His life had changed. It was getting increasingly hard to avoid the realization, or thinking about it. It was getting less consuming to think about too, fortunately. Maybe because he could think while running, and he found it so much easier to focus after the training stuff he did with Cafas?

At any rate, Adder dodged and darted between the trees of the forested part of the mansion's grounds, running full-tilt simply because he could, even though it was only a few hours after a round of exercise that liked to leave his body sweaty and tingly in places. Was this what being well fed did? It was a good thing Cafas had given him something to do, because otherwise he probably would vibrate through a wall or something. He couldn't just exist any more. He had to do as well as be.

Right now, what he was doing was challenging himself, simply because he could, and because if he did clip a tree and hurt himself he could just go inside and it would be fixed and he wouldn't even have to explain why.  It was...

He didn't have words for it, just like he didn't have words specifically for the way his ankles shifted to keep him balanced on the uneven ground, or the feel of the ground under his toughened bare feet, or why he had decided to run on only two feet and keep himself from shifting.  Just because?  Maybe.  There were places it would have been easier on four feet, like that path of jagged rock pieces he'd passed a while back, but he could also just jump it at the speed he was going, and so he did.  He could have jumped farther with his tail to balance him, and the ability to curve his body and land on forepaws instead of the feet he'd pushed off with, but it was also kind of a challenge to do it the hard way, and he felt lighter when he landed the jump and kept on running.

Adder ran even faster for a while after that, starting to exhale through his mouth though he could still get enough air through his nose, and a side thought occurred to him: he could run faster as a wolf, but he could feel cooler through his entire body as a human.  When he made himself warm, his fur could trap that too much in the summer.  It was wonderfully warm in winter, and one of many reasons he'd survived, reasons without which he almost certainly would have died and probably in his first year alone, but in summer he could barely be glad his fur wasn't black.

He was thinking too much about wolf and he had decided he wasn't going to shift.  Needed more human.  What to think, what to think.  There was an open area ahead of him.  Change of scenery, change of thought?  It would probably work, and it didn't mean he had to stop running.

Adder sprinted out of the trees, sweat streaking his still-super-new-to-him dark blue shirt under the flecks of tree and leaf and dirt he always picked up while running in the forest.

Archery was a form of meditation. Maya exhaled slowly as she let the arrow fly, straight at the heart of the target she'd set up twenty paces away. There was no one else on the range - Mirror was the sole member of the Xavier's archery team at the moment. For once, she didn't mind. She needed some quiet to clear her head. Focusing only on the next arrow and the next shot did just that. She'd take her time, before she had to go back to dealing with the shitstorm that had hit the X-men, and the world in general.

There was a rustling sound from the woods, and Maya lowered her bow, taking the arrow off the string. People generally knew not to run into the range; it even had a perimeter around it, but someone running at full tilt might not have noticed it. As the figure broke through the undergrowth and appeared in her line of sight, Maya let out a warning shout.

"Clear downrange!!"

Adder closed his eyes almost completely against the flush of sunlight, leaning on scent and sound to place his feet. They flew open again as a shout rang out, and he dropped into a roll and crouch to kill his momentum.

The shouter was downwind from him, and it took him a moment to catch the scent and place it. He hadn't been paying enough attention to identify person-by-sound, and in his defence he hadn't really heard not-cop-face-shifter shout before.

And then he waited, pressed low to his raised thigh, and tried to figure out what exactly was going on. It was also a chance to let his breath even out, and so if not-cop-face-shifter did anything, being not-cop-face-shifter, he could run full bore once again.

The person who had burst out of the woods ended up in a roll, and crouched half hidden by low shrubbery. Maya sighed, playing the arrow back into the quiver, and slinging her bow over her shoulder. She'd have to schedule another safety training for Mansion residents, one that involved rules for the archery field...

"You're right next to my target" she called out, taking a few steps forward to see better "Now I ain't sayin' I'm not a good archer, but it is technically against the rules to shoot while anybody is down there. So, would you mind coming up here to the line?"

Once they were behind her, she could resume her training. Or talk to them or whatever. She hoped it was a resident at least, and not someone she'd just caught in the process of sneaking onto Mansion grounds...

Next to her target? Adder glanced around. So the ringed thing with a stick in it. A stick that looked to be very recently very stuck in it.

Yeaahhhh he'd rather not take the target's place, please and thanks. Once again, though, not-cop-face-shifter didn't seem to recognize him. That was kinda great, kinda.... something else. Not sticking around in other people's heads was kind of his usual plan. It was what he aimed for. It was safe and kept them from going after him, since that required that they remember him.

This time, though, he kind of wanted to see not-cop-face-shifter's expression when she realized that it was him-again. It seemed entertaining. Plus... mm, yeah. He could cross the distance she was shooting very quickly, and a wolf running away left a pretty small target. He'd had people shoot guns at him before, and they didn't leave their bullets sticking mostly out of the target. They went all the way in if not all the way through.

He approached at an angle, curving around the side just in case she did change her mind and decide to shoot at him: it would be easier to change direction and get out of there. If all went well, though, he'd at least get close enough for her to probably hear him if he said anything. If he judged other-people-hearing-distance right. It seemed like such a short range.

Oh. It was Wolf Boy again.

"Hey there" Maya grinned, waving now that her hands were free from the bow and arrows. He slinked to the side as he approached her, being out of the range, not that she would have shot until he was behind her, but he seemed to be generally careful, from the few encounters they had had. He was still around, then. Sometimes, with the more... private residents of the Mansion, it was hard to tell if they were still around, or had snuck out one night...

"We gotta put up a better perimeter for the archery range" she noted with a shrug "Sorry about that. Good to see ya're still around. How have you been?"

Their previous conversations had not gone well, but Maya was always willing to give it another try.

So much for entertaining. She was just waving and didn't look at all surprised. Harrumph. He should just leave, then. Serve her right for interrupting his run. Somehow. He wasn't especially concerned by the logic. He was more concerned that not-cop-face-shifter wanted to chat.

And maybe also that he hadn't immediately bolted, but was still within other-people-chat-range. That was not a place he usually occupied. It wasn't a place he wanted to occupy.

But it was apparently the space he was occupying? Somehow, because he hadn't bothered to leave yet.

Well, it wasn't as if not-cop-face-shifter had been put off by him leaving before, so it wasn't as if doing it again would change anything. Harrumph.

"I've been me," he answered. Was that 'chatting?' Was he being too much of a rich person now? Hah! And ew. Seriously, he didn't want to be one of those frilly floucey people who had no idea what the rest of the world was like. Even if maybe he didn't really know what the rest of the world was like... but he still wasn't like those people and didn't want to be!

"Why do you do this?" One of his ears flicked towards the targets but his eyes rested on the bow. He hadn't seen one before, but he could see how it could flex and snap back into shape, and if something was leaning against it while it snapped back, then that would push it in that direction, but was it really easier than just throwing it? Not that throwing straight things without spinning them was easy, especially small straight things. Hm.

>>"I've been me,"

Okay, so he was still not the social type. So be it. And yet, wolf boy seemed curious about Maya's archery outfit and targets. Maybe that would be a good start for a conversation?...

>>"Why do you do this?"

The mirrorwalker blinked, not sure what the question entailed. She looked down at the bow and the quiver on her hip.

"Do what? Archery?" she looked up then smiled "I'm just practicing... I picked up archery when I came to the Mansion, because I thought it was cool I guess..." she shrugged "And now it comes in handy whenever we go on a mission. I had to shoot a building once... It came alive. Long story." she waved a hand as she dismissed the rest of it. She tilted her head at the wolf boy.

"I guess running is more of your sport of choice, huh?"