Ouroboros Spine mines (danger!)

The bird Vairë found and is trying to treat is a leucistic “brown” fish crow!

Deer were creatures of wandering, and despite Vairë’s wolf body, the spirit that had settled into her empty places at birth was still that of old doe, even if her memories had faded into the haze of time, clinging to the edges of Vairë’s consciousness. They came as overly vivid dreams, offering young doe a glimpse at what old doe had done, how prey handles their lives outside of predators. Old doe’s first fawn, the first doe to die for her, the stag who would eventually steal her heart and keep her in his herd until her death.

But this was lost on cub, on wolf child of soft fur where deer was course. Her legs did not remember having hooves, her haunches did not remember the score of teeth. What Vairë did remember, body and soul, was travel. For all she wished to stay at home, home had been invaded. Home had become terror, so she began to roam. Small bits and pieces away from where she normally stayed, at first, then beginning to leave Moonglow’s scented borders, climbing up the spine, dipping low towards the Wilds below.

Today, however, she was running back to Moonglow’s borders, eyes wild, iron scent invading her nostrils making saliva drip down from her jaws, intertwining with the blood that was already staining her chin and chest. Across her back, slung like a fur, a todd fox, slain by her own tooth. In her mouth, the limp shape of a bird, held ever so carefully as to not injure it even more than it already was. The beige toned teenager skidded to a final halt outside the ulaq she shared with her family, throwing the fox off her shoulders and gently sitting the bird on the ground between her paws. Dual toned eyes flicked between wounds, between the bird’s eyes and the shade of its feathers. She couldn’t just let the poor thing die.

But she didn’t know what to do to stop it from its fate.