Ouroboros Spine crooked but upright

Tonravik watched Echelon as Echelon had watched her and felt she could read her mind in that instant, intuitive to her in their years of traveling to arrive here and now. Tonravik responded to the display of fangs by keeping her stony disposition and hard stare, snorting. "Naga," she seethed then, vehement in this. She knew the svelte, slight Echelon was a brilliant fighter; she needed her now on the homefront.

"It is a week-long trip, and there is no easy way. If they come here, we will know it; we have every advantage." They knew their land. The way it could aid, and the way it could trap. And Tonravik knew much of Plains; the flatlands were not for her. Wolves of the plains knew how to hide in long grasses, as any would, but knew nothing of what the wolves of mountains, plateaus, or other landmasses knew. Wolves of Tartok had displaced plains wolves (if they were Dotharan, she did not know) before for their bison, and had herded the beasts after their victory to mountains.

Tonravik looked to Echelon. It was unfortunate she was in no state to do battle and proclaim war herself, but she wanted nothing from them regardless. She would take everything, of course, if they gave her merely the chance; she felt, in her bones, that they just might. They would not have known, then, that she was pregnant; it was days later that the signs began to show, and her scent began to change.