calmest before the storm

He had been doing the usual: eating, sleeping, being alive. His life consisted of little else. He kept to himself, only stepping out to harass the occasional wolf or a certain coyote. Speaking of, it had been a while. He thought of her. Was she pregnant? It had been fun, to twist her paw and convince her to lay with him when she thought him the most vile of creatures, but he wondered at what he did, potentially placing a new generation of coyotes into the foulest of circumstances he could imagine: raised as slaves to a weaker species.

It sickened him, somehow, though he was not and had never been an altruistic sort. He could not place his cares, if what he had could be labelled that, but he was nevertheless compelled to break from his routines to seek her out. He checked first the water hole, but she was not there, nor was there any sufficiently recent trace of her. The day was new, the sun just on the rise, but he was impatient. He skirted the plains rather than wait for her, and found her lingering at their edge, away from the wolves and their bison.

He stole close, then closer, and found the answer he sought in the developing curve of her stomach. He did not hide long, and revealed himself almost immediately, greeting her with nothing more than an unblinking stare, and the smallest of curls at one corner of his mouth.