Hideaway Strath one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan

The matter of the Lotturo Lemmenpesä is the one thing standing between the weary couple and some much needed peace. The moment she slakes her thirst, Lotte turns from the water with droplets of sweet snowmelt still clinging to her chin. In a rare moment of clarity, she turns her attention to Ceannasach with wicked mischief brewing in her argent eyes — and pokes her snout up beneath his chin with a playful whuff that damps the fur at the hollow of his throat. Pleased with herself, she pokes her tongue out at her mate and whirls — ungainly despite herself — and bounds a pace or two away. She moves cautiously, wary of the wracking pains that threaten, but finds she is oddly absolved of them. The tautness in her lower abdomen is unchanged, but moving is easier now. “Come and get me,” she dares her husband, reminded of their first game of tag. The young mother-to-be is far from limber as she trots heavily through the uncharted wood — stopping short when a strangely comforting, strangely familiar scent piques her interest.

Lotte abruptly changes her trajectory, abandoning the game as she turns to her husband with a smile of invitation. She is still panting heavily, her body temperature higher than it should be, but she seems less strung out. Her keen nose leads her through the coniferous forest; she disregards the firs, pines, and larches impatiently as she breaks through the bracken, heedless of the low, scraping boughs that trail shallow pink furrows along her taut flanks. “Oh, Arturo,” she breathes as she breaks into a secluded hollow where a single sequoia stands — the largest that Lotte has ever seen. It makes no geographical sense that it is here, towering above the spruces, cottonwoods, and aspens that populate the majority of the strath.

The soot-stockinged rogue investigates the clearing and turns to her husband with a rapturous air, for beneath the King Sequoia’s roots is a small hollow. Whatever animal once inhabited it is gone now, and Lotte pokes her nose into it and immediately begins to dig. She is, at present, too fat to actually fit — but she reasons that that’s what legs are for. “Here,” she says decisively, heaving a sigh of relief. “Here, I will give you sons and daughters.” She cranes her neck to look over one dirt-spattered shoulder.