Northstar Vale you and me and the devil makes three

Ravenous, Lotte continued eating, though her attention remained raptly upon the fiery little girl. “A sequoia is a tree — the biggest kind of tree I have ever seen — with fox red bark,” she exulted. “I grew up in the northern tundra — a very flat place where there was always an abundance of snow and little of anything else. I did not see my first tree until I was older than you!” She chuckled, remembering how enraptured she and Dagfinn had been. Naturally, the first thing her kaksonen had done was pee all over the trunk before she could. She’d made him pay for his insolence, though.

It was Lotte’s turn to look confused. “I have never heard of a wolf living inside a mountain,” she admitted, “but I know little of mountains. My daughter is keen to learn to climb them.”

The singed songbird grinned a little sheepishly at the girl’s closing query, having heard it more than once from the wolves she met. “My glib tongue runs away from me,” she murmured. “It is the language of my home. I called you ‘little spark’ and then ‘little fearless’. In this common tongue it sounds clumsy, but I meant no offense by it. It is a habit.” Her ears flattened in deference as she said, “I can try to stop it if it troubles you…” Her voice trailed off as she playfully caught the tip of her tongue between her incisors, as though demonstrating her willingness to do just that.