Sleepy Fox Hollow Verbindung

Why had he trespassed?

The word was unfamiliar to him. He knew it, of course, but to him it was synonymous with sin, and he did not believe he'd sinned against these wolves. It halved his enthusiasm to be accused of such a thing, but ratcheted up his nervous energy by several heart-pounding degrees. He decided to keep a little more distance than he thought was strictly proprietary between himself and the older male, when normally it might have been more polite to crowd close enough to kowtow and grovel.

"I suppose I wanted to get a look at you before you got one at me," he admitted, because he could think of nothing any less damning than the truth. He wanted to explain that, for him, it was rolling the dice any way he tried to join a pack, and he trusted his legs to be swift a whole lot more than he trusted strangers to be kind. Somehow, he determined that this would not impress the grizzled male.

They were moving on, anyway, and Dusty stole a glance toward Emmerich as if to reassure himself before answering the next question.

"Yessir," he said, and he hoped he didn't sound too strange saying it. The only adults he'd ever had to pay mind to had been on first name basis with him, and so less personal honorifics felt a little stiff. "Both," he clarified, "and I can always find water."

The coywolf did not consider that this was not as useful a talent in such a verdant landscape, nor that the sort of hunting he and his family did in the desert was very different from the way these wolves might hunt. He was confident in his abilities: smart enough to understand he was stronger when he relied on others as well as himself, but not yet wise enough to see all the ways in which he was different from this species of his kin.

"What's Paleo?" he asked, his interest keen. He glanced at Emmerich again. "And what's a gargoyle?"

They didn't have those in the desert.