Meadowlark Prairie the irony of dying on your birthday

They peered at one another for a beat, until movement caused Raven to look upward again. She licked her lips a little nervously as a white she-wolf with a missing eye closed in on them. The Gamma studied the blank eye, deciding it was an old injury. She was just shaking her head no when her attention returned to the invalid even as the she-wolf muttered an oath and promptly vomited yellow bile into the snow.

Although this was no pack mate, the medic couldn't just ignore the stranger's plight. Glancing at the most recent arrival—this time, a familiar face—Raven sank down into the snow beside the ill wolf. "Describe your symptoms to me. Can you tell me your name? And where you're from?"

She listened for a response, even as she already found herself thinking ahead. She would never take a sick stranger to the caves, where she could possibly infect the entire pack, puppies included. Raven didn't even want to cross the caldera's borders. But she did want to help, so even as she kept her ears pricked toward the ailing she-wolf, she glanced around herself as if hoping shelter of some sort would spring up out of nowhere.

That didn't happen, of course; everything remained a white blur. "Aaron?" the caregiver called to her pack mate lingering nearby. "Can you find somewhere we can take her so she's at least not so exposed?" Even a tree would suffice. Anything was better than lying out here on the open meadow, to be preyed upon by predators, the elements or a little bit of both.