Ravenshook Cliffs slipping down, down, down

The portly boy worked his way south-west along the coastline, stopping now and again to satisfy base needs like hunger and thirst. By now he'd learned the sea had an abundance of water but no relief to offer a parched tongue, so when he needed to drink, he had to head inland until he found a stream. Luckily the Sequoia was replete with forests where water could easily be found in springs and brooks. He kept to the coast to keep from getting lost, though, and always returned to the beaches. Food was another matter—only a fool would dream that such a fat wolf would ever make a competent hunter.

He managed to secure one meal by luck, a lean fox with a badly broken leg that could hardly flee from him. The rest of what he ate was scavenged offal from leavings in the woods. He carried the fox's tail with him as an imaginary good luck charm—"them be crafty critchers," Holga told him, leering, "smarter'n you or I or any fool wolf. Catch a fox by 'is toe and you'll be blessed, boah."

Well, he didn't believe all that, but the notion comforted him in his solitude, so the titian-haired tail found a home in the glove of his chubby muzzle. It was still there when he ran across another fellow on the cliffs—a man built well, he figured, without really knowing what that meant. His fur, a sumptuous shade of brown that made Laurel's tan hide seem positively drab in comparison, was frosted with salt. Lucas mistook this for white highlights in the pelt and complimented (out of the blue as always), in a voice muffled by a mouthful of fox fur, "I like your markings."