Wapun Meadow ain't too sure what i believe in

The other explained what Ursus was -- a pack, in the valley up ahead -- and said that they were mean and they didn't like trespassers very much. Charles knew what a trespasser was. They went across the borders and tried to steal stuff from you, and often they would get ripped to parts. He wouldn't like getting ripped to parts, he didn't think. He only liked to be bad in smaller amounts, just enough to get punished. He wasn't sure why, even as he grew older now, even as he was a year old, why he did these things, but neither did he stop very long to think about them. Charles wasn't a worrier, and it was probably for the best considering where his life had taken him so far.

What being 'mean' was was a more abstract concept for Charles, though. He wondered what being mean was, but he didn't want to ask it. Unaware that a lot of wolves thought that anyway because of his peculiarness, Charles didn't want to look dumb. Mean was probably just something similar to fierce. Got it, Charles said. As he looked up at the other wolf he noticed that there wasn't a lot of peculiar detail about him. You look normal, said the coywolf; it was hard to say whether it was admiration or ridicule in his voice as he said it, the latter mostly because of the weird choice of words. I mean uh -- that's fierce. He wasn't sure why he used 'fierce', mirroring the word that had just been said to him, other than his own lack of vocabulary and that the word had a ring to it. And if he used it for his leader, then it must be a word akin to 'cool', so that was probably a good thing, right?