Heron Lake Plateau sleeping children are still flying

With Raven mobile and moved over to the den, Quixote felt a little bit better about starting to resume a few of his duties that he'd been severely neglecting.  He'd gone on a few short patrols, not even covering the full edge of the territory, but as long as it got done eventually, that was the thing, right?  There was still the section at the base of the plateau's cliff to do, but that was a longer trip and one he couldn't cut into smaller bits.  Maybe he'd do that one tomorrow.

Before returning to the den, he dug up a squirrel that had recently been placed into one of the caches, bringing it along for a nice evening snack -- it's not like it'd qualify for more than that.  It didn't take long before Raven popped into view, sitting outside the den.  She looked like a different wolf than when they'd first met, now wounded and the size of a blimp.  Okay, part of that wasn't exactly a bad thing and was his fault anyway -- unless she was regretting it now, as Raven did look pretty miserable.  But still.  Stuff had changed.  A lot.

Things had changed, but Raven had become the one he genuinely cared for, which was kind of odd to think of if he got into a particularly introspective mood.  Not that he had much of a chance to do so, as it was hard to do so when he still fretted about her healing and the pups.  He dropped the squirrel at her feet, taking a seat next to her, Still no good ideas on how to get comfortable?  At the very least he wasn't going to just go off and snooze and leave her up alone.  That felt, well, needlessly cruel.  From his understanding the pups were still just under a week off, give or take, but having Raven suffering that long sounded awful.  What else could he do?