Firefly Glen ^__________________^

The mountain was too quiet. It wasn’t just Sialuk’s absence that made it so. Treepie tallied Moonspear’s members in her mind as she picked her way down the crag’s eastern flank. There were the three she’d seen yesterday and Alaric, of course. But other than taataa’s companion, Tiuttuk could think of no one else. She frowned, yellow eyes panning the foothills before coming to rest on the healing ulaq.

She walked up to the moldering log, then past it, leaving a trail of prints in the snow as she wandered into the glen. Tiuttuk didn’t go very far into the trees before swiveling around to face the mountain again. She beheld it in silence for a long moment, then sighed and dropped her eyes. A patch of bluegrass caught them, green tufts pushing up through the dormant grass and snow near the base of a middle-aged oak.

Treepie padded closer, nosing at the ticklish little shoots and wondering what they were doing here so early. Wasn’t spring still weeks away? Her head cocked, then she loosed a second sigh and slumped to her hindquarters at the base of the tree. She tipped her head to peer up through its scraggly boughs, noting the blue sky beginning to whiten with the promise of fresh snowfall.