Merrit had gone to the river today with plan and purpose in mind. Ma had told him that father was sick, which meant he had to spend a lot of time resting, and a lot of time holed up and confined in the safer areas of the pack.

Today, he wanted to find a way to cheer his father up. Merrit had seen an interesting quarry the last time he'd come to this stretch of the river, and that was what brought him here now. The heavy stench of mud and fish lifted through the cattails, and he wound through their thick stalks until his paws grazed the slick ground on the other side. He readied himself for the shock of water, but instead his found his toes gracing - 

Mud? He furrowed his brow. Hadn't the shoreline lapped with water right up to the river reeds? A dark stretch of sodden dirt separated him from the river's edge, and he turned and meandered down the riverside, his prize momentarily forgotten as he surveyed the thinning stream.

Eventually, he picked up his sister's familiar shape bent low in the bank. He hopped down and joined her, lowering his neck to mimic her movement and sniff at the mud himself.  "Why's th'water nah'here?" he queried, and expected that she would have the answers, like adults always do.

Merrit tipped his head at Steph's lack of knowledge, surprised that she didn't have an answer. Even mother didn't bring a reason for the water's sudden decline, yet at that, he paused. He had begun to realize that sometimes the adults asked him questions they already knew the answers to, and he wondered if his mother was doing this now. That had to be it, and Merrit quietly tracked Steph's glance up the river.

His sister gave a good thought, and slowly, he nodded his agreement. "I made water stop," he mused, remembering when he'd stepped in a small trickle of rainwater and had caused the water to pool around his toes instead of carrying on downhill. Maybe that was happening now, but surely no one's paw was big enough to stop a whole river! He narrowed his gaze, and thought out loud. "Maybe a bison fell asleep in the water." But he couldn't remember if he'd ever seen a bison in the forest before, and his thoughts fished elsewhere. "Or... maybe Greyback," he said slowly, and turned to find his family's approval. Yes, that felt a lot more satisfying. The large man was probably almost as big as a bison, after all, and more than capable of blocking a river.

They laughed at him as he spoke, and Merrit frowned. Laughter hardly seemed the appropriate response; as far as he could tell, this was serious, and nothing worth laughing about. Was the situation actually funny? Or were they laughing at him? He found himself chilled at his mother's praise, and offered her a hollow stare. If she didn't think Greyback was in the water, then why were they going to check for him at all?

He stayed by the riverbed as his family moved upstream, until he caught his sister's glance. Only then did Merrit rise to follow, letting the coldness roll from his shoulders, but neither taking back his suggestions nor amending them. So what if he was wrong. They would find their answers soon enough.

Though Merrit was a headstrong child, and more removed from his emotions than others his age, he was not unforgiving. When wrongs were admitted, he much preferred to let things lie than to dwell on things that made him and others feel bad inside, so he received his sister's apology with an open heart, even if his only visible display of reception was a gentle bump in return.

They moved all the way along the riverbank until they reached the invisible divide between the familiar and the foreign. Here they stopped. The river continued unobstructed for miles, but visibly low, and even when he squinted he could see neither bison nor Greyback blocking the stream. So he had been wrong, but that left him unfazed. Now that they were here, his defunct theory paled beneath the mystery of the unknown that lay before them still. "I wan'ta come," he said with a firmness to his words and looked to his mother, then to Steph, hoping for their agreement.