Usually the plains were vibrant and alive, full of sounds and smells and everything wonderful about this place. The sky stretched in all directions, unmarred by anything except the ridge of mountains to the north (closer now than Faolan was used to). The scent of sun-warmed grass was a comfortable, relaxing smell, like hay (not that Faolan had ever smelled hay, never having been on a farm or anywhere they make hay). And while to an outsider the plains looked dead and empty, like there wasn't much besides endless grass that could ever live here, to someone who'd lived there all his life (and who possessed lupine senses), there was always a hum of life in the background, songs of birds, rustling of rodents, and the tapestry of scents of all the animals that had passed through since the last rain.
Right now, though, Faolan just felt numb. A part of that might have been that he wasn't a wolf just now, merely a human, trudging through the grasslands toward the mountains with his eyes on his feet, fixated on his own thoughts. He'd gone as a wolf until he left the pack's territory - faster to travel on four feet than two - but once outside of their lands... It was too much, with a wolf's sense of smell, of hearing. Too much hearing and smelling all of that and knowing how likely it was that he wouldn't ever be back. And he could still almost smell and taste the blood on his muzzle. It was better to be a human for now, with almost no sense of smell and dimmed hearing, so he didn't have to think on what he was leaving.
Exile. This couldn't be real. Maybe it was some bad dream... But no, the memory of his cousin's blood on his tongue, the way a wolf's jaws so easily crushed a windpipe were all too vivid. He hadn't meant to go for his throat. Truly, he hadn't. But a combination of anger and instinct and his cousin moving the wrong way at exactly the wrong time had all led to a body at his feet, his muzzle coated with blood, and the stupid traveler girl he'd been trying to protect running off in complete terror of the "vicious beasts". And he was left trying to figure out just how he'd killed his cousin.
The young Garou curled his hand into a fist at his side, fingernails digging into his his palm, and stared intently at the ground as he walked. His nails were cutting gouges in the skin of his hand, but that was better than the alternative, which seemed to be to just... sit down and wallow in self-pity. Wolves didn't wallow, and maybe he was only a wolf half of the time, but things were so much simpler, that half of the time. Being a person meant all these muddled feelings and thoughts and silly, painful concepts like names and exile.
