Sleepy Fox Hollow Down the road

Donnie ate quickly. Anselm surmised this was the after-effect of a boy starved of food. 

His father intoned gravely the lost child could not stay. I vill go to Epoch, Papa. Mahler likely would want to be close - Wylla was near her time, and Anselm itched for more travel. 

He frowned. If they turned Donnie to the woods, the cat could make an easy meal of him. At the same time as heartless as it was, Anselm would always pick family over strangers. Donnie’s soft roo broke the silence that stretched between them all; he would let Mahler show the boy where he could stay temporarily - he did not have the stomach yet to turn lost little boys out into the cold.