Firefly Glen Pulling me under

“Yeah,” Cypress said, his agile mind whirring wildly, “worse.” What would happen, for example, if the girl never found her footing? What would happen, he wondered, if she died? In his innocence and ignorance, he knew with the unshakable conviction of the very young that the girl would be fine — he was here, and he would save her; but even if he was not here, someone would save her. Only bad wolves died. The young wolf’s upbringing had been sheltered, and he’d been fed upon tales of love and war gilded with beautiful words and heroic themes — but the skewed belief that Rannoch would forever be the hero and he, the smaller son, the failed firstborn, would be left to skulk in shadow had begun to take root. A burgeoning taste for the macabre — sympathy for the villain, perhaps? — had begun to rear its head in the Neverwinter prince. “Never mind — nothing bad will happen. Look, you’re doing it. You’re almost out,” he encouraged hastily, a fissure of impatience causing his changing voice to crack, betraying his adolescence. She was supposed to be Lucy — he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was wasting time.

He found a patch of solid ground and reared back, striking at it like a fox making a kill — and when it held, he tossed his mud-spattered head and triumphantly cried, “Over here, Lu — l-look!” Despite his blunder, he shut his mouth tight before the shadow’s name slipped fully from his lips, and the cover was unintentionally convincing. The slip of his errant tongue merely seemed the product of a boyish stammer: “over here, l-l-look!” He shifted restlessly, ready to offer a nod of encouragement should the female look his way again. “Step this way — be careful — and push hard with your front legs. I’ll help pull you out.”