Wapun Meadow in the beginning

Ah. That explained a lot. Oni was sent on his way not so long ago, but he was older and more wizened in travel and self-preservation, he assumed. The wide world and all of its solitude didn't bother him much, but he supposed he understood why a younger wolf might feel a little lost in the whole thing. The world was a big place, and they were a very social type of animal.

"Are any of us?" he wondered rhetorically, following along that same vein of thought. They were raised from birth to believe in the collective. Was any wolf capable of being alone and truly feeling at ease with it? Oni challenged the very notion, and thought any wolf who proclaimed themselves thus was simply trying too hard. "I'm not from around here, but—" he paused and lifted his nose into the sky to take a whiff, "I reckon there's no one to worry about." He was not the violent type, after all.

"If you aren't used to being alone then you must not have been alone long," he surmised, turning a pointed stare on Liatris and abandoning his feigned interest in the ice. "What changed?" For him, it was destiny. For her?