Light of May ::: an original roleplay

Who: Sam.
Where: Summers territory; the woods behind the house.
When: Early evening.

Curiosity was a dangerous thing, contagious and unstoppable, it flowed and it spread and if left unchecked it could lead to dark places. Sam had learned that early in life but the wolf in him was so conscious, so strong at the fore at all times, that that curiosity never really went away, not fully, never permanently. It pulled him out of his comfort zone and into the unknown. Time and time again it drew him from the places he knew were safest and out into the world where anything could happen. Like this morning.

The house was the safest place for him, increasingly familiar and comforting because of that fact, but there was something out there. Something he knew he should fear. Something he needed to identify because uncertainty was the worst thing to feel and if he knew what he was supposed to be afraid of maybe that would make things easier. Sam was probably lying to himself on that front but he was so good at that, convincing himself of things most others would deny outright. It was one of the reasons he had become an Omega so completely, in every way a person could embody such a thing.

His paws covered the ground easily at a gentle, cautious lope, taking him closer to the edge of the Summer’s Pack’s territory where he had told himself he would stop, and stop he did, standing on the proverbial line between one patch of line and the next, picking out the scents of wolves he knew and others he didn’t. There was another pack nearby, he knew that, had come to learn that very quickly after being brought to the house and encouraged to explore. But there was something else, something that he knew deep down in the pit of his being, something that had a cold creeping sense of dread and icy fear rising from within. It laced down the length of his spine as he stood there, staring with alert golden eyes into the shadows that clung to the trees and bushes and ground in the early evening, day losing its grip to the approaching dusk, the sun setting below the horizon.

Sam didn’t notice any of that, too caught up in that scent -- those scents, he realised with a shudder of approaching panic -- to take it in. Instead he stood there staring into the distance, ears twitching and pivoting on top of his wolfen head as he finally took his gaze from that fixed point dead ahead, scanning the surrounding area. Left, right, and then each again, checking each of the compass points in between. Nothing. Nothing to see or hear.

That didn’t mean there hadn’t been anything there, though. Sam knew that as certainly as he knew his own name. That cold sense of dread was rising ever higher until he couldn’t stand it any longer and with a wave of nausea sweeping and rolling like a lazy wave through his stomach he moved, suddenly swinging his agile body around and turning himself back towards the house.

When he moved back for its welcome familiarity and sense of comfort and safety it was no longer at an easy lope that he did so. Sam ran, as hard and fast as he could..