Firefly Ravine Bleak

Her heart froze in her chest. She didn’t dare breathe as she strained her ears. The call didn’t come again, though Njord’s own bellow startled her. She nearly threw her foreleg out again to silence him, though it was too late. She squinted into the distance, lips moving silently as she hoped and prayed for an answer.

They were met with a brief and wrought silence before a young wolf appeared nearby. Meerkat’s heart jumped into her throat before sinking at the sight of a stranger. This must be the girl who had shouted, though why had she said Quennell’s name? And how did she know Njord?

Before she could articulate any of her scattered thoughts, Meerkat swore she caught Swordfish’s scent on the crosswind. It was just a faint hint, his familiar smell and the medicinal odors she had recently come to associate with him. The muscles in her neck nearly creaked as her head snapped upward, muzzle raised in the air to better capture these intimations of her missing son.

He was here, she whispered to no one in particular, nearly certain of it. Quennell too. What…?

If they had been with the group seeking refuge from the bear, why were their trails isolated? But that was the only clue she could pick up on the air, even as she exchanged a look with her mate and scrambled further along the ravine. Had the two injured boys become separated from the others somehow? Though Sapphique had turned its back on the Sveijarn-Corten pair, she could not imagine they would leave their injured sons behind.

We have to track him down, she said to Njord and Ray, returning to them with a frenetic energy, paying no attention to the girl. We have to find him.

She exchanged a look with her mate, silently promising that she would obey his earlier words and stay in his sight. But then Meerkat spun on a heel and ran forth, prepared to plumb the very depths of the ravine if that’s what it took, all the while screaming Swordfish’s name until she grew hoarse.

If I need to make any edits to tweak assumptions and/or continuity, please just tap me. I think this’ll be my last post to segue into this.