Phoenix Maplewood I was sleeping in the garden

'Run, Waawaashkeshi. Run until the familiar is unfamiliar and your fur is frayed at the ends.'

It was advice that her grandmother had given her long ago. She had not understood it until she was taken from her wanderings in the mountainside. The fear her aunties, mothers, cousins, sisters, felt for the strange men who lingered in the distance as they wandered, the aggression that followed when they would approach a daughter; she understood it all now.

By chance she had slipped away. At first it was difficult, her sore limbs dragging her down, but now she ran; she would run until what was familiar ceased to be so, until her already ragged fur was unrecognisable.

Even now she did not understand what her purpose may have been, why the boy had taken her. Maybe it no longer mattered.

She kept her gaze held forward, paws bounding through the snow as nervous twitches forced her to look for any who may appear on the landscape; strangers who she would promptly run to, or familiar faces who would give her reason to turn tail. The nerves were a horrible feeling, one she was not accustomed to. Waawaashkeshi wanted to return home, but there was no home now. A warm embrace, it was all she wanted; something to let her feel secure.