Blacktail Deer Plateau i can't stop drinking about you

Ira spoke softly in her ear, trying to console her. Beyond him, she could hear the silver male speaking evenly. "No harm done." Slowly, the yearling's eyes cracked open, though they winced shut again as Fox's sharp words cracked over them all like a biting whip. It took a beat for Bones to realize that Fox wasn't yelling at her but at Ira instead. Her eyes reopened, burning with tears. They were all at odds because of her.

If not for the news about her father, Bones might have fled right then. Instead, her glistering eyes fixed on the gray brute and she asked in a quivering voice, "Me father's been hurt? What happened?" Slowly, she rolled over and pushed herself into a sitting position, though her head hung low between her silvered shoulder blades.

"Please don't fight because of me," she added to both Ira and Fox. "She didn't know, Ira. And he was just trying to protect me, Fox," Bones tried to explain to them respectively. "Neither one of ye did anything wrong." She paused and sucked in a shaky breath, then shook her head at Fox's question. "I can't. I promised Cap'n Bazi. And Ira goes wherever I go." And Fox had just made it very clear what she thought of him.

Feeling humiliated and defeated — quite different than she had expected to feel on this trip — Bones let her head drape even lower. Tears fell from her pale eyes, dripping down her slender muzzle and onto the grass between her forepaws.