Two things bring him back to the Glade.
Foolishly, secretly, the memory of Evien stirs in his muddled head. The second thing is the sound of a fox dying loudly. (He wasn't sure it was possible for a fox to die quietly.)
The Glade might be a drop-off for young men with questionable families. Fox was for lunch today. He approaches, cagey and seemingly nervous. The sound of ripping flesh is thick and wet and almost funny, because it was such a beautiful day.
Smells terrible but tastes decent, yeah? Dermis, epidermis, hypodermis, muscle, fat, bone. The sight of it in one viscous red smear against the grass— he tilts his head, as if asking another question.

A small muscle twitches under the crepe of his eyelid. He feels his eyes on him. He might as well have smudged fox blood all over Taylor. Eye contact was an aircraft that refused to be identified.
The combination of his red mouth, his laughter, his dark eyes, strike Taylor as appealing. If you don't mind, he says, uncertain, before placing his nose on what remained of the fox. He had eaten it indiscriminately. A bite from there, a bite from here.
This boy was clearly the most wolf out of anyone he had met so far.
Thanks for the lunch. Half-joking, he smiles halfway at him before tearing at a vague space between the pelvis and the ribcage. His teeth clink and grate on the bone. Have you lived here long?

The boy seems so comfortable in his own skin. Taylor envies him. This sort of jealousy was reflexive and he had stopped trying to repress it for a long time. It was like trying to keep a politician from lying. A waste of time.
In between bites of fox, he studies how the boy shakes his head, how he pronounces words like nah and dunno. These nuances are endearing, but they captivate Taylor mainly because he knows he will never be able to pull this act off. This was perhaps the only masterclass he had to fail.
Before he opens his mouth, he lingers on the fault line separating lie and truth. I'm not from around here, but I'm in a pack just across the meadow in a valley. Truth. I like it there, but I miss my family sometimes. Truth, lie. 
I'm Fields, he says warmly enough. His smile, while bloodstained, is surprisingly genuine.

Toad. He figures that his parents were some sort of New Age evangelists who named their kids after animals and flowers so that they would be welcomed back into the breadth of Mother Nature's hug when their time ran out. Or something like that. 
Called Ursus, he says, polishing off the last of the fox. He salvages what skin hasn't been torn apart (not very much) and cleans it with long strokes of his teeth. Interesting people, he grins inwardly. That was how dear Ico had put it. Believe it or not, we live with bears. The fox pelt was relatively neat. Its fur was matted with blood; he would have to wash it later. Might have a medic joining us soon.
Evien was another matter. Taylor didn't know that Toad had met him previously, but if he had, perhaps he would have felt the throes of a fitful teenage jealousy.

Despite his complete and total incompetency with social cues, Taylor doesn't miss how Toad's eyes light up at the mention of a medic. How his ears shove towards him. The base of his stomach tightens. He is sure that this sudden interest isn't due to the actual academics of healing.
Calculating, testing the ice, he forgets about his fox pelt. He fails to laugh at the appropriate time—goddamit!—and frustration tightens his hands.
Not much. He can't bring himself to lie. Not about this. Do you have a friend that's a healer? He braces himself for the answer, feeling teenaged and turbulent and tragic.

Would he consider Evien a friend? Could someone like himself even have friends at all?
He was, decidedly, unknowable. He lets the truth pass like a too-big pill through a dry swallow and shutters his eyes. Yeah, I do. And it seems you do too.
Evien hadn't mentioned meeting another boy nearby the Valley. He weighs two things in his mind: jealousy and the much more pragmatic notion of recruitment. Combine the neurotic and the practical and you more or less got Taylor Fields, wretched survivalist.
If you're gonna join just for him, Taylor rolls his sleeves up, at least prove you can fight. He's detached himself from the situation long ago. His actual self is hiding under a nuclear bunker, contemplating. 
He isn't surprised. Evien, he was pretty but substantial and most of all practical. He often feels he doesn't deserve to stand next to the smaller boy. He shakes his head, forces himself to believe that this was recruitment— nothing more.

Who said I was interested in joining your rag-tag band of crazies?
You did, Taylor wants to say. Your eyes, your ears, your mouth, they all did. Coolly, he says, I don't give a shit about the lunch. 
Toad jumps at him; Taylor rears back, but there isn't much room for error and he grunts as he's pushed back, teeth poking and then tearing at his neck. Pain strikes through him. For a moment he's back with his brother. Let's try this.
He snaps to the present, a low scream trapped in his throat. He's hyperaware of the hot blood welling up in the scratches on his neck. He writhes away from the bite as best he can, lowers his stance, and aims to grab Toad's right elbow with gnashing teeth, his eyes narrowed and hackles raised.

Blood and hair fills his mouth. Taylor bites down, hard, while he still has the chance, but Toad is already tearing away, and he's left with nothing but a scrap of skin. Breathing hard, he turns and spits to the side. A smear of red saliva on the grass.
There's no time to assess his surroundings— Toad is rearing up, so close and so big he's obscuring his vision, casting an unnaturally large shadow over him. His weight crashes against him, supported by gravity, and he crumples against the mass of the heavier boy. Physics. What a bitch.
Where bruises would appear in a day or two, the skin is pulsing with a deep ache. Like he had so many little heartbeats. Taylor tries to slip out from under once, twice, bucking and writhing, like a bull in pain in the middle of a spectator ring, taunted by the matador.
Hatred, for himself and Toad, curls itself around his heart in a cold grip. He's shaking with anger, frustration, adrenaline, but he doesn't speak.
Defeat tasted a hundred, no, a thousand times worse than fox meat.

When Toad's teeth pierce his neck again, he doesn't scream, but his lungs betray him and he gasps. Searing pain shoots through him. Where he's bleeding from, it feels impossibly hot.
He swallows blood and blinks through the sweat. Get off of me, please. His voice is smooth and polite, if not, a bit breathless— he could be talking through the phone to you and you wouldn't know how much pain he's in. How much hair-trigger rage is souring his organs. Burning him up from the inside.
Toad's breath is heavy and damp in his face. Shimmering in heat. We see Taylor, cinematic, disconnected and feral. Music playing in his head. Pure primal id.

Dragging himself up, first by one arm and then by the other, it strikes him how much he hates the person in front of him. How much he wants to violently conjoin his skull with the ground several times in quick succession. 
His hands shudder. The scene replays over and over again in his head like a corrupted disc, stuttering. In his head, he's already digging up the dirt. I'd like you to follow me, he says, still smooth, still polite. As if the fight had been a brief but vivid hallucination, springing in and out, cat burglar style. 
Blood is dripping slowly from the cut in his throat. It stains him like some depraved and perverted bib. On their way to the valley, the leave a trail of careless red.