Sochi never thought that she would be the kind to settle down.

She never thought she would be the kind to find roots and let them sink into her soul—and yet. And yet. She finds that she has rarely wandered outside of Loess. She has spent her time wandering the borders of a home, looking after her children, and spending time with the dragons that keep to Loessian mountains. She has found a strange form of peace but with it comes a nagging sensation of wanderlust.

As the days pass, the bite of it becomes harsher—more acute.

She bristles against it.

She feels it every morning when she wakes and finally, this evening, she gives into it. She shifts into her tigress form and slips away from those who have come to know her best. She slinks to the border and then lunges forward, her powerful back legs sending her shooting into the dark. Her lungs ache with the sting of the winter air, but she doesn’t slow. The ground quickly becomes covered with snow and she feels the way that it crunches between the pads of her feet—the way it muffles the sound of her running.

When her nose twitches with the scent of prey, she dives into the shadows.

What happens next is more instinct than anything and she tracks the deer through the woods. She weaves and slinks—runs and then stalks in the shadows. Until she finds that she can come downwind toward the animal and is able to rush it. The adrenaline is overwhelming and the joy of life floods through her as her teeth bite into the neck of the animal and the copper pours out. Her mind nearly splits with it.

When her belly is full, the cream of her fur stained from the hunt, she turns her nose toward the depths of the forest and continues. She shifts back into her equine form, her chin red and her silvery eyes bright against the black of her winter coat and the shimmering iridescence of her blaze.

well, I can try to get you closer but I know you’d break your neck just to see the stars
and if we don’t dare to hold it then this reckless wandering love was never ours

Sochi had not assumed that she would have company of any kind.

It was the middle of night after all, in the dead of winter, and she had not heard the breaths of many others when focused on the hunt—so imagine her surprise when she is joined by not one, but two. There is something like a flash of annoyance that crosses her features, but it’s gone before it can fully settle there, leaving her face carefully blank, the neutrality painted there in broad strokes.

She angles her head toward the first, her nose wrinkling at the scent of old blood. There is not much that she fears anymore—she has seen too much to be easily flappable—but the predator in her naturally dislikes the heavy scent of death on him. Not because she fears death so much as the fact that there is nothing to hunt when the animal is already dead. There is no challenge, no need.

“Be faster next time,” she quips lightly to his concern about needing to find breakfast elsewhere, rolling her scarred shoulder lightly. Her mouth pulls down slightly at the label of mighty tigress, but her silvery eyes quickly shift to the next to join them, feeling a bite of annoyance at how much she talks.

“Sochi,” she finally offers, if only to stop them from asking her questions. Reaching down, her rubs her chin against her leg, leaving a smear of blood against the black although it does not stand out so starkly as the tattooed crimson tiger slashes that run across her chest. She could ask more questions, she knows. She could be diplomatic or kind or simply engaging, but none of these things have ever interested her.

Instead she straightens, studying them both with an unblinking, mercurial stare. Either they would be interesting enough to capture her attention or she would leave—it was simple for her.

well, I can try to get you closer but I know you’d break your neck just to see the stars
and if we don’t dare to hold it then this reckless wandering love was never ours