Nay he said, nay and nay again, to staying put inside the lands meant for his kind and his kind alone. Everyone there was always so mean, such a burden on his poor shoulders, and rarely could he so much as sleep in the hopes of getting some privacy without someone crazy and weird rambling into his ear - how he kept himself from biting off their tongue so they could burden him not a second more was beyond him. It was because of this, because of how he’d sooner not have the bitter aftertaste of bloody tongues in his mouth, that he traveled far and wide with big dreams, bright eyes, and his nose to the ground. He smelled something funny. He was sure, not, of whether he’d like to eat it. It smelled distinctly of rat, and he was shocked at the thought of how it was, perhaps, a rat after all. Maybe he could hunt it for pleasure, instead of for food - though something inside of his stomach was starting to churn rather painfully. He couldn’t keep up with this hunger for long. Rat or not, he wouldn’t be picky about making it into a quick snack.

His paws padded against the floor of the cove incredibly softly, like he was a ghost, not a wolf, simply floating to its destination. Eyes of emerald were reluctant to miss the slightest thing, shifting uncontrollably from his left to his right, from the ground to the ceiling, as though maybe, just maybe, that rat might choose to hide from him on the ceiling. It was such a clever thing to do, but he would not be bested! No, not by a rat!

It wasn’t long afterward until he began to smell something different, something not rat-like at all. Intrigued, momentarily driven to forget about the hunt he was meant to be on, he pursued the scent of canine that clung to the walls he walked by. It would be rude of him to take the stranger by surprise, and so, in the hopes of not doing such a thing to the unsuspecting fellow, he began to hum a tune under his breath. There was no words accompanying the soft melody. There would have been, for surely he had plenty to say, but nothing seemed right for the moment - perhaps he could sing along to the lines of oh darling I’m coming for you but would that not leave the stranger with an uncomfortable, awkward feeling? He didn’t want to scare the disadvantaged wolf away; no, not before he so much as got a glimpse of him. He needed some company, some normal company that differentiated from what he had to put up with back home. He could tone down the creepiness for a little while, could he not?

Obscuro, the solo wolf, the one of white, rounded a corner, his hum heightening in pitch for the briefest of moments as his eyes fell upon the silhouette of the creature he had been meaning to stumble upon. A grin stretched from one corner of his jaw to the other, approaching on light paws. He had every intention of spurring out some kind of a greeting, up until he saw the corpse of a rat laying helplessly, lifelessly, at the stranger’s front. His grin slowly faded away until it was naught, regarding the creature, his memory faint but present nonetheless. Had he not been stalking something? Food? The very rat at this male’s paws? He sniffed, unsure of what it was that his mind wanted to tell him. Had he stolen this catch from him? This meal that would solve the problem bubbling to life in his stomach? The thing that he had been pursuing for a very long time? “Pardon you,” - he would not say pardon me when it was him that was meant to be pardoning his behaviour - “but the food chain insists that I eat this rat, for lack of a better substitute. It’s only fair, for I have been searching for it for quite some time. Quite some time, indeed.” He dipped his head, then, as though such would aid this wolf in better seeing the picture he was trying to paint. “Either way, I must eat something before starvation drives me to do a crazy thing. I don’t want to do something crazy, oh no, dearest me, not at all, but the crazy thing in question demands to be done. I cannot question such a direct demand!” Eyes of brilliant green widened substantially, surprised at his revelation. “This crazy thing is ticking inside of me: like one, two, and three. Oh, there just went four. Maybe it’s not so crazy after all, then - crazy things happen on the count of three, don’t they?” And then there was silence. Nothing but this strange silence as the air stilled, anticipating what would happen next in this cove, a Helidos wolf trapped inside of its depths by the true essence of sickness at its finest.