A large meadow grassland surrounded by forests. Rolling hills are covered most of the year in tall grasses and flowers of every color. Large herds of buffalo can be found migrating most of the year.
He hadn't been inland long, but the flowers were already fading. It made sense, Delta knew how seasons changed beneath the waves, but the chill of autumn wind was certainly more merciless than that of the ocean's currents. It was disappointing, but it was an inevitability. He slid downstream past the muddy river, relishing the sensation of sediment pushing from his gills by the cleaner water. Slowly he rose from the river's bottom and forced the water from his nose, head splitting through the current as he turned to watch the incoming fields.
The wide swaths of colors he'd caught glimpses of while traversing the rivers had begun to darken and curl, petals dropping one by one as winter plodded closer and sucked the life from the blooming meadows. It was disappointing to have not seen the flowers in their prime, but as the sun rose over the horizon and the sky bled with morning orange, Delta leered from the river's edge and tasted the cool wind. He caught the scent of flowers, but nothing much else so early in the day. Even the distant shapes of buffalo laid stagnant.
Perfect for what Delta wanted to do.
He took a deep breath and forced the water from his gills, steeling his resolve as he cut through the river and churned his paws until they met sloping gravel. Carefully he hauled himself from the water, fins hanging heavy against his sides as he shook the pins and needles from his legs. Without bothering to shake the moisture from his coat, Delta awkwardly shuffled past the bank and towards the closest patch of flowers, growling softly at the sensation of his tail dragging so cumbersome behind him. Alas, his struggle on land was worth it, and he could finally stand face to face with the petals he'd long since admired from the water.
Most of Delta's diet was fish. Fish and sea grapes and shellfish and whatever else could fit inside his mouth; growing up in the ocean had made him far from picky. He'd long since grown accustomed to those salty tastes, so the discovery of sweet was something else entirely. The land had sweet things! Sweet things like flowers! He looked nervously back and forth through the grass before snapping one of the flowers up in his jaws, leaving only the naked stem attached before moving onto the next.
They were delicious, yes, but dangerous. Leaving the water was always a risk and something to be avoided, but the flowers would be gone soon, and it would take months before he could taste them again.
While he'd reached his fill for the moment, another idea came to him. Carefully he began to gather more of the blossoms within his jaws, clutching the stalks of several between his teeth before backing out from the grass and awkwardly turning his long body around to face the river again.
In theory, Urna should have been heading towards Cloud Bend. But the squirming, gnawing, burning tension at her core had only grown since she'd returned home, and she wasn't ready to face the crowds or sit still for a doubtless long and boring meeting until it was out.
She needed a chance to cut loose and blow off some steam, and she couldn't do that with her kingdom-mates chattering all around her. Urna slipped into the field alone. Goldenrod brushed her chest. The flowers were starting to turn white and fluffy, but they still buzzed with the slow insect activity of early morning. Bees warmed their wings on high stems and crickets hopped away from her paws with every step.
The unbothered quiet called to her, and the itch in her heart grew. She gave in. Urna fell onto her back and thrashed, sending up clouds of downy seeds and tiny moths whose wings caught the golden morning sunlight. She surged to her feet and leapt, kicking like a foal. It wasn't enough. She nipped at the dry stalks, ripped them, worried them flat beneath her teeth. Her claws tore up clods of earth.
The first burbling syllable of a laugh swelled in her throat, but an unfamiliar scent (among the crushed leaves and overturned soil) reached her, and she swallowed the sound abruptly. Flipping onto her stomach, she rose into a wary crouch, her eyes just high enough to peer through to the river bend.
What was that? A something, moving in an ungainly shuffle back towards the water's edge. An otter? But no, it had fins. A seal? Its movement was weird. Huh.
Could catch it and find out.
Urna trotted obliquely closer, drawing as close as she could to the river while still sticking to the higher grasses. The strange creature's smooth little head hit a familiar angle. A cat! Maybe. It clutched a bundle of flowers in its mouth.
"Hey!" Urna galloped the last few paces towards the riverbank, her tail flipping up over her back. "Who are you?" she challenged.
---
just a silly lil dice roll to determine whether she was stealthy in her approach or not
success: with the wind in her favor, Urna's able to get pretty close to Delta without alerting him. failure: girl u are not even a little bit sneaky. Delta can definitely notice her right away.
Character Diceroll 1: Success Diceroll must be above 500 to be successful.
0 was added for Dexterity.
557 was added for Level 2.
0 was added for A. No Enchantment.
0 was added for A. No Buff / Penalty.
For a brief moment, Delta swore he heard a sort of caw, like that of a crow, but upon flinching and scanning his gaze up and down the horizon, he spotted nowhere to perch and no black shapes dotting the sky. It was the closest noise he could link the sound to, but whichever bird or beast that made it eluded his vision. He flared his nostrils, but paired with the strong fragrance of the flowers in his jaws and the breeze blowing upwind, no unfamiliar scents came to him. A familiar anxiety twinged in his chest, and the safety of the water called to him as he shuffled closer to the bank with nervous, hurried steps.
He was not fast enough however to outpace the sudden thud of paws behind him, and the spike of adrenaline which coursed through his little body was only amplified by a sudden call which rung unrecognizable in his panicked mind. The instinct to escape flashed to the forefront--underwater, he would have kicked off the bank and pumped his fins to catch the current downstream, but such instincts proved less than helpful on land. Muscle memory had him kick off the gravel in an undignified hop, stumpy limbs flailing out in all directions as his tail lashed uselessly and his fins flapped against the air. It was more of a full body spasm than anything, and he stumbled to catch himself in a clumsy landing with his mouth agape and little fangs bared towards her. His bundle of flowers now laid haphazardly scattered around his paws, and he arched his long body and let out a gurgling, high-pitched hiss.
It took a moment for his eyes to catch up with his thudding heart, but when they did, he recognized the large shape as something wolf-adjacent. It was bright and warm, like sunbaked clay, with strange tentacles writing across its haunches like stinging anemones and hot light flashing through its chest. It looked of soil and earth, and its low voice, her low voice, now that he parsed her words, rumbled like a tremor through the dirt. Delta nearly didn't recognize that she'd spoken, but through the fog of fight and flight, it proved a tiny relief that it wasn't some mindless beast who'd caught him outside the water.
That wasn't to say that the experience still wasn't terrifying.
"Um," Delta sputtered, struggling to be polite because she'd asked him a question, but also battling the urge to shriek as loud as he could as he had done with predators in the past. If he screamed, perhaps it would distract her enough for him to break for the water and dive to safety; but would she attack him? She was confronting him, yes, but if she could speak, then she was like him. Would she still eat him if they were the same in that way? Slowly, he took a shaky step back towards the water, not taking his eyes off the stranger. In any case, he needed to be back in the river.
"I am River Delta," he answered shakily, very obvious in his attempts to shuffle backwards towards the water's edge. "I am--are these your flowers?"
Urna looked at the flowers, now scattered around the finned creature. "Uh, no." Up close now, with the urgency of intercepting the stranger gone, she started to realize how the situation looked.
On reflection, she had, perhaps...come on a little strong.
Flowery Fields bordered Verdantis' territory, sure, but it wasn't her responsibility to guard it from others looking to share in its bounty. The intrusion by Duskorna still had her keyed up. Urna suppressed the urge to put herself between Delta and the water, and instead self-consciously brushed crushed blooms from the side of her shaggy neck. "I am Urna, of Verdantis," she offered. "Muddy River is my home." She nodded in the direction, though her eyes lingered on the shining line of the river's route. Which way was Delta planning to head? (From which way did he come?)
She could just ask. "You're not from around here."Close enough.
Delta only stopped his nervous shuffling once he felt the cool water of the bank pooling around his paws. It was at least a small relief to know that deeper water stood only a leap away from him now, and the damp fur which spiked along his spine eased seeing that the stranger made no move to intercept him (yet). Instead, she began to dust her pelt free of the same petals Delta has been previously eating. Was it common then for animals like them to visit these rolling hills? The little cat had only seen the shapes of large herbivores from his view in the water, but it made sense that smaller creatures would be obstructed by the tall grass.
How much can't I see? Are there more of her? Delta nervously tasted the air, but all he could sense was the thick aroma of flowers. He jumped again when the stranger spoke, though made no further retreat into the water as he hesitantly followed her gaze towards the nearby muddy river. The breeze around there had always carried the scent of wolf, but Delta had never stepped a paw on land there to investigate. Did this pack--Verdantis, own the river itself? Had he been trespassing?
Delta was a poor liar, so elected to say nothing yet as a fresh wave of guilt and fear crashed in his belly. Instead, his recollection wandered back to another pack he'd heard mentioned, and his eyes lit with surprise at the sudden realization.
"Urna, of Verdantis," he awkwardly tested the new kingdom's name, "you are a different pack?" The fish-wolf he'd spoken to at the cove, Loch, had said he was from a pack named Dusknora. This same river lead to where they'd previously spoken, were the two packs close in more than just location? Allies, perhaps? Or were there so many groups here that their territories bordered? Delta shuddered at the thought of all the animals it would take to fill this land with packs, more than there had been of his family in the ocean, certainly. Of all the times he'd been beneath the water and not bothering to surface, had he been making enemies of countless organizations by trespassing?
"I am from the ocean," he answered simply, gesturing with his stumpy muzzle towards the opposite direction of the muddy river. He kept his frightened gaze firmly affixed to Urna; her words had been less of a question and more of a statement, but it had been a correct one.
"We did not have packs," he awkwardly continued. "How many are...how much of you are there here?"
The creature—Delta—made it to the water. To his credit, he didn't immediately turn tail and splash away. She watched him with mild and fearless curiosity, despite the antsiness that had started to claw at her again. What was he thinking about?
He repeated the name she'd given him, kingdom included. Urna's eyes narrowed. "Different?" She cocked her head dangerously, but her stance eased slightly when he answered her non-question. Casting her eyes out toward the indicated horizon, she pictured the ocean: vast, deep, wild and—so she'd thought—fairly empty of the kinds of creatures that spoke sense.
Urna huffed wry surprise at his next question. "I don't rightly know, myself. Verdantis is bigger than my old clan, for sure. Two hundred, maybe? I'll be seeing for myself soon." Caution kept her from offering more information about the meeting. The last thing Duskorna needs to know is when our patrols will be thin at the fringes.
Time to pry the other way. "You've met another pack?"
Urna's head tilted at his mention of the other pack; although the motion by itself would not have frightened him normally, a cold uneasiness wormed its way through his belly as her eyes narrowed. Delta focused on the cool water lapping at his paws, grounding himself with its presence as he swallowed a lump rising in his throat and listened to her speak. At the mention of Verdantis' size, the little cat's eyes widened. Two hundred? That was far more than he'd anticipated, and he shuddered at the thought of just how crowded a place like that could be.
"Wow," Delta muttered, flicking his gaze away from Urna to leer anxiously into the horizon where the distant shapes of mountains and woodland loomed above the flowers. He nearly didn't catch her uncertainty on the numbers--too preoccupied imagining the vast amount of unseen lives tangled within the kingdom borders. He blinked, anxiety momentarily forgotten as he looked back towards Urna and mirrored her, awkwardly tilting his own head.
"Seeing yourself? Are you new as well, Urna?" He didn't specify which new, whether it be to the land or to the kingdom itself. He supposed both questions applied, especially since she'd mentioned having a previous pack; or clan, as she'd called it. Perhaps the word was just far enough removed from wolf-kind to make him less nervous, but Delta found himself preferring the term. Clan. It rolled off the tongue nicely. Slowly, perhaps due to the soothing pull of water around him, he untensed and allowed his fur to flatten.
"Yes! Yes," Delta started, snapping from his thoughts at the stranger's next question. "They who follow our Goddess. I met one, and he came from the sea also. I never knew wolves could."
He nodded, half to himself before continuing. "But you are of land, not water. Is Verdantis land as well?"
