Ravensblood Forest No more alone or myself could I be

The forest was alive with new scents, and Lotte busied herself with excavating dens and padding the caches to provide what succor she could. Today, though, she was busy doing something else entirely.

It surprised the smoke-and-shadow tundra native that trees needed to be cared for, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. She realized her error only after she’d committed it, and sat staring at the top-heavy young sequoia whose exposed roots promised a lovely living space — if the inhabitant wanted to be smothered and crushed when it inevitably fell. It tilted at a dangerous angle, the winter thaw having softened the earth beneath it into muddy slush, and Lotte bore testament of its threat: she, too, was covered in mud and wispy white root tendrils. Her instinct was to fell it, but no matter how ardently she threw her weight against it, it wouldn’t budge. She’d heard that telltale creak, though — the tree was fated to meet a sad, horizontal end.

It was too early, Lotte felt, to wake the Family and request their aid. Anyway, Olive and Dakarai were in no shape to help her knock down one of the great arboreal giants. The idea of having Arturo help her had its own appeal — she did so love to see the suave and svelte Ceannasach dirty and ruffled, after all — and she turned, trotting purposefully through the shadowed weald, only to be intercepted a short time later by a classic beauty of a wolf. Her bright pelage was a deep, overcast steel-blue with undertones of fog and mist — it amused Lotte that her own pelt could have been painted with the same palette, and she dipped her muzzle cordially, her warm alto rich and mellifluous in the morning calm. “Rakeet, comrade,” she murmured, her moonbright eyes drifting appraisingly over the regal creature with natural, but not overt wariness.

The differences between them were evident: the gloss of the Comhlach’s fur cast a striking contrast to the Banríon’s matte — and presently soil-caked — pelt; Lotte was visibly taller and broader; and the Raurc colleen possessed a certain polish that Arturo’s mate lacked. Lotte’s first impression of Lia Raurc was one of immediate liking, and her mud-flecked mouth tipped up at the corners in a bright smile as she said, “We have not met — I am Lotte Ansbjørn Fearghal. Who are you, sininen veri?”