Blacktail Deer Plateau i was lightning, before the thunder

There was too much going on, and Burr was barely able to process it all. He was certainly smart enough to go over the facts in his head, but his attention was divided between three—no, four—wolves all at once. He swung his head slowly around to regard the kindly woman, Pema, when she lowered herself to his own level. There was a tremor through his entire form that seemed to suggest fear and the remnants of shock, but his voice was bold and unwavering (brave, he might later claim) when he asked, "Where's Easthollow?"

There were kisses and nudges exchanged between the others, reports given to the grizzled old grey who seemed to steal the show when he arrived, and words that he only half-listened to until Dawn pointed out that they didn't know his name. Burr felt increasingly wary about the sheer number of wolves involved with him here, but even the eldest Saefyn wasn't stubborn enough or dumb enough to look a gift horse in the mouth. He was far from home, alone and frightened and badly hurting, but Pema was right—they had helped him. Anyway, it wasn't like he'd had many good encounters with adults besides his parents, so what was the worst they could do?

He knew, but chose not to think about.

"I'm Burr," he said, and balked at the way his voice crackled in his throat. Chocking it up to pain and misuse, the boy cleared it and continued, "I fell—" but anything else he said was drowned out by the concern expressed by his three saviors for the older wolf. Obviously something had happened, but Burr didn't know these wolves and he was just a young boy who couldn't yet empathize and ended up feeling selfishly ignored instead. Someday he would understand. He ended up dropping his chin onto his legs and trying his hardest to ignore his throbbing ankle and the tears building in the corners of his eyes.