Dragoncrest Cliffs soldier, take your time

Étoille let him take the lead, and meander he did. Drageda's forest wasn't so different from the forest his family fled through when they ran from the bear—unbeknownst to Ephraim, they were one and the same—but he hadn't been old enough then to appreciate the towering trees, the thick-packed undergrowth and the heavy coating of moss facing out to the sea. Now he stopped to snuffle every fuzzy green surface, every fungus clinging to the ancient bark, and every fern protruding from every root bed, all the way down to the lake.

He scampered to the shore when the lap of water made his ears prick, and his eyes widened. "Is it th'ocean?" he wondered, although he was almost instantly certain that it wasn't. It didn't have the same sharp smell or the same white curls of foam. It shore wasn't rough sand and grass and driftwood. Instead, green algae grew at the edges and reeds hid the banks. Geese honked raucously from further out on the water. And if he looked hard, he could see where the shore curved on the other side; the lake had an ending. The ocean did not.

"Yeah, it's nice here," he answered, wagging his tail as he picked along the water's edge, unconsciously coating his toes in lake slime. "B'fore the big storm and b'fore I got lost and b'fore coming here my ma and pa took us to a place. There were two black wolveses there," he recalled, and then frowned. "They weren' nice. They said they didn' need us. Pa was mad." He thought for a beat, then amended, "pa was always mad, though." Shaking his head to dislodge a fly from around his ears, the pup fixed his brown-masked guardian in his champagne gaze and smiled. "But you're real nice. Nicer than pa, maybe nicer than ma too. Ma found a new kid anyway, didn' need us neither. You're diff'rent."

So, in short, as Ephraim turned his relaxed gaze up to the canopies, where a flock of finches tittered and bounced: "I like it here."