Bigby tended to save the park for lulls in his patrol; in a sense, it was the highlight of his night, if you didn’t count staggering back in and falling asleep. The scents weren’t the same as his once-home, of course, but they were similar enough to calm him, and the most trouble he tended to run into here were people sleeping on the benches instead of safe at home.
Tonight had been a rough one, and Bigby found himself gravitating towards the park rather than a bar or his pack of Huff ‘N’ Puffs. He’d been… worried, once, that nature would bring back old memories, stir up old instincts - but it seemed as long as the place was quiet and uncrowded enough to pass for a real forest - even a tiny one - it had the opposite effect. He could be calm here, staring up at the moon in the dead of night.
A rustle in the bushes shattered the tranquility, yanking him out of his thoughts in an instant; he braced himself, muscles tight, a second before a small white figure flew out and growled at him in a clear threat display.
He almost responded in kind, lips drawing away from his teeth to form a growl of his own, when the rest of his brain caught up with him - that was a growl, all right, but a play growl. A cub’s - a child’s?
Awareness flooded back to him, and with it the realization that he was standing here snarling at a tiny figure who’d likely only meant to scare him. Ashamed, Bigby quickly straightened, shaking himself once, firmly; maybe the park was a bad idea after all.
“Very scary,” he said after a moment, trying to wrest back some control over the situation. He inhaled, and frowned; whatever the child in front of him looked like, she certainly didn’t smell human. It was something like… moonlight, if moonlight had a scent, but beneath it, there was something….
Familiar. That was what it was, more familiar even than the slow echoes of home here in the park. This girl smelled of forest-home, the kind of forest-home that had been Bigby’s once upon a time. Something in his chest ached, and for a moment he stood there, unsure of what else to say.
Aisling dropped her arms, teeth clicking shut. His snarl didn’t escape her attention - an actual snarl, not her play ones, not the ones she used to jokingly scare people. She was suddenly very aware of how big he was compared to her (and her, without any of her powers to force him to leave her area alone). She bared her teeth briefly, no longer joking. He had gone from a random person she could scare and get a laugh from to a threat to her new home (because, let’s admit it, this is where she’ll be sleeping in the coming weeks).
She put her hands on her hips, scowling up at him, head craned back. “Go away,” she said in the most demanding voice she could muster. She’d rarely had to actually interact with humans entering her forest. Most were merely passing through to Kells so she didn’t bother with them. The ones trying to spoil her forest got scared away by her wolf pack or magically moving trees. Now her wolf pack consisted of one puppy wolf currently napping farther into her area of the park, the plants hadn’t responded to any of her pleas or magic, and she’d already used up her element of surprise.
But it wasn’t as if he knew about her wolf pack situation. She could say she had a dozen wolves hiding out around here and he’d never know. “If you don’t, I’ll have my wolves eat you.” She lifted up her hands, curling them into claws as she spoke. He hadn’t been scared by her but maybe her threat would make him leave - or he would get the idea that she didn’t want anyone around.
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