Blacktail Deer Plateau i know what it feels like to be empty

I was hoping @Dante might jump into this one.. :D

Saēna was gone.

Pura had never felt anything quite like it. It felt as though a large, sucking chest wound had opened up over his heart, but there was nothing there - he had checked, several times.

She had departed in secret, promising to return 'some day' and in turn forbidding him from sharing details of her departure. If reasons had been given, Pura had forgotten them now - something about Fox and Peregrine and more babies.

The freckled wolf hadn't said a word to anyone, and nursed his grief in private. Since adopting Peregrine's 'kill on sight' approach to border patrol, Pura had more or less lived at the Plateau's eastern edge. He prowled the foot of the mountain like a silvery wraith, practice-murdering any non-wolf wildlife that crossed his path. Rabbits, mostly, and the occasional squirrel - more often than not they managed to outrun him, but he had emerged victorious on several occasions already.

It was evening now, and time for Pura to start his eight trip along the border. Here and there, he stopped to pee on a rock or a shrub, shaking his leg. The world was eerily silent without a sister to run back to at the end of a hard day's work. He missed her fiercely.