Felltree Marsh This.. Is the real world.

The story Esaro offers him makes him frown and he waves his tail a few times and relaxes his shoulders just a little.  He felt for the loner, losing his family. In some ways, Ukko misses his own family but, the last he’d seen them, they were alive. To have the whole pack turn on them didn’t allow his alarm to settle back and he remains uncertain on whether or not he’d want to lead the wolf back to his home.  If he were going to prove himself as a leader—even with the conflict over the last several days—he couldn’t lead disasters to their core.

“I’m sorry to focus on this but why did they turn against your family?” he asks in the most delicate way possible. He’s not on the borders of Phoenix Maplewood and instead on neutral ground where he can’t enact any sort of protocol, but if Esaro turns out to be unsavory, he’d rather the other not know where he calls home. 

He at least offers his stay to the pack.  Their numbers are small but they get by, at least, but for the winter they could use extra paws to keep them together. Does he even have the power to welcome someone to the pack? He wrinkles his nose slightly in consideration before brushing that off.  He has plenty of time to figure it out, or so he thinks.  

“I’m Ukko,” he finally introduces now that he feels relatively comfortable.  “And what ca—” he breaks off as a few flakes fall from the sky and land on his nose. He blinks past a few that stick to his eyelashes then jerks his head for the other to follow.  He can find out what the other’s good at, what he can do to benefit his home, when they find shelter against the snow that begins to come down harder by the minute.