OOC: Great post, Draiko, it feels good for the club to be moving again. Tracker should be back any day now, too. *Cattle prods her* Fantastic post by you, too, Husky, good development. :-) Could I ask every member with an active character to make a post for one of them as soon as you can, please. Simply to see who's still here, and to unstick the game a little. Post even if you're waiting for someone else, regardless of whose turn it is, it doesn't have to be very long even. "Thor blinked and waited" would be fine for example. Thanks! Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

BIC: The human nodded slowly to Omara's words, left to mull over the experience as she gracefully departed. The hindrance of the old wolf's leg was still plaguing her in this cold, it was a shame, an unfair and unfortunate burden. The weight and significance of what had just happened still sinking in. The damp nudge against John's hand brought him out of his pensiveness though, and as the Tharadra'al alpha left to see to her pack, he turned his head to see Husky looking up at him somewhat expectantly, and he thought he caught something about not wanting him to wander around alone. She wasn't as easy to understand as Sybrix, the Collie whom had seemed to adopt him as her owner and formed a special bond with, but the rugged youth was good enough at least to get the basic message of the wolfdog's words. It was gallant of her, in the state she was in, to try and repay the favour so soon.

It did look like the hybrid's leg had healed though, and the cast just needed removing. Most of her poor condition had been down to starvation and despair, exposure, but that was tended to now, and she could wolf down one of Omara's rabbits before they left, if she insisted on joining him. Sybrix would probably be glad of some time alone, she was irritated enough with him for all the strays and needy animals he kept bringing home and trying to help, they just seemed to have a habit of finding him it seemed, or vice versa. He'd take the other two coneys down for her to eat while they were out, yeah, that'd work. John started to feel a sense of direction and purpose again, some more stability and simplicity in his life, he had his own little family out here now. Just a simple case of setting up the fishing nets at the river, and then checking out the southeast border to see if that vision, or impression he got from the link with Omara's pack, had been accurate. It wouldn't do to have rogue wolves near his home when Sybrix was with cubs, and not at her best from fever. So, that was the plan: Fix Husky's cast, get her to eat, sort the nets out, have a sniff round the woods to the southeast. And then home, to rest his wrist. Aranok's teeth had dug in amongst the bones and ligaments, he could barely twitch his fingers, but given time, he was sure it'd heal over, nothing was broken, after all, just a fracture, they tended to repair themselves if you just rested them right.

John gave a smile down to his recently made friend, and with his left, uninjured hand, the one she'd nosed, he gave her fine, if slightly ragged, head a pair of thankful strokes, running over her right ear. A few good meals, some time to groom and take care of herself without that cast getting in the way, and he was sure she'd make a strapping bitch, more than capable. He gave a short chuckle, and took welcome advantage of domestic dogs' understanding of human language, "That's very kind of you. I accept your company, it'll give me someone to talk to on the way." The young man nodded to the cast on her right foreleg (it's the right leg because I say so; I've just looked back all the way to where she was shot in it and can't find one mention of 'left' or 'right' anywhere) with a mild furrow of his brow. "But first, we should get that thing off of you. However long's it been on? And how did you hurt your leg, anyway?" The cast itself was in an advanced state of disrepair, Husky's limb less fleshed out inside the rigid carapace now in her weaker condition than when it had first been formed. It jogged against her ulna as she walked, a cumbersome bracer now that its work had been done. A good few cracks against something hard and it should come free, he could probably hammer it against one rock with another rock, there were a few lying around out here at the edge of the pine forest, churned up by the gradual vertical ascent of all that which is buried in the Arctic circle, with the ground compacting and expanding continually over the seasons and the years. Old graveyards could be quite macabre, as coffins rose to the surface, buried long before such pedological processes were known to man.

In any case, the human brushed a few flecks of snow out of his beard with an absent hand and waited for the dog's answer, it'd be the first time the two of them had a proper talk, and could learn a little about each other. The morning was early yet, there was no need to rush.

 -John