Rising Sun Valley [m] We'll wish for weightless knees

When he heard the summons, the coywolf paused in his task, blank-faced and contemplative. In the distance, his full-blooded cousins cackled and cried, many voices rising up in retaliation against the call of the wolf. He answered neither of them, in the end, and moved silently toward the summons.

He appeared to her with the long grasses up to his shoulders, and one long, white-striped feather held in his serrated jaws. His black nose twitched, nostrils flaring, and he pranced in a wide circle around her, parading his delicate prize.

Come and get it, his body language said — but there was a hunting glimmer in his dark eyes that seemed to be saying something else.