Moonspear come away, o wolf child!

✴       The boy had been mindlessly keeping to a small area of the mountainside in an effort to patrol it, mark it as his own, and stockpile it with various things that he found interesting. This typically meant that he would steal fragments of bones from kills and then bury them somewhere within the designated soil; today he had found a half-dead little squirrel and had been playing with it (read: terrorizing it) until it looked ready to give up its little ghost, when he was briefly distracted by the commotion of a rising din nearby. Revui did not know the wolf that was barking but he knew the insistence of the tone. With a casual lift-and-toss of the poor little squirrel against a nearby tree, the thing was dead. He would return for it later, but now his interest lay with what was over the next ridge.

There was a moment of indecision within Revui as he left his fresh prize. He crossed through a small field of wildly tall grass interspersed with young trees, and came thundering along a winding path, which led to the treeless expanse where the pale wolf was. The boy looked around at the shadows for a moment—curious if anyone else would come to intercept the stranger or whatever had startled them—but ran ahead without slowing. He came upon the stranger's flank with his summer coat bristling.

It was at this point he recognized the scent of his parents upon this stranger. So, that meant they were a stranger to him but not to the mountain — a packmate, and one he likely had seen without recognizing on previous days. He ducked to the right of the adult's figure and looked for the target that had them so agitated, at which point he saw the ring of mushrooms.

He wasn't aware of the cat. Perhaps Revui should have recognized the musk of the strange animal, but his senses were overwhelmed by the fresh blood that spattered his face from the squirrel. His tail lashed behind him, and he looked from the stranger to the odd concentric growth as if to say, I don't get it.