Lost Creek Hollow tearing into me without teeth

she crosses the border with relief, bone-aching weariness that has little to do with physical exhaustion dogging her step. the forest closes up overhead, and one of the boughs carries some of the first buds of the season. some of the pawprints behind her are touched with rust; the blood is not her own. she deposites herself atop a small knoll a short destance from the border, at a loss. everything still seems not-entirely-real, and dimly she remembers someone - Sunny? Adi? talking to the sky and stars. it helped, they'd said, to talk to the dead. it seemed stupid. and besides, overhead the sky was still lit by the evening sun. still - for a moment, she imagined Aviana, pheasant clutched in her jaws and grin on her muzzle. Grayday, her father at her side and telling her about something Easy had done as a child. she couldn't bring herself to talk to them, but she could picture them here with her, indistinct and already falling prey to the erosion of memory. 

she began cleaning away the blood she'd stepped in, the taste of it betweeen her toes foreign and reminding her all to clearly of the boy she barely knew throwing himself at the body of the dead woman. she hadn't been taken by fire or illness, but anoher wolf. it should have dismayed her, but she felt only dull recognition at this fact. she moved up her leg, to her shoulder and the stop she could never reach. maybe she should have should have stayed with Sunny, and not distanced herself from the last family she had left. maybe she should stop wallowing in grief and bond more deeply with her packmates. maybe.

He smelled the blood first, and he followed it, the trail taking him to where another wolf sat. She wasn't familiar to him but he was not sure of many in the Hollow. He was slow to learn, and liked to do it at his own pace. There were a good many of them.

Are you hurt? he asked, softly, forgetting introductions or really any kind of formalities to his more urgent curiosity. It didn't occur to him that materializing from the lengthening shadows with no announcement or warning might startle her. At least he was as unassuming as always in demeanor.

the boy who disturbed her mangled train of thoughts was soft-spoken and sudden in his approach. she might have been started, by her mind was too far away to register the surprise. "it's not my blood," she answered in turn, voice level but sounding strange to her own ears, as if the words were uttered by a stranger. 

a moment passed and her mind returned to the present, and realized the words alone sounded incriminating. "a boy was attacked outside Easthollow, by another wolf. there was a girl, dead." she didn't particularily want to tell the boy this, and it occured to her dimly that Rannoch out to know. she'd tell him later, but something was nagging in the back of her mind, soething she couldn't place. "has something like that happened around here, before?" 

Good, he said, though he still didn't stop checking as non-invasively as he could. Which basically meant he was giving a good look over.

Do they need help? He could if need be, maybe, at least assist. They weren't pack but to Gannet any wolf in need was worth the time. I don't think so. He hadn't been here a super long time, but long enough, and he'd never heard of anyone dying except the one maybe, with the bear? Cougar? Something that wasn't a wolf.

she still taken aback, and so merely shakes her head. the first wolf would benefit from no help whatsoever, and Evergreen was well-supported by his pack, and she had to believe he'd be fine. "I should tell Rannoch." she mutters, more to herself than Gannet, and rises, offering a pelt a stiff shake. she begins to move off, but pauses. "thank you." she doesn't know why she says it, exactly, only knows she'd be worse off if she'd been wallowing htere alone much longer. with that, she's gone.