Old and wise people say that, when poverty enters the house, love flies out of the window. To rephrase it - you cannot run a business on enthusiasm alone. Dwin was a happy exception to this rule. At least in this moment of time. Thinner and dirtier than she had first left Brecheliant, a little tired and worn, hungry most of the time and cold half of it... nothing could lessen her triumph, when she set foot on the shores and witnessed the wast field of water ahead of her. It was absolutely stunning and mind-blowing. Up until this point in her life the only bodies of water she had seen, had had a margin, a border, an end. Here - try as hard as she could, it seemed that the water reached to the edge of the world and beyond. 

She sat down in the soft sand to take in the view, breathe in and taste the salty air and revel in the scene before her. It reinforced her belief that going out in the world had been the right decision all along. That every boring, difficult of homesick day had been absolutely worth it to have this one moment of distilled joy. The scene was something. Beautiful. Mesmerizing.

"Fish? No, I have no idea," Dwin shrugged, turning to regard the strange curiously and finding that she liked the stranger right away. Sure, there had been plenty of cautionary tales about not trusting people you did not know easily, but at the moment the young wolf was tired and therefore not very inclined on playing the "I am the worst thing you can meet here" game. If she was to be eaten here and now - well, so be it. She had seen the ocean and therefore achieved at least something in her life.

"I skipped my fishing lessons for camouflage classes," she told, referring to Teya, who had tried voluntarily and patiently pass on the skill to the young Blackthorn, who at the time had not considered it necessary. First and foremost, because fish had never been at the top of her list. Now - however - she figured those skills may have come handy. "Name's Dwin - who are you?"

"How can you steal fish that still swim in the water?" Dwin grinned back at Heph, but then thought that technically "stealing" meant to remove from someone's place of belonging. Which meant that the act of fishing was - in theory - stealing. The bigger question was - from whom? Who did fish in the big vast water thingie belong to? In any water thingies... come to think of it, if they belonged to someone, how many did you have to steal, before they noticed? Or was there a legal way of stealing? Now Dwin regretted skipping fishing lessons, because now Teya was too far away to answer to all these questions and it was very likely that by the time Dwin returned to Brecheliant, she would forget this line (branch?) of thought completely. 

"I am not a lady. Ladies are old people," Dwin corrected. And she would have preferred "fearsome" instead of lovely. Sister Dee was lovely and definitely not, what Dwin was. "Nah - first time visiting. What about you? Where are you from and where are you going?"

"I never thought of it that way," Dwin remarked, repeating Heph's formulation of "stealing". "But, what do you think - after we have stolen life, whom does the body belong to then? I mean, if I died right here and now, and - if what I am told is right - that the soul travels and the shell remains here... does it really count as stealing, if I do not need my dead body anymore? Isn't it more like... recycling? Because stealing implies that the owner is still there with a claim. If I am not... then isn't it - my dead body - technically garbage that anyone can take?" now this was something. If one raided a graveyard with this perspective... would it count as immoral too?

"What would you like to become, when you die?" she asked. "Where do you want your soul to go and what you want your body to become?" 

The sudden nearness of Heph surprised Dwin and she flinched a little, feeling relieved, when she retreated again. "Maybe," she shrugged, feeling taken off track a little and therefore her flow of thoughts and questions paused. But then her companion claimed that she would want to become a bird after death and Dwin was back in game again. 

"A bird - what kind of bird?" she asked excitedly. "My grandma - her name was March Owl and according to the family legends she knew the names and songs of all the birds there are in this world," she told. She often wondered, what had it been like for her great grandmother to walk through the forest and instead of background chatter here the actual conversations between the birds. 

"I don't know. I think my aunt Wraen wanted to become a tree - I think... I dunno, if I got tired of life and wanted a long rest, then I would definitely want to be a tree. But becoming a bird would be fun also," she said. "I could fly - that would be amazing. Or... maybe become a water-dweller and see, what secrets lie in the depths of the lakes and seas. I think it would be just as interesting to see, what lies below the water as to see, what is above clouds."

"Geese are beautiful. Not on the ground - they look kind of funny and awkward, when they waddle around, but in the water - only swans are more beautiful," Dwin had been born just in time to see geese settle in the lake at the caldera and she had also been there to see them off before their journey. She did wonder, where did all of them go, but Maia had assured her that they always returned. 

"I dunno," she shook her head, smiling at the silly question. "That's, what I want to find out. Though... I know for sure that there lives a Big Fish inside caldera lake," she told. "And Teya... I think it was her, told that he has a whole family there. All of them big and long, and hungry and they eat little puppies. Did you know that?" she told, as if it was a big secret. 

"Have you met big puppy-eating fish? Or worse - big wolf-eating fish?" she asked, because Heph was older and Dwin automatically considered that she had seen more of the world and therefore knew better.

"Well, you cannot consider to having been everywhere noteworthy in the world, unless you have visited the caldera. It is THE BEST place," Dwin was a true patriot of her local village, one could sense it in the every fibre of her being, when she told it. Brecheliant's present location was truly an extraordinary place in the Teekon wilds - there was no other like it. But Dwin would be just as proud of her home, even if it was a shack in the woods made out of cardboard, plastic and old tires. Your own castle is still a castle, even when it does not fit the conventional idea of what a castle is. 

"We have a tall mountain in the centre of the territory and there is a huge lake inside - mom told that a long, long time ago at the pit of that now lake lived a dragon, who had a bad temper and spat out such hot fire that it melted rocks and turned everything in ashes. But one day a travelling lake - so you know, in old times lakes were not stationary, but traveled like clouds in the sky, seeking good places to land and stay - came there, decided to rest and fell right in the dragon's lair. The dragon drowned and eventually turned into numerous vicious puppy-eating long-fish that live in that lake to this very day," she finished, slightly out of breath. She loved listening to stories, but was not good at retelling them. She had difficult time remembering all the details and even this version of "how did caldera came to be?" was a patched up, improved and stood ve-e-e-ery far frmo the original.

"Well, if the seals can hunt wolves, how can you be sure that you won't eventually become the prey and not the other way round?" Dwin asked.

"It won't be that easy. You will first have to pass a face control. Then you will have to find correct answers to three riddles. And then you will have to tell a joke that would make even a stone laugh," Dwin made up the stuff on the go, though this order of things was not entirely of her own creation. Long, long time ago the two sisters (one of whom was Dwin's mom) had discussed, what they wanted their pack to be like and having to guess riddles as a challenge had been one of them. 

"How can that be fun?" Dwin looked at Heph, as if she was that mad lady on the street, who was out in her slippers in the snow, waving kettle and lamenting the government (narrator's experience). "Real life is not a folk tale. There you can be swallowed whole by an evil wolf or be smashed to pieces and then put together and brought back to life by a witch. If they catch you and kill you - that's it," she argued. "Have you done all things in life you wanted to do to want to have a risk of dying?" she asked. 

"Well, you might get a pass, if you have superpowers too - making rocks weep sounds just the thing. Though... if you make that happen by upsetting or hurting them, then it is a no go. I mean, rocks are as old as time, therefore they should be respected as all old people should," she finished her thought, but this was the first time in her existence that she had considered these particular inanimate objects as something sentient and capable of feelings. 

"Well, you should not fear Death, but you should also treat Life with care and respect. Because you do not really know, if there is another chance," Dwin shared her opinion, but she also understood, what Heph meant. In a way Eljay was a definition of having fear of life. At least that was, how she translated his unwillingness to leave the borders of caldera ever. Why he had no curiousity in life beyond them was a mystery to Dwin.

"I think that there is a balance possible. Where you can have fun and not put your life in danger. Where have you been during your travels?" she asked. 

Dwin was tempted to ask, why had Heph's experience with elders not been very good, but then decided that this kind of information would be no good to her. After all - if you did not respect older people (which meant her dad), then there was no place for you in Brecheliant, where respect of all people was one of the key characteristics. 

"Well, that's, what I will find out, when I die," she shrugged. "And I have not heard of people coming back from the dead to tell the story or warn others to live their lives differently," sure, she had heard plenty of ghost stories and other tales, where such things happened, but so far - since none of her meals had ever had haunted her, she figured that ghost stuff as such in this reality did not exist. 

"You did not answer my last question," she reminded gently. "What have you seen in this world that excited you very much?"

Dwin listened attentively, trying to conjure the images of what Heph could have seen, when she had climed those mountains and been so close to the sky and stars - maybe she had been able to touch them too. This reminded her that she had often wondered, how far the sky was from her and whether there was any place in this world that was high enough to just take a step and then just tread through the starry realm. After all they did talk about a Milky Way being there. So - with that in mind - there had to be a ladder to get there as well. Unless it was reserved for dead wolves or Elysian wolves.

"Maybe they had once been very huge mushrooms that were turned into stone, what do you think?" she mused. There were stories of supernatural creatures able to turn living things into stone. Why not mushrooms? Or plants? Or trees? Could you turn water into stone too? And the air? So many questions, but she did not think that Heph would be able to answer them. "Well, my home has a lake that houses the Big Fish. They are huge and can drag a puppy underwater and eat it whole," she shared. "What if... that's what happens to moose, when they spend too much time in water? They turn into big scary fish that takes revenge upon those, who hunt and eat them on the ground? Though... it would not make sense. They are huge and scary and more powerful than us already," she had seen a moose once and the size difference between them was enough to convince her of her own smallness and insignificance. 

"Well, I just started my journey and so far... I have not seen much exciting things, but meeting people and aliens has certainly been very valuable," she shared. "Have you met aliens? Wolves that look like wolves, but are kind of not?" 

"Well, not before your eyes. I mean, I do not believe that you have sat by that mushroom, observing it day and night until it finally turns into a stone, have you?" all ideas needed a proof, because without that they were just that. Ideas. Myths. "Or it could as well be that it takes a very special kind of mushroom to turn into a stone. Or - what if they are cursed?" to discover the secret life of mushrooms had never occurred to her before, but seemed a very promising subject to delve into, once Dwin would be old, stiff and cranky, no longer able to run around. 

"No, not like that. Foxes are foxes and coyotes are coyotes. They look a little similar. But these guys - one was very tall, almost naked and looked like a walking skeletong. And its head was so small compared to the rest of the body. And then there was all huge clumsy, bear-like, with round muzzle and ears that did not stand up. And then there was one that looked like a pile of fur and twigs," in regards of the latter she was not sure, if it had been even an alien wolf. 

"Well, just because I have not seen anymore, does not mean that there aren't any around. I mean, I am alone for a lot of time, while I travel. Any squirrel or... or fox that encounters me also could be under assumption that I am the last of my kind. Perhaps... I would rather like to think that, if there is one specimen, there has to be another one as well. At least none of those, who I spoke to, mentioned that they were the last of their kind," Dwin said, thoughi being one Skeletor here in winter was a miserable existance. There being more of those bony, short-furred creatures out there, starving and begging for food, was simply sad. 

"What do you think - what is the thing of the things you have done that every wolf has to absolutely do in their lifetime?" she asked next, referring to the fact that Heph was older and had seen way more than her. She might give her ideas as well.