Redhawk Caldera Fighting a giant goldfish at the South Pole

He wanted to be brave. For almost all of his life, Nightjar had been brave, challenging everyone as a pup and feeling almost no fear even when he lost. But he wasn't brave now. His forepaws pressed against the earth, shoving his shoulders back as far as they would go, and he hunched over himself protectively as though he feared an attack at any moment. This was Redhawk Caldera, ruled by the soft-hearted Blackthorns, and Nightjar had no reason to be afraid that any wolf here would attack him. They had let Towhee live and they would help him, too. But that wasn't the reality that he believed in, and from there stemmed his fear.

His reality was simpler: Towhee being allowed to live had been a fluke. In any other pack or any other circumstance, she would not have been given the chance to develop into a useful wolf in spite of her handicap, to the point where it hardly hindered her at all. Nightjar, on the other hand, had been with his sight for three years and didn't have the slightest clue how to live without it, nor was he as amenable to having to re-learn how to live with a handicap he had never had before. The solution was simpler still, but he didn't think about it now.


Nightjar whimpered instead, and when Finley quietly asked what happened, he shook his head. "I don't know, my eyes were itchy yesterday before I went to sleep and I woke up like this!" He didn't connect it with how the sun looked yesterday. He wasn't smart enough or knowledgeable enough to do so. As far as Nightjar knew, he went to sleep, woke up, and only had his peripheral vision left.