Lucas shook himself and turned to face her. His ears pinned back a little and he lowered his head. His tail swished and he let out a soft whine.

"You good?" Rue asked, not exactly speaking with words, but communicating in the canine 'language' she understood in this form. Lucas looked surprised.

"How can I understand you?" he asked. Rue chuffed at him, the canine equivalent of a laugh.

"We're 'speaking canine' so to, well, speak. It's just as nuanced as human languages, just not particularly verbal," Rue explained, amused. "You could probably talk to regular wolves or even coyotes, foxes or dogs, while in this form."

Lucas approached her cautiously, aware that she was larger than him as she'd said a few days ago would be the case. He sniffed around her face, and she patiently allowed it, though her tail stopped wagging.

"The other werewolves are territorial, so I've never really shifted near them," he said after backing off a few paces. "I've encountered other types of werebeasts from time to time, but couldn't speak to them. So I had no idea this was possible."

Rue's posture and expression took on an air of smugness and she opened her mouth slightly in a sort of doggy smile.
"Well now you do! And now, are you hungry? Do you want to hunt?" she asked. There was something in her eyes that Lucas couldn't quite figure out. She seemed to be watching him with a certain intensity that made him feel unsure of himself.

"I... actually, no. Normally after I shift, I feel ravenously hungry because it takes a lot of energy, but I actually don't feel hungry right now," he said, feeling mystified. Rue's air of smugness intensified.

"Ha, that's great! If you don't want to hunt, then you can wait until morning to eat food you brought with you." Rue began to trot into the trees, swishing her tail in a gesture that Lucas implicitly understood meant to follow her. After a moment's hesitation, he did trot after her, falling into step so that their hips were aligned, which meant his nose only reached her chest.

"Is this your doing somehow?" he asked.

"Yes it is. I thought, if you still felt uncomfortable with being what you are and weren't keen on the idea of hunting and eating raw game, that I could do this for you, so you don't have to hunt," Rue explained. She thought this was a good way to pay back some more debt to Lucas. She didn't tell him that it was just an illusion. She was using a bit of magic to make him not feel the hunger, but he technically still was. He would definitely feel it in the morning!

As the pair ventured deeper into the dark forest, Rue felt herself becoming invigorated. It had been a long time since she was able to spend much time in this form. Her pace gradually picked up until she was running full tilt. She glided between trees and over or around obstacles like bushes and fallen logs or boulders in an effortless silence.

Lucas did a good job keeping pace with her, but he was not nearly as silent. Leaves and sticks crackled under paw as he followed her as best he could. He couldn't get around all the obstacles as easily as she did, partially due to the difference in their size, and partially due to his inexperience.

At one point, they accidentally flushed a fox out of a bush. Almost as a unit, the pair shifted focus and chased the fox around for a while. Neither had any interest in hurting the animal, but it sure did not know that! They just had fun chasing it as it pulled out every trick it knew to try and escape them. When it finally bolted down a hole in the ground, Rue backed off, disinterested in trying to dig it out without the intention to kill it. Lucas was slightly more reluctant to leave it be, apparently feeling a stronger pull to the hunt than she did.

By that point, the moon had passed its zenith and was beginning its descent. Rue began to make her way back to camp, following her own (and Lucas') scent trail back the way they came. Lucas followed her, content to let her do the tracking while he got lost in his own head for a bit.

He wondered which of them was wilder. Was the wolf wilder than the hound? Or was the faerie wilder than the werebeast? Maybe they were equally wild, in different ways. It was hard for him to tell which way it went, and harder for him to tell if it even mattered.

Lucas also noticed that they hadn't 'spoken' in a while. There was a certain amount of passive communication that was happening between them, such as how she was communicating interest in the scents she was picking up, and that she was confident that she was on the correct path back to camp. He was also able to pick up how relaxed she was out here in the woods, and that she was enjoying the outing. He could definitely understand her thoughts and feelings more clearly this way than when they were in their human forms.

Lucas came to a stop when he realized that Rue had laid down, sprawling comfortably on the forest floor. Puzzled, he looked around, realizing with a start that they'd made it back to camp. The moon was setting now, and dawn was only a couple hours away at most.

"If you plan to sleep tonight, you should probably do that," Rue said, the throaty rumble that formed the vocal component of her communication cracked through the silent woods like thunder, and Lucas winced, even though he recognized it hadn't been particularly loud.

"Right. I am feeling pretty tired now," he admitted.

Rue's big paw pushed a clump of leaves away from her before she tucked it beneath her chest. Lucas understood the gesture to be an invitation for him to lay beside her. He hesitated, feeling a bit awkward. If they weren't both canines right now, he wouldn't dare... but that was the point, wasn't it? They were canines, and it got quite cold at night in the mountains, even in summer, and it was barely even summer anymore now.

Lucas hesitantly made his way over and laid down beside her. They were barely touching, but the warmth that radiated from Rue's body was surprising. Then again, they had been running for several hours, so perhaps he was also emitting a ton of heat. He rested his head on his paws.

The near-silence of the forest combined with Rue's steady breathing and body heat quickly lulled him to sleep.

Rue watched Lucas sleep for a bit to make sure he was really out before she stood up. She wanted to catch something for herself to eat while he slept, and she wanted to finish and settle back down before he shifted back into human form so he wouldn't get hypothermia.

She easily tracked down a couple small animals she could make short work of. The first she ate almost entirely, leaving very little behind on the forest floor when she finished. The second, she ate half of, and took the other half back with her. She set it down a short distance from where Lucas lay before settling back down beside him to sleep.