Chapter Text
Every wolf of Loria knows how it feels to be afraid, so helpless that you need the assistance of a friend or a pack member. If you asked them whether they had ever needed the help of someone outside their birth pack, however, most of them would look at you in confusion or surprise. Other packs are not hostile, per say, but the four packs are different groups for a reason. They have fundamentally different beliefs, including how best to help another wolf…
A golden jocol sprinting through the harsh heat of Goldsea’s northernmost desert wished she could live a life without knowing this sense of desperation. Her feelings had been continually brushed off by wolves of her colony and surrounding colonies, until it felt like the plains themselves were suffocating her. This wolf ran north. She hoped the frost would cleanse this fearful itching in her soul.
It was early morning. The night’s chill would soon be scared away by sunshine, and only a single brown lupin could find a reason to be up and about at such a harsh hour. She didn’t trust her leaders, nor her tribe, and she couldn’t stand the fear any longer. Taking a small woven bag around her neck, she looted her tribe's stores - or rather, the tribe she lived in - for dried meat that would help her last her treacherous journey.
She didn’t feel any shame, prey was booming in the area, and she wasn’t sure she really knew any of her packmates anyway, considering recent events. She turned her back and padded away, remorseless. She headed south in hopes that she would be lucky enough to meet a nomadic pack reaping the benefits of the summer season and get away with their help.
Scrambling down the rocks and dirt of the mountain was tiring work, and the caramel-coloured wolf was flagging. She had been travelling for a full day, so she allowed herself to take a moment at the base of a thick tree to eat some of her rations. It was then that she heard the agile steps of another wolf approaching, and they were travelling alone. She certainly didn’t feel up to helping another desperate soul, or fending them off from her precious rations. She was exhausted. But she was Icerun born. It didn’t matter if she could, because she would do it anyway. That was what made Icerun wolves who they were.
“Hello! I need help, please - do you have any food or water nearby?” The small, golden jocol that approached had a rasp in their voice, but a bounce in their steps like leaves rolling in the wind.
They clearly assumed that she lived in a colony nearby but this territory was new to the brown lupin as well, so she replied, “I can spare some dried meat, but I don’t know the area well enough to direct you to a river,” She heaved herself to her feet and lifted her nose into the air to smell for signs of running water.
“Come on,” the brown lupin suggests, “I need a drink too, anyways, so lets go have a look around.”
“Thank you,” the jocol’s voice is filled with relief, “where are you from?”
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” the lupin paused, “because I’m not going back. I’m just hoping that every wolf I knew there escapes. No wolf deserves to be treated that way by a leader they should trust," her thoughts distract her for a moment before asking, "but where might you come from?”
“Ah, I’m sorry. Well, I’m from Goldsea, actually, but I feel the same. Um, I mean… I couldn’t ever go back. The people I knew just refused to understand or acknowledge the fact that I’m a woman. I was dying there, I think,” she spoke sheepishly, instinctively expecting some sort of venomous retort.
“Be proud, little whirlwind, the fact that you’re here shows you have Orrin’s willpower,” the big lupin smiled, “although, you could stand to have a little more forethought,” she chuckled as she gestured at the jocol’s lack of rations.
The small, golden wolf playfully rolled her eyes and grinned as she padded alongside the toweringly tall lupin. She noticed, then, that she hadn’t been smaller than anyone she knew except her father. She never realised how much that bothered her until now.
Their pelts brushed as they both powered through their exhaustion together.
“Well, I think we make a good team,” the jocol boasted, “because I see some water that way!” Away she ran, glancing back at the other wolf with a smug grin as she followed behind.
“Fine, you win, but I hope you don’t spend all your time running around, or else I’ll lose my exploring partner to exhaustion!”
“Aww, you’d miss me?”
“Of course,” the lupin smiled, “the bigger the personality, the more noticeable the absence it leaves,” she spoke, as if reciting someone else's words. The lupin’s cold, blue eyes lingered on the other wolf before saying, “I’ve never met anyone as full of playful energy as you.”
“I’m swooning,” the jocol says sarcastically, but her grin gets a little wider.
The two smiling wolves, having only just met, know instinctively that they can trust each other. Two runaways, united against the world. Eager to help each other onto the path to freedom and a new, better life as a team.