Mount Apikuni And faded through the brightening air

Saena heard Jackrabbit before he ever reached her. The emotional, self-aware side of her was curled up internally in the fetal position, while the wild, rational side was what burned in her breast now. Her ears pricked up of their own accord, but she hardly reacted to the sound of paw pads on the rough mountain floor. She lifted her head marginally, seeming barely aware of the agouti youth's approach. He blended into the dusk so well that he may as well be invisible anyway. Do it, she thought, take me unawares, kill me. Do it. But he spoke instead.

She rose to her paws in a sudden flash and let her hackles bristle lightly. It was naught but a defensive posture, devoid of a true threat from the way her ears pulled back and her lips hung loose at the corners. "What's wrong with you?" she mimicked back at Jack, "approaching a full grown wolf so lackadaisically. You could get yourself killed." Saena was the last wolf who would ever attempt to kill Jackrabbit, though. Her attempts at violence were reserved for wolves who violated whatever land she claimed, and for Reek, whom she pushed out of mind as quickly as he drifted into it.

"You ever lose something important, kid?" she asked, if only for the sake of talking to someone, even if he was young, not a whole lot older than her own daughters. Beneath the depression and hopelessness that surrounded Saena in the aftermath of her visit to Larksong Grotto was a desperate loneliness that reached out for any form of contact, negative or positive.