The Tangle hips that could bear you a buffalo

“Oh,” Eirlys replied sadly, her mouth remaining open as she tried to think of what she could say to back out of this. She didn’t know any “Fury” — but she couldn’t help but think there was something weird going on here. This wolf — Fury, not Mallaidh! — looked so much like her mother! She was leggier and more svelte, but that wasn’t honestly a hard thing to achieve. Idiot girl, she thought to herself, unconsciously emulating her mother’s habitual internal dialogue. Look at the way she’s looking at you. She thinks you’re just as dumb as you look — and close your mouth!

Eirlys closed her mouth.

Lotte hadn’t lived long enough for all of her stories and songs to stick. Eirlys knew Ceallach’s middle name solely because of Hemlock’s continued presence in her life, and she knew her own because Dagfinn had been Lotte’s favorite topic of conversation — when she wasn’t talking about Arturo and Hemlock, that is. The family had stopped talking about Chusi, Roarke, and Mallaidh over time; even now, it was still in that “nope, too painful to deal with” stage. Especially after Arturo had — well, changed — it was smarter just to focus on the ones who remained. And with the birth of Reed and Droman came more responsibility to stay cheerful and upbeat.

“I’m sorry,” Eirlys remembered to say at last, shuffling her paws. “We look — I mean — okay.” She pumped the lingual brakes, realizing that, “We look the same,” might actually be pretty insulting if Fury didn’t like how she looked. Anyway, Fury was very pretty — the ideal of what Eirlys wanted to look like, just like Drogon. Idiot girl, she thought again. She really had to stop looking for her family in every wolf she saw. Maybe the wolves in these wilds just all had colorpoint markings.

Stranger things had happened.