Heron Lake Plateau how many people have to pretend to die.

This is basically something I feel that Niamh would do in her spare time

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Niamh couldn't see Finley, but she could hear what she interpreted as a pretty smug-ass smile in her voice when she responded. There wasn't really anything Finley could have done at that point, so Niamh merely stayed where she was, looking this way and that until she thought she might have found an option. Maybe she could lower herself down onto her hind feet on the lower branch and jump down from there...But that branch was only about as thick as her forelimb, and danced below her weight. There was no way she could balance on it, even if she tried to hug the trunk of the tree. The lower branch couldn't help her- but as she gazed down the shivering branch she had a hold of with her teeth, she got another idea. 

She hoped that the tree was young and that the branches were supple- and could really do nothing about it otherwise. She tested her weight on it and it seemed to bend a bit, so she took one hind foot off the lower branch, and then the other. She began to swing her hind end back and forth slightly, simply assuming that the branch she held onto would bend and gently lower her to the ground. For a few seconds, it seemed like it might obey her, a bit- just in that it bobbled under her weight for the first few swings. But she was holding on far too close to the trunk for it to bend and gently set her down. 

Instead, the branch bobbed up and down twice more before it cracked just beside her mouth, with half of the branch remaining more or less attached and the other half pulling away like a strip of long wallpaper off the branch and down the trunk as Niamh's weight pulled it to the ground. In the end, it might have slowed her down just a touch, but she still hit the ground gracelessly with a loud grunt, the branch still clutched in her jaws. 

It took her a second to sit up, with her haunches sore as she'd landed mostly on one hip. But she was young, and young wolves could bounce back- she'd fallen a little over a metre and a half, but thanks to her long legs, she hadn't been as high up off the ground as she would have been had she not been practically a wolf on stilts. She shook her pelt out and nudged the branch toward Finley. "Y'can't eat it. But if you shake it at Elwood he'll probably bring you something to eat." She said, slightly out of breath as she stretched each of her limbs out, wincing slightly as they groaned from the abuse.