so — until a hoarse note, like the noise of some unseen demon, split the air and echoed menacingly over the empty expanse of the basin.

Mauti could feel her heart constrict with fear, her entire body sent into a fight or flight reaction. She was on her feet suddenly, having turned to be parallel with the water's edge. And there she stood, her nose flaring, her eyes searching the dim, shifting mists for the creature that would surely launch itself at her throat.

"Hello?" she ventured after a minute, her stupidity not unlike that of victims caught in a horror movie.

[Magnus]

Magnus knew what the smell was. At this age, it was impossible not to, and Dagur had been a through teacher. Still, he bounded through the snow in that direction with abandon, spirits bolstered by the uncertain "Hello?"

Eventually, something lithe and tense even in silhouette took shape and Maggie's ears flicked forward, pace slowing before finally halting, just within sight, the shadowy woman shrouded in fog. A delightful contrast, and Magnus gave an easy, open-mawed smile, head at the tiniest tilt and his tail swaying even with his back. "Hi." He recalled the nervy edge to the voice drifting through the mist moments ago. He acted with a carefree, if almost goofy demeanor, but Magnus had always been keenly perceptive, even if tenaciously optimistic. Everything would turn out fine-because the moments when the man's despair took over, were some if the darkest moments of his life.

"I'm Magnus. In the mood for a hunt?"

[Mauti]

The silhouette came dimly through the whiteness, a softness that solidified the closer it approached. For what felt like millennia, Mauti stood frozen, her hackles prickling painfully along her shoulders, down her spine. She couldn't move — could only watch and wait as, slowly, the monster that came to kill her materialized into a man instead.

Hi, came his simple greeting, and if Mauti had been a weaker woman she might have fainted on the spot. Instead she dipped her nose at him, released a breath she hadn't known she was holding.

I'm Magnus, he said, and for some reason, putting a name to the face made him just a little less scary. But that didn't mean she was ready to trust him; nor did it mean he was alone or that he had good intentions when he asked, In the mood for a hunt?

She took a risk in taking her eyes off him to scan the rest of the open field — or what of it she could see, anyway, moving only her eyes to keep him in her peripherals. She was hungry, she thought to herself, but she'd be damned if she needed the help of a stranger after all these months living alone.

"There's nothing out here," she said matter-of-factly, weariness creeping into her tone and into the judgment of her eyes, "unless you're capable of taking down an elk."

[Magnus]

For better, or worse, Maggie was not so easily deterred, even by the shadow's minute movements and her reply.

Nothing but elk, she said, and his grin turned cocky, encouraging with a teasing edge mirrored in his voice. "Not by myself, no. But two heads are better than one." How better to flirt with a girl than to simply focus all of your energy on convincing her to kill something with you.

Maggie had absolutely no game, no, but that youthful optimism and persistency had gotten him far in life, and he wasn't changing that tune now, not even for spindly shadow-ladies. To be truthful, his focus was mostly on catching a meal. Magnus was hungry-Although that instinctive drive, he felt, was more productive turned toward hunting something than being overtly sleazy out of the gate.

He gave a spirited flick of his tail and stepped back invitingly, tilting his head expectantly at the woman. It didn't slip by him that he hadn't gotten a name, not that Maggie was perturbed. He'd dealt with crabbier types in Dagur's legion. Seriously. The savior had a habit of snatching up strays, and stray folks tended to be some of the nastier ones, too.
As long as they didn't dare hurt, really hurt, any of the saved, Dagur's strays could be as aloof as they liked. Magnus would worm his way through those walls sooner or later.

[Mauti]

For a moment she appreciated his honesty; she could think of a few wolves that would lie right to her face, tell her they'd take care of everything and all she had to do was sit and look pretty. It softened her guard a tiny bit further, realizing that the two of them were perhaps a touch down to earth, but it still took a lot of effort to finally get her limbs to move. Only a few steps, as though to accept his invitation. "Well," she admitted, "you're right, but I'm not sure how much help I can offer." She'd always been thin, weak — the closest thing to skin-and-bones without actually looking emaciated. Self-consciously, she lowered her ears as she took a quick sniff of the air.

"But, lead the way. Maybe we'll get lucky." Surely something would have succumbed to the snow by then, all they really had to do was find it.

[Magnus]

He didn't quite understand. The woman was spindly, sure. If Maggie thought she'd take to the compliment kindly, he'd have teased her about scaring the elk by scuttling at them like a big, dark spider. But she had teeth and legs that seemed to work fairly well, and that was four extra legs and a whole lot of extra teeth on Magnus' side he didn't have previously. He gave a dismissive snort at the self-depreciating comment, tail swishing, but offered little feedback as he focused his efforts on picking out a trail to track.

Intelligence roll[roll=1d20+2]

[Mauti]

She got a dismissive snort in response — something that caught her off guard but left her wondering how to feel. Should she have been disappointed? Forgiving? Angry?

In the end, she found herself appreciative of the quietness that cast itself between them, her own senses wandering as he, too, focused on the task at hand. She'd sniffed the air once already but hadn't been paying much attention; now she breathed deeply, her nose to the ground as she took a few strides away from the water and the man that lingered beside it.

Intelligence roll[roll=1d20+2]

Tucked among the aroma of silt, snow, and something disgustingly sweet was a prey scent, though she couldn't pinpoint what it was exactly. She had a direction, at the very least, but turned to look back at her new hunting partner. "Got anything?" she wondered aloud.

[Magnus]

Magnus frowned, sifting through the smells. Trying to track instead of asking the strange woman to do it had been a mistake-it was difficult to stay focused with every breath bringing her particularly alluring scent to his lungs.

"Something's injured." Maggie relayed, only when the woman had taken her own moment to test the trails. "But I don't know which way it's headed. What about you?" He lifted his head, giving a little snort as if to cleanse his palette. His tail remained cheerfully swaying lazily at Maggie's hocks, but his demeanor had taken a more grounded tone.