The Tangle hips that could bear you a buffalo

“I can’t.”

Eirlys swung around, for she’d already begun to trundle off in the wake of her galvanizing cry, to peer at her littermate with a glaze of dumb confusion misting her glacial gaze. “O-Oh,” she eked out idiotically, “yeah, of course.” She should’ve known that! She should’ve scented the wolfscent that tangled thickly within Mallaidh’s pelt. Stupid.

“Of course,” she repeated, panic attacking her way through the rest of her, “Oh, yeah, I knew that, I was just seeing if you knew that! That’s the only reason why I said it. Not because I actually wanted you to drop everything and follow me blindly.” She pushed herself back at her sister clumsily, trying to rewind what she’d done, and nosed comfortingly at the girl’s cheek. “Well,” she said inanely, “I could bring Ceallach here, or you could come visit after you tell them — you don’t have to stay or anything, you could just come visit and.” She swallowed thickly. “Even if — we’re still a family, so…even if we live separately for awhile that would be okay as long as we don’t lose each other again.”

That sounded fair, right? Eirlys bulldozed onward, wheezing asthmatically. “I know you’re not alone anyway, but you’re not alone anymore, Mallaidh,” she said. “I have to go back to Ceallach — and Hemlock. He — they — worry if I don’t come home.” She hesitated, knowing that she was rushing through the end of their meeting, but nobody had ever taught Eirlys how to end conversations gracefully. “Can I bring him back here?” she asked. “Can we come and visit you?” She wanted to be a part of Mallaidh’s new life the same way she’d been a fixture in her childhood; she just didn’t know how to go about it.