Dragoncrest Cliffs We can bow 'cause our music's warmer than blood

The swing of a long tail was the only movement at the calm lake's edge that misty morning. Its surface was frozen over now from several nights of cold weather, but the ice was fragile, incapable of holding any wolf's weight. That was the advantage of living on the coast; when it snowed, it snowed heavily, but the weather warmed it away within days. When it dipped below freezing and the water froze, it was never solid. The environment was too temperate to allow winter to truly become a burden, as it did to inland wolves. It was the perfect place for Ephraim, who had inherited a coastal wolf's thin, coarse fur.

He watched shadows below the ice with cautious champagne eyes and a grimace on his face, twitching his tail to and fro even as light snow fell around and on him. He still wasn't sleeping well, and echoes of voices kept rising from his memories of the fight. He'd dissociated. Their faces had melted off and he'd been unable to recognize anyone. That was why... well, he didn't want to think about it. But the more time passed between then and now, the more clarity came as he replayed the events over and over.

Keep him. There was a warped voice in his head saying that, indiscernible as masculine or feminine, so he didn't know who had said it or to whom they referred. He often isolated himself like this to try to puzzle it out, but the most he could guess was that the voice meant Eurycrates. Of course they could keep him. They'd destroyed him.

@Vercingetorix