Ice-blue eyes, weary from hours of reading, pressed themselves closed momentarily in order to relieve themselves, even if just for a second. After a moment they opened again once more the cyclical routine of reading began once more. Line by line, the tabby's oculars steadily grew heavy, until eventually Alaric could not take it anymore and he closed the tome with a single paw.

    Since arriving in Tanglewood, Alaric hadn't had the easiest time assimilating to the life of a Tangler. He'd previously prided himself on being adaptable, and now he was beginning to eat his words. Many Tanglers regarded him with suspicion, and the only answer that he could get as to why was something about the "political climate", whatever the fuck that meant. The tabby was not at all well-informed about what was happening in and around Tanglewood. In all honesty, though, their skeptic stares did not faze him. As long as they left him alone he would be okay—until then, he'd keep to himself and his tomes.

    The library was one of two refuges that he actively sought after. Its collection was not exactly massive, but the number of books that could be found there was certainly respectable. Similarly respectable was the range of genres that the library boasted. Alaric himself had already borrowed quite a number of books, many of which he'd finished in the short time that he had lived in the Tangle. He was well aware that he needed to return them, but somehow it kept slipping his mind and the piles of books in his home continued to climb to new heights.

    On this particular night, Alaric had been reading through yet another one of the library's small collection of medical and veterinary journals. He was finding them to be quite fascinating, in all honesty, even though most were about humans and their issues. The books about animals were even more intriguing to the tabby, especially since he, well, is one.

    Exhausted from poring over tomes, the tabby drew himself to his paws. He issued a glance around his home, noting the stacks of books that he needed to return to the library. He made a mental note to do that tomorrow. One book, which sat by itself near his bed, was about the medicinal properties of common herbs. The drawings were intricate and detailed, so much so that Alaric was beginning to notice several of them growing in the underbrush whenever he happened to decide to go hunt something to eat. He'd been reading through it abnormally slowly because he was making a conscious attempt to commit each of the herbs to memory.

    Alaric allowed a sigh to escape from his lips as he gazed around at the mess he'd made of his home. It was much too late in the night, he decided, to clean it all up. Instead, the tabby departed his home and began a trek towards the shore. He noted while pacing through the town that there was no soul in sight. He didn't give it much thought, though; a quick glance upward would reveal that the moon was directly overhead, meaning it was around midnight, which in turn meant that everyone in the town would be asleep. Alaric thanked the stars above for that.

    The journey to the beach seemed to get shorter each time he went there. This was not the first time that he had gone to the beach in the middle of the night. The droning of the waves crashing against the shore helped to clear his thoughts, and the beach's windless nighttime doldrums were always welcome.

    Walking out onto the soft sands, Alaric once more breathed in the salty air that he had become acutely familiar with. His paws carried him across the sand onto one of the piers extending outwards from the shore. He took a seat at the end of the wooden structure. The moon's ever-changing reflection on the water stared back at him like some sort of heavenly spy as he cast his gaze downwards. A sudden sense of tranquility settled over Alaric, reminding him of a time before he left his home. Yet another deep exhalation found its way past his loose lips as he continued to stare outwards at the sea.

Echoes of self-doubt and dismay reverberated off of the walls that enclosed the hound's mind. He perfectly understood how his underlings perceived him in the light of his recent decisions, and frankly, it had gotten under his skin. Being seen as a party bag of poor choices and irresponsible judgments by his friends and family was not how he envisioned his reign as general, yet lo and behold, that's the route he had apparently sent himself on. Absolutely no pointers or tips in regards to leading were shared by Crow, his predecessor, so the mongrel lamentably found himself being thrown off of the deep end. And it wasn't as though the other Tanglers were making it any easier, either. For some inexplicable reason, a fair majority of his comrades possessed little to no faith in their fresh leader, despite him dubbing the region as his home for nearly two years now.

So why the lack of faith?

It was completely beyond him, and the stupor he experienced while pondering on the subject left him rather upset.

The flow of complaints hadn't began until Leroy made the controversial decision to grant Pittian defectors permission to find a home in Tanglewood. By all means, the resolution came as deplorable to the canine as well - but he noticed an opportunity to weaken his tribe's loathsome enemy, and he pursued it. "From this moment forth, all Pittian deserters will be allowed into Tanglewood". From the moment those damned words left his conceited maw, the air in the atmosphere tasted different, shifting from clean and credible to precarious and problematic. In fact, it'd gotten so problematic, two of the general's most favoured confidants felt the need to depart from the territory; the one he'd considered to be a close friend, and the one he saw potential bubbling within. Their takeoffs catapulted a metaphorical boulder of monstrous proportions towards his confidence, which sustained massive damage from the impact.

At times like these, Leroy found comfort in moonlit jaunts through Tanglewood's claimed land. Call it cheesy or cliché, but it worked. When the commotion of everyday died down in the evening, he found that the negativity in the air did as well. Thenceforth, the night soon became the his preferred time of day. The shoreline existed as his location of choice when it came to his lucent strolls, for the nighttime serenity paired perfectly with the calming noise of ocean waves. The ocean spray also relaxed him, but sometimes that shit got in his mouth, which birthed an unpleasant experience for his taste buds.

Tonight didn't initially deviate from the others; at dusk, he vanished from the home that both him and Crow shared, and made for his routine nighttime hiking trail. All went typically until he arrived at the shoreline, where another figure could be spotted off yonder. They could have been doing quite an assortment of things, really - sulking about relationship problems, brooding about how tough life was, griping about their regrets, or anything of that sort. What they weren't doing, however, was subsisting with ill intent... Leroy was ninety-nine percent sure on that. Upon closer inspection, the realization that this individual was the one he'd met near the border soon came to him. This alleviated the male to a considerable degree, because in the case of this person being of, say, the Snarl sort, then the hound would have nope-d the fuck out of there.

Instead, curiosity brewed within him. Over these recent weeks, the backgrounds of newcomers developed as an interest for him. History was life's greatest teacher, and by peering into someone's past, one can uncover a wide variety of influential knowledge. If there was any way to strike a nerve within this fellow that caused both him and Leroy to relate with one another, then by all things holy, that'd be a victory and a half.

The wolfhound does not announce his presence from a distance. Rather, he discreetly encroaches on Alaric's position, and only speaks once within immediate earshot. "Hey," he greets softly, stopping his movement so that he stood a good metre or two away from the newcomer's flank, "how's it goin' for ya on this particular night?" Speaking kindly to another person wasn't by any means his forte, so he dearly hoped that the tabby saw through his crude wording. After all, Leroy was doing his damn best.

    The tabby had never been particularly strong in the physical sense. It was one of the things that he disliked about himself that he was willing to admit to. Compensating for his lack of physical strength was his intelligence, as well as a strong sense of awareness. As such, he was able to note Leroy's presence before the other male had had a chance to part his jaws and utter a single word.

    Gray ears instinctively swiveled as the hound approached, sensing the sound of his footsteps over the crashing of the waves on the shore just as soon as he stepped out onto the dock. Go away, thought Alaric, whose mood was somewhat fouled by the stranger's presence. Here's hoping they don't try to kill me. Despite his acute instincts, he wasn't quite sure of who the footsteps belonged to until the hound closed the distance between them, but Alaric visibly perked up once he realized that the stranger in question was the same one he'd met when he first announced his intentions to join. The tabby recalled the leader's—er, general's, he supposed—name as being Leroy.

    The wolfhound's greeting came quickly upon his approach, and it went just as soon as it came. Alaric, though usually not one to care about the emotions and tone of another being, did not miss the sort of unfamiliar crudity that Leroy's words carried. He chuckled lightly in response as he considered allowing the wolfhound to continue on with that atypical friendliness of his. Alaric figured it might be amusing to do so. But it was only them out there, though, and as fun as it would be to mess with Leroy like that, there truly was no purpose in doing so. Alaric's a tough, no-nonsense kind of guy; if the wolfhound had something to say, then he should come out and say it.

    Just the same, Alaric was also not someone who allowed his emotions to be felt or overtake him as so many creatures do. He wasn't keen on sharing how he felt about particular topics with anyone unless he was provoked into an intelligent debate, something that many animals seemed to be adverse to doing for whatever reason. Knowledge is plentiful, so why not learn as much as you can? That was the tabby's thought process, anyway, but he noted that many did not share his way of thinking. Although, whether he liked to admit it or not, he'd always had a penchant for authority that forcefully tugged at all of his thoughts and feelings until they were drawn to the surface. As such, in the face of authority, he was easily his most vulnerable.

    Alaric processed the wolfhound's greeting for a moment longer before deciding to respond. "I'm doing alright, I suppose. I'm tired, but otherwise I'm fine." This was the truth. For the first time in a while, he had actually felt okay. He might not be adjusting as well to Tanglewood as he'd hope to be, but truly he was doing just fine. It hit him after a few seconds of silence that the polite thing to do was to ask about how Leroy was doing as well, prompting him to speak again. "What about you?" While he waited for the wolfhound to respond, he spoke once more. "And, forgive my wording, but you can drop the act if you want." He shot a glance over his shoulder at Leroy, studying his acquaintance's face.

To say that Leroy expected a brutally forthright reply would be a complete and utter lie. The wolfhound understood that he wasn't good at smalltalk, but hell, he did not think that he would make his introduction so incredibly bogus that a stranger could penetrate through a single phony question. Again, hearing only a handful of words was enough for the feline to discern the query as an act. Like, damn, that's a wake-up call if he ever experienced one. The male had proved himself in the past to be rather skilled in the devious art of manipulation, though casual dialogue seemed to be his weakness. Whatever, that could be worked on later.

In lieu of continuing the forged exchange as he had once planned, Leroy instead voiced the first line that formed within his head. "Shit, man," he says, half-laughing whilst he speaks, "ya got me all figured out." Rather than him catching Alaric off guard, it appeared as though the newcomer caught the general off guard. Embarrassing. "I promise ya I meant no ill will," he resumes, "it's just kinda hard to think of what to say when ya randomly run into someone past midnight."

Still flushed as a consequence of his misstep, Leroy's mind falls blank. What had he been trying to achieve here again? Couldn't be anything too important if he was able to forget about it in a jiffy. Looking for where he could go from there, the wolfhound chooses to answer the tabby's own inquiry. "Ahhhh, I'm alright I s'pose," he says, his tone composing of both lethargy and woe, "wish things coulda gone my way better, but we all have those days, right?" All at once, the mongrel's attention span rebuilds itself from its shambled state. "Alaric, right?" he asks, "where'd ya say ya were from, again?"

    To say that Alaric was perceptive was a bit of an understatement. While the tabby wasn't quite in touch with his own emotions, he was seemingly hyper-aware of how other people felt and the manner in which those feelings conveyed themselves through speech. It was a learned skill; when you're on your own for as long as Alaric had been, you learn to talk yourself out of many close calls. So it was no surprise to Alaric at least that his words had been able to pierce through Leroy's thin veil of cordiality.

    That was not to say, though, that the wolfhound had been accusatory in any sense. Up until now, the general's words had not been envenomed as far as the tabby could tell. If he had sensed any hostility from the wolfhound, he would have found a way to escape from the situation with all due diligence. The fact that he had not done this demonstrated quite a change within Alaric, one that showed how his level of comfort while among others was slowly rising. Perhaps it was at a snail's pace, but nonetheless he was finding a way to assimilate.

    The Tangler chuckled slightly upon hearing the hound's words. "I understand completely," responded the tabby, still gazing over his shoulder at the other male. His head swiveled to face the ocean as Leroy began to speak again, but his perked ears still indicated that he was listening to the general's words.

    He nodded in agreement with the male, who had just finished saying that it was difficult to make conversation so late in the night. "I know. Small talk isn't exactly my forte either." That was one thing that he and the general seemed to have in common.

    We all have those days, right? Leroy's words sparked a sort of curiosity in Alaric. He was thoroughly unsure of exactly what the wolfhound meant, forcing the tabby to assume that the matters that Leroy referred to were either personal or political. Alaric was not well-versed in either matter, frankly; he knew little about anyone in Tanglewood, and they knew little about him. That was find with him. He shot an inquisitive look at the general, his icy hues narrowed in question. It was not any of his business to know what Leroy meant, but if he did not mind sharing, perhaps that look would elicit some sort of response.

    "That's me, yes," spoke the tabby, almost sarcastically. He hoped that Leroy would find some form of humor in his sarcasm. He assumed that if anyone did, it would be him. The second question was the real kicker. Was he really intent on sharing his entire backstory with the general? No, he decided after a moment. Yes, it would probably be best to be vague in this case. "I'm not from anywhere, really," Alaric responded, taking a longer time to answer than normal. It wasn't necessarily a lie, but it very obviously was not the whole truth. "I'm not from The Pitt or whatever that place is called, if that's what you're wondering." He'd heard about the Pittians in passing, although he still wasn't one hundred percent sure about why they were so disliked in Tanglewood. "If you must know, though—and I'm sure you do—I was alone for around six moons before I came here."