I have been walking this land for 5 years.
I have always been seen as a brute.

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The plateau stretched out in an unbroken sprawl, a sea of bristling blades of greens and yellows wavering under the coaxing breath of the breeze. The terrain here felt dreary, uneventful -- half-mournful, half-indifferent to those who dared traverse its breadth.

The tardy sun cast a pallid, gold-tinged hue across the skyline, its light dancing sickly atop the countless blades of silage that flickered like restless shadows. Above, clouds drifted low and gray, their bloated forms promising rain, though the earth below seemed dried enough to consume a deluge and ask for more.

Demas moved with the deft silence of a predator, his slender frame slicing through the wild growth without disturbance. His stirs were measured, each tread thorough to leave as little evidence of his passage as possible. The woolly black of his fur absorbed the murky light, making him appear more like a shadow than a creature of flesh and bone. He caught the vague tang of pine sap on his fur, a remnant of his last passage through a viscous thicket, and beneath it, the ever-present odour of soil and stone that cleaved to him like a second skin. His pearly irises, dark and hooded, surveyed the rolling expanse ahead, though they did so almost absently. He tailed the footpath carved by the wolf ahead of him -- an outline of paw prints pressed into the foliage, leading ever onward. A part of him wanted to hasten his gait, to stride past Visarik and set his own route, but the pragmatic core of his presence defied.

It was safer this way, to tread a half-step behind, to let another wolf carve through the uncertainty of the unknown. Safety had a price, he reminded himself, even if it meant swallowing the knot of resentment that coiled like a serpent in his chest.

The stillness was not the serene kind. It was hefty, oppressive even, pressing against his thoughts as if daring him to fill the void with words. But he would not.

Words were brittle things -- fragile, delicate, and prone to treachery. The fewer of them exchanged, the fewer threads left for fate to twist. Yet, as the breeze picked up and the silage whispered louder in its grip, his mind betrayed him with thoughts he could not silence.

This companionship -- if it could even be called that -- was a necessary evil. A means to an end. He reminded himself that Visarik’s presence was not a comfort, nor a trust. It was a precaution. A shield. To Demas, survival was the only pact they shared, unspoken yet understood. The very notion of needing another irked him, but the solitude he once embraced so freely had turned bitter in the face of the open plains. Out here, alone was a gamble, and Demas wasn’t the class to take reckless chances. Not anymore.

As his paws pressed into the moist ground, his mind briefly flickered to the rain threatening above. Its arrival was inescapable, though its chill would be welcome against the heat that simmered beneath his skin -- the silent bitterness that he carried as one carries a blade. Concealed, but honed. Always honed. He drew in a slow breath, his nostrils flaring as he caught the mingling scents of far-fetched thunder. The thought drifted unbidden, a whisper that stung as much as it soothed. Loneliness is a sanctuary, but even sanctuaries can become prisons if the walls are too high.

He swallowed the idea, brushing it aside like the fodder that tickled his limbs. For now, there was only the path ahead, the tousle of gale against his lobes, and the stable footfalls of the wolf in front of him. For now, that was enough.