Sleepy Fox Hollow Go get yourself under those dead-sea lights.

When Etienne had left the hollow and not returned, Anselm assumed the worst.

And when he had gone to Rivenwood in anger and hurt to confront the only man he had dared let close, Etienne had been gone from there too.

At first, Anselm assumed Etienne had gone back home. But as the hours bled into night, he wondered -- and when he wondered, he tended to make hypotheticals. And when he tended to entertain these hypotheticals, things got out of control.

First, he imagined Etienne had found someone else and had left. He'd lost Etienne's tracks back by Rivenwood. Maybe Etienne did this on purpose, to confuse him -- because he knew Anselm would come after him, right? Maybe all of this subterfuge was to throw him off his tracks, and ditch Anselm for good.

A blackness settled in his heart, and bile rooted its way between his teeth and burned his tongue.

By daybreak he'd been furious, he'd been desolate, and he'd grieved -- a strange unsettling peace that was shortlived as any tempestuous emotional storm could be. He'd picked up a scent close to the Hollow that he wanted to disbelieve; it couldn't be Etienne, this didn't match with the runaway hypothetical that made him heartsick this last week.

But it was Etienne, as far as Anselm could tell. Etienne, and some other scents too.

Anselm's heart skipped a beat. Before he knew it, he was trotting loose-limbed into the Hollow, tail arced and nose in the air as he tried -- casually, because he couldn't let anyone know he actually had missed Etienne or even been worried about Etienne -- to parse from the sundry scents the direction Etienne had headed in.