Gyrfalcon's Keep one evening as the sun went down and the jungle fires were burning

Pendragon appeared to be truly sleeping, so Lotte withdrew — but not without a tinge of disappointment. She knew little to nothing about the golden-eyed male, but it seemed she wouldn’t be learning anything today. She turned from his prone form only to be confronted by Arturo’s Leifteanant. Lotte could lay no claim on the viridian-eyed dryad, and for a moment this irritated the possessive smoke-and-shadow bitch. Her fur bristled instinctively as she gathered in Hemlock’s scent, but what she found intrigued her — even pleased her. Hemlock was female, healthy, and just a little older than Lotte — but despite her petite frame and almost vulpine appearance, she possessed a strength and vitality the Banríon was beginning to fear did not exist in the Teekons. “Peace,” Lotte murmured cryptically. “We will be allies, you and I.” She had no quarrel with the rust-and-flame female whose scars told a story the songbird was not yet privy to. “I learned it from a traveling trio of bards — it is a human traveling song.”

Lotte paused as her husband began rousing the other wolves, rallying them for the next leg of their journey, but returned her attention to Hemlock with pointed alacrity. “Run with us,” she suggested. “I understand better than most your desire to keep your scent free of the pack — but we have lost our chance at subterfuge. If you distance yourself for your own reasons, I will not push you — but if you are doing it for Teaghlaigh, stop.” Her words were brusque, but her alto was as warm as she could make it. Blithely she crossed the distance between Hemlock and herself, and with a smile that could have been considered flirtatious, she butted the air alongside one russet shoulder with a sweep of her broad muzzle — not near enough to touch the Lionsbane, but certainly near enough to make her longing plain.

“Another traveling song to rouse the troops,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows comically as she danced away with a saucy flick of her coal-colored tail, “taught to me by Brontide Corten.”

“Upon the hearth the fire is red,
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet,
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen but we alone.

Tree and flower and leaf and grass,
Let them pass! Let them pass!
Hill and water under sky,
Pass them by! Pass them by!

Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.

Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,
Let them go! Let them go!
Sand and stone and pool and dell,
Fare you well! Fare you well!

Home is behind, the world ahead,
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadows to the edge of night,
Until the stars are all alight.
The world behind and home ahead,
We'll wander back to home and bed.

Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,
Away shall fade! Away shall fade!
Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,
And then to bed! And then to bed!”