Porcupine Ridge things my heart used to know

Several days had now passed since Tagg had led her into the mountain depths and into the wintry Arcadia she now called her home. Everything was much colder and harder than she was used to, but it was a change she accepted willingly—and her troubles made it easy to forget her irrevocable fear. Though, at nearly every turn Diane was reminded of how much this wasn't the life she had been raised attuned to.

There was no sea song. No waves or their symphonies. The ground did not yield to her paws, and everything smelt new and unfamiliar. But even though active comparisons of her birthplace were being made in the back of her thoughts, there was nothing more distracting than being thrown headfirst into the unknown. She had been graciously fed and watered, with little expectation for anything of use during her introductory grace-period, and it made Diane uneasy being stagnant. She wanted desperately to prove her worth.

Nothing about the mountainous topography was easily accustomed to. She slipped quite a lot, and her paws felt rawer than they ever had. She had just attempted to make her first kill on the Ridge, which ended in a spectacular tumble down a rough, icy hill. Shaking, and finding herself generally unharmed, the young wolf limped away from the embarrassing crash-site, and stopped several yards away to lie and tend to her suffering feet.

She licked them, grimacing as she relieved herself of embedded grit and pebbles, trying to ignore the stinging taste of disappointing failure left on her tongue.