be humble, for you are made of earth
Fur is grazing in the thick of the trees; she keeps to herself even here, safe and home, when she first hears the howl and instinct takes over, makes her freeze so that she can only hear the loud hurried thud of her heart in her ears.
Wolves are enemies!
She has seen a few deer taken down in the midst of the hunt, hamstringed and set upon by the pack after the alphas have had their fill. These are things that she should never have seen and cannot unsee, even the horse blood in her harbors a natural respect and fear for the wolf. But it is the deer in her that balks at the wolfish summons, thinks to hide herself deeper in the forest.
Still, there is a thrum of power that supersedes both horse and deer.
She answers to it, beckoned by scent of wolf, horse, pine, and ice.
It is a gathering of Others; they are too much horse for her and she knows none of them. Fur thinks of running before they see her, but she knows that they will have her scent by now. Her antlered head is lowered, chin to breast, as she circles them from a distance, distrustful of the way the wind blows the smell of wolf into her nostrils. Maybe some of them are like her, wolves in horses’ clothing just as she is a mystery of horse and deer. Their kinds are enemies though, predator and prey, so says the natural order of things and she cannot ignore instinct’s prompts in her to keep back and flee until she has but all of Taiga’s trees between them.
(No, they’d just hunt her down. Sever the hamstring, go for the throat and tear it out.)
Fur begins to shake from the fear that builds up in her small shape, until she spots the familiar spotted bulk of Ruan. Emboldened by the sight of him, she runs right to his side and presses herself there, small and trembling. She cannot disappear into his spots, or his ice, but the staunchness of his shoulder against her cheek starts to calm her wild nerves, enough so that she can say his name in a tiny broken pant - “Ru-an.” Her dark eyes look up at him, uncertain of the wolves in their midst for they are many, and she is but one. “Wolf.” she tells him, casting nervous flickers towards all the rest.