Redtail Rise bloodstain

When he was silent, she looked back to him—and her stomach felt then as it did when she had been very young, and learned the lesson in her long days of travel and longer still nights of hunger that there was a point that meat could spoil! 

New Snow frowned, and looked down. She did not think he was wrong. She pawed at the earth, frustrated, and looked back to the horizon. 

Now it felt too far away. Out of reach. She moved to sit beside him, burying her head in his shoulder. She felt the whisper of natures cruel breath at her nape, and wondered if soon it would be natures unrelenting teeth there instead. 

She rumbled, uneasy. They put the three newest life at risk, if they stayed—but she weighed even the alternative. It is out there too she barked out, as if this might somehow settle them if Wealda could not be moved.

But… 

He had seen her that day. It is not here, she rumbled, knowing that if he thought that it was that they would be gone already. But they both had the instinct within them to be loyal—to Red Woman, and now to Wealda. That loyalty within them both might very well compete against their better instinct, but New Snow had been too exhausted to think of it any other time but for now.