Silver Creek anyway

A sense of trepidation came over Talisman, for reasons he would be embarrassed to articulate aloud should Fiona or Prowler notice the way he shrunk in on himself slightly, muscles coiling for fight-or-flight. When the she-wolf strode over to investigate, his pale eyes stayed glued to her, though he didn’t move right away.

When he did, he crept a little closer with an intensely wary air about him, his heart thumping in his chest hard enough to shake his frame slightly. Talis licked his lips, telling himself it was just a fish. Or maybe it was a frog. In any case, surely it was something small and harmless, not…

He saw the otter’s head at the same instant Fiona turned to ask him if he wanted a familiar. Apropos of nothing, he scuttled backward, nearly tripping over his own hind legs. His cinnamon-dusted tail tucked between his legs and slicked to his underside, his nails audibly scrambling on the ground as he attempted to pivot. Driven by stark terror, he fled.

In hindsight, he should’ve known it was a possibility he’d come across an otter whilst venturing near a creek. But it had been so long since the young coyote had even thought of an otter, much less revisited his childhood trauma—an otter had nearly mauled him at two months old, its vicious and infectious bites ultimately killing the mother who’d rescued him—that it hadn’t even crossed his mind until he’d seen those savage little eyes peeking at him from the water.

With that image chasing him, Talis wouldn’t stop running for days.