hide & seek [o]

Auru Geniven

Where... am I?

He'd gotten turned around again. Mist and fog clogged the senses; something the man grown up as a nomad ought to know by now, but always found himself surprised by whenever he happened across it once more. It made it hard to even get a good scent, never mind seeing anything or anyone even through the haze.

With his luck, he was liable to walk right off the edge of a cliff and never be seen again, the dense fog muffling his cries of surprise and even the grisly thud and splattering of his body on whatever lie below the edge.

...

That was a little morbid. Happy thoughts. All he knew was he was in the fog, in a forest, and that so far, he had yet to encounter any unwanted cliff sides that might lead to his demise. See? A plus right there, already off to a good start.

Well, half of one. He could do without the whole being lost bit. But then again, he'd never been here before. Never been in any of this surrounding land before. 'Lost' was his entire state of being.

But then again, could one really be lost when one had never known a home to begin with? Could you really be lost when you had never known an area well enough to not be lost in before?

Thoughts for another time. For right now, the piercing and winding voice that echoed from the nearby landscape, like a ghost of the dead whose cries rang out into heavy mist.

"I'll leave you to the spirits of the dead!"

Well.

That wasn't foreboding at all.

Perhaps a swift retreat from whatever otherworldly figure chose this time to make herself known was in order.

Unfortunately for Auru, the dense fog allowed for his fear of falling to come true as he tried to turn and make an escape. Well, half-true. There was no falling off of a cliff side for the young man, but he certainly did find himself sprawled out on the forest floor as a mixture of a squeak and a grunt erupted from his chest in surprise.

He winced as he jaw clanged against a stone hidden under the forest soil, likely causing what would surely be a nasty bruise beneath the copper-eyed man's dark pelt. He raised a paw to rub at the minor injury in hesitant pain.

But a sudden realization distracted him from the light throbbing and instead perked up his ears to a frightened point. Muscles tensed as he froze in place, half-risen from the ground as he listened.

Ah, right, he wasn't alone, was he?

Auru Geniven

First of all,

Fuck.

Auru's head snapped around so quickly at the woman's approach that he would later be impressed that he hadn't come out of that incident with a bad case of whiplash. As it was, he had a cramp shortly afterward that was quite persistent.

Perhaps in a more ideal, or perhaps simply stereotypical, situation Auru would have stood his ground. He was the male, he was the one who ought to be larger and stronger. While in reptiles, the females were the more powerful, in mammals, it was often the males who carried greater strength, and as such, Auru should not have had any issue with being told by a female that he was trespassing in her territory.

As reality stood, Auru had always been slightly small, not too noticeably, but enough to note a subtle lack in height. He had the capability to layer his frame with muscle and power, true, but he was a skittish man, and skittish predators were often hard to come by their prey. He was not a skeleton by any means, but he did have a distinct look of being underfed, a consequence of not necessarily his poor hunting skills, but his tendency to flinch rather than pounce.

He was also in the wrong, he was the trespasser, and rather than playing the role of a dominant man who came to seek out new lands, his eyes instead snapped to and fro before zeroing back in on the dominant woman, trying to see if any more members of this unknown pack would simply appear from the mist like the undead ghosts he still half believed the woman to be.

He was pressed low to the ground, belly against the damp soil and head tucked in on his own frame. His ears were back and tail tucked between legs, but he was so low that one couldn't even see the appendage. Limbs were splayed as he had fallen, nails dug into the dirt as that fragile frame was shaken with frightened tremors but the man found himself without the will to run, cowering rather than fleeing despite the way every instinct screamed to leave.

Copper eyes were blown wide as Auru's jaw worked furiously, trying to come up with some explanation.

"I-I-I-I'm s-sorr-ry I-I-I didn't know- th-the f-f-fog- I-I-I d-didn't s-smell a-a-any m-markers I-I-I'm s-s-sorry-"

His mouth continued to work unintelligibly as Auru tried to come up with something, something more, something that would get him the chance to escape.

Something.

Anything.

But all he could think was a frightened circle of apologies, and he pondered in some distant corner of his mind that this was a fitting end for such a lowly wretch as he.

Auru Geniven

A smile curled its way across her lips, and Auru could not help but to be reminded of a serpent coiling itself before its deadly strike.

He had to wonder if this was a cobra who flared her hood before the bite, or a python whose bite was only a distraction from the coils wrapping tight around slender bones until they shattered and ground to dust.

"Forgive me, I tend to act before thinking sometimes - there is no need to be afraid."

If you will excuse me as I politely leave the room to get some fresh air due to the overwhelming scent of bullshit.

"What is your name, stranger? And why have you come here?"

Why had he come here?

The man remained on the ground as he was, ears back and teeth bared in fright, looking more like glass which would shatter to pieces if touched than a wolf. Copper eyes flicked from eye to eye as he looked at her, taking short moments to glance at the surrounding area for approaching trouble as his mind contemplated the question.

It was a fair one, an expected one, yet still Auru found himself to struggle with the answer.

He had never much had a reason to be anywhere before, there never was a reason to be there, he just was.

Such was the nomadic lifestyle. You didn't go anywhere because you needed to, or because you were required to make your presence known, you simply traveled because that was what you did, wandering was what defined you. You had no home, home was something for others. All you had were your paws and your claws, you laid no claim to a territory, held no duties except to care for yourself.

He had never had a reason to be anywhere, how was he supposed to answer?

Seeing as how his mind could come up with no better answer, and Auru's thoughts just chased each other round and round in panicked circles as he tried to answer her question, but came up short, he figured that if he were searching for a way to answer, perhaps honestly was the best path.

It still took a moment to find his voice behind clenched jaws, muscle tight and tense and difficult to unlock.

"I-I-I... A-Auru. I-I ju-just... wand-dering..."