It snowed heavily, making the midafternoon look like evening. Beren tramped dully through the muck, trying his best to avoid the deepest snowdrifts and the frozen streams that seemed to insist on being all over the landscape. He was hungry, and tired, and therefore very angry at everything. It was unlucky that he'd run into this snowstorm, and, without something else to blame, he blamed the gods..and spent most of the time cursing them under his breath, especially whenever he tripped over a hidden item in the snow and fell into a hole. As, in fact, he had just then, ending up in white powder up to his flanks. Because, of course, this snow was not the pleasant wet variety that melted into an ice crust and was easy to walk on. No. This was of the soft type which seemed more like ash than frozen water, and which never froze, and barely settled. It was nearly impossible to walk through. In fact, if Beren hadn't been in the middle of an unprotected and wolf-infested forest he would have long ago settled down for the night. As it was, he was in a hurry to get along. Night would be coming before long, and he did not plan to be out in this. If he recalled correctly there were some caves up in the hills behind this forest, and hopefully one or two of them would be uninhabited and he could spend the night there.
He struggled out of the snowdrift, snarling to himself, and carried on, attempting to get most of the snow off of himself. This did not work as well as he planned, due to the fact that more white powder continued to drift out of the sky and land on him. Beren stared up at the clouds, frowning darkly, muttered about the weather, and made a note to himself to find something to eat before he had to hole up in a cave for several days. It looked as if this storm was about to get much worse. The wolf paused and turned eastward, heading for the distant hills at a steady lope. Hopefully he would find something to eat before he arrived. Otherwise, it might be too late, but it was hardly the first time that Beren had gone hungry. Nor, in fact, would it be the last. Today, however, it seemed that he wouldn't be starving to death just yet. Beren somehow had picked the exact correct direction and, sooner, rather than later, began to pick up smells of old blood under the snow. This caused him to wonder who had decided to make a large kill (the blood smelled of elk) right before a snowstorm. But then, there it was, and as he followed the scent, the blood trail got clearer and clearer. The dead elk was at the bottom a slight hill, in a spot mostly clear of trees. It was even convenient to the caves. Beren got the feeling that this was too good to be true. He'd have to advance cautiously, just in case the pack that had made the kill (which, to be fair, was at least forty-eight hours old) was not still hanging around. Birds seemed, from a distance, to have picked some of it clean, but not enough for there to be nobody around.
In fact, he noted as he approached slowly, there was a fairly heavy scent of several wolves around the dead animal. None of them were very recent, though. Perhaps they'd abandoned the elk in the interest of getting indoors before the snowstorm? The aging male stopped to sniff at the corpse, mentally listing the number and gender of the other canines that had been there recently, and decided to himself that the kill was abandoned. This might have been a decision based more on his own hunger than good sense, but he needed to eat. There would be no hunting in the storm that was coming up.
He was just beginning to eat when he noted a shape moving in the trees nearby, and raised his head to frown at it. It was the size of another wolf, and, he assumed (or hoped, more likely) was another wanderer. The gypsy really didn't feel like wrangling with some impromptu pack of wolves at the moment, come back to defend their prey after two full days. He raised his head and tail, looked straight at the other half-hidden animal, and raised his voice into a threatening growl. "Gypsy-right, stranger. Finder's, keeper's." The laws of the wanderer were very clear on the matter of found prey. No matter who had abandoned a corpse, the first wolf to find it had rights...so long as they could defend it, and Beren had every intention of doing so. He stood, head forward, paws squarely beneath him in the thickening snowfall, waiting for the other wolf to respond.
It didn't matter how continuously she cursed the skies above for the fall of frozen white that bit at her bones through her thin pelt, the damned snow kept falling from the thick grey haze of the sky onto her pacing body with no intention of ceasing anytime soon as the wolf made her way though the endless snow-covered terrain of the Orriens. Oh how she hated Winter. Irritated, hungry and driven to the point where her mood was as good as a questioned Alpha--Kitsch snapped her jaws angrily at the flake that fell too tauntingly close to her side for her liking and swished her tail in a quick fashion to rid herself of the consistent white that stuck stubbornly to her wet, brown pelt. Whatever she had snuffed out through this miserable weather had better damn well be there when she arrived.
Why was it that she continued to stalk these colder climates when she ached for the searing heat of the sun only a desert could give? Because she was a lone wolf, and hunting wasn't exactly her forte--especially if she had no back up to help her which was why she was forced to follow the trail of a near-fresh kill for the last hour. If the storm had by any means mislead her...
No, that wasn't the problem here. What was, was the fact that her next meal was not lying stranded in the open like she had hoped--wished it to have been. Some other wanderer had decided to cosy itself up to the deer without any intention of moving anytime soon. It had noticed her it seemed, as it lifted it's head from where it was previously sniffing out the meal--her meal, and now drew his attention at her approaching, voice catching on the wind that was neither polite, nor friendly. 'Gypsy-rights, stranger. Finder's keepers.' Gypsy's rights? That term alone had her blood boil within already barely contained irritation. To no surprise, Kitsch's hackles rose on her continued approach, both bluffing to hide her smaller size, yet mostly displaying her displeasure at having her meal taken as soon as she had found it. Being in a less-advantage state to the wolf didn't stop her standing at the other side of deer, a row of white, pearly teeth just visible over peeling lips as she stared him down. 'Survival of the fittest.' The femme snapped back, having no desire to back down if a fight arose from the already tense air as she nipped at the fold of skin at the deer's hoof in a testing, cautious manner, savage eyes watching the other's movements within a taut, leaned body. She wasn't about to let a chance for a meal get away from her that easily. Even if this wolf was a Gypsy.
