King Elk Forest fukurō

“Kiyoshi Draconid.”
 
The boy corrected her almost immediately upon being called a ‘Whitebark pup’. The correction had not been done to insult the woman; he simply wished for her to address him by his actual name instead of the place where he had traveled from – the place that was no longer a home. As she had continued to speak, she stated that Toshi had traveled with her group and that she had believed he’d returned home to collect his family. The dark-eyed boy frowned thoughtfully and turned his gaze back in the direction he’d traveled from.
 
“He is gone,” Kiyoshi remarked, his tone bordering on sad. This would surely break their mother’s heart, and the young pup could not imagine the lengthy journey home to see her… to tell her that Toshi had gotten lost somewhere and they would not see him again. Then, the boy looked back to the tall woman in front of him and wondered what he was supposed to do.