if jackdaw (@Jakoul) followed, augur did not move to address her.

the land here was feral and sprawling and good. he drank from a crystalline lake and hunted rabbits for an hour or so beneath the low pine branches.

he ate. he slept, curled, ears alert but tail over the soft tissues of his face, so that they would not be frostbitten.

in another two hours augur rose, shook off the snow which had collected in an unmelted pile upon his thick fur, and set off again along an icy ridge.

here the trail sharpened; blotches of blood. footprints thick with it.

augur bristled and growled a single low note of death into the cold wind.