Emberwood [m] But if you get me out, you get a show

The coywolf was quiet. Their eyes met for an uneasy moment before she went back to grooming him, and Dusty Rose turned his gaze up toward the canopy. Her tone raised his hackles, but lying as he was, it was impossible to see this small tell of nerves. He was otherwise calm, and contemplative, as he often was.

"There were dogs," he said after a long stretch of quiet. "Mainly hunting dogs — y'know. The kind that keep with humans. Most of them spoke a different tongue, if they bothered speaking to us at all. I've only met a few face-to-face instead of fang-to-fang. One was real pretty — she had a pedigree or somethin', and the wolf that married her wouldn't shut up about it. Another was a sniffer-dog. I met him and his band during the water hunt. We didn't speak the same language, though, and he died before I got to know him. Snake bite."

He did not have strong feelings about these dogs. He hadn't trusted either of them, though.

"The hunter-dogs, though," he went on, still gazing up at the canopy. "We lost a sister that way. She got her paw caught in a trap. We were there all night with her, trying to dig it up or pull her out. We were just starting to talk about chewing her little paw off when we heard 'em. First the dogs, cawing and baying. Then the men. We had to leave her."

He did not have strong feelings about those dogs, either. His sister was a distant memory, and though he'd loved her, he'd long since burnt away those particular nerve endings.

"But these things happen," he said. The words were rote.