bury me low

As a desert child, Cera was used to early mornings. When the sun awoke, so did its disciple. So as the golden light crested over the horizon, Cera shook his fur out and faced the dawn with a yawn of blackened lips and flashing teeth. He strikes out quickly, a lighthearted jog of long, stiltlike limbs warming muscles from their slumber. He doesn't have a home to call his own, though many abandoned ones are available and many others had built their own. Until the time comes that he has the resources to do so himself, he calls these woods his temporary home - sleeping in his canine form to preserve heat, burrowing beneath exposed roots to create a rotating series of dens. It's more familiar to him than modern domiciles, but he knows someday soon he will have to relinquish this kind of existence, if only because winter bears down with a looming promise of harsh nights. Hunting is similarly easy in his coat of furs, and with his...peculiar past lives, he has a very easygoing palette. Though his more carnivorous nature has been difficult to adjust to, taking life never something he has preferred, the bartering he has been able to strike up with the delivery of fresh meats has awarded him the coin, food, and items that he would not have otherwise. If he is reluctant to join civilization until he gains his full bearings, well...that is for him to know and others to ponder. Another day of aimlessness awaits him, and Cera greets it with a growing sense of boredom. Perhaps his days of nomad life are numbered if he is already this lonely and directionless. With a deep inhale, Cera's treading paws falter as new scent filters through his sensitive nose. Large ears swivel uncertainly upon his cranium, trademark green eyes flickering across the bramble before him. It is not the scent of prey he has become accustomed to, and he certainly doesn't want to pick a fight with another predator in a body he is not entirely familiar with yet. Still...Smith had informed him of the magic of the land and the shapeshifters that also inhabited it. He could not merely assume anymore that every creature he crossed paths with was feral. A soft whine slips from blackened lips, lilting high at the end in an inquisitive sort of noise far too human for his vessel. He shoulders past the dew-damp brush, eyes alighting upon another similarly shaped figure. Hello? he calls tentatively with his mind, as Smith had taught him. Whether or not it works is up to the fates to decide. His tail is lowered and ears perked, trying to exude a friendly and curious air instead of a threatening one. Still so unfamiliar with his canine self, Cera merely tries to relax and do what feels instinctual, natural. Hopefully, the other wolf will see it for what it is - an olive branch. If you want to shine like a sun, first you must burn

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