The booming voice coming out of the snow-encrusted silent forest made her jump and spin around, inadvertently yanking on the scarf-turned-leash. The fawn protested, but Philotes kept her eyes on the rapidly approaching man. Who turned out to be a god. Which wasn't necessarily a good thing. Men of this period in time seemed to have some very distinct ideas about women traveling alone. That could prove problematic should she run into one of them, but she was fairly confident in her abilities to talk her way out of such a situation. With a mortal. With a god, well, Philotes was made of tougher stuff than most credited her with, but she wasn't exactly a fighter by any stretch of the imagination. And she didn't know just what this guy was god of, either.
So when he said she should be there, Lottie didn't know whether to take it as a warning or a threat. She was sort of leaning towards threat when he added the part about things worse than wolves. Was he referring to himself? Was he telling her to get out or she'd see his bad side? Uncertain, she decided to play it cautiously until she could figure things out.
“I know,” she told him. “About the wolves, I know. They almost caught up to us once already, but the fawn was orphaned and I found him before they did, so he's mine and I'm not letting him become lunch, not this fawn, not today.”
Her jaw was set in a stubborn line by the time she finished speaking. Anybody that knew her would recognize that look and know Lottie wasn't going to budge an inch from the position she'd taken. In this case, there was no way this new god was going to persuade her to leave the fawn behind. It just wasn't going to happen. And with the burst of stubbornness came a false sense of bravery as well. She wasn't letting the wolves have the baby deer, and she wasn't letting this god bully her either. And for that matter, damn the snow and the cold too!
Lottie lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “Do you know how far we are from Bifrost?”