Moonspear there's no one to bother me, except

Here's something strange: Katmai didn't have a strong concept of what a "corner" was. He knew what it meant to be cornered, and he knew that wolves liked to say they came from this corner or that corner of the wilds. But that was just another way to say that one lived out of the way. What a corner was, that could be swung around, was a little less clear to him.

He had seen few enough walls in his lifetime. None of them had been quite so structured as to have a corner.

Katmai found himself confused by much of what Cosmo shared. Musher was a new word as well, and he did not know what one might look like. His idea of a sled was skewed as well, leaving him to imagine humans as much smaller than they were. Something that might ride on a wolf's back as easily as on a sled, the way that his father had told him the water hunters bore their water-sniffing birds in the desert.

But the overarching theme was not lost on him. Though his expression remained slightly slack in his fascination, he gave an agreeable nod by the end.

"Our goals are simple enough," he said, a bright smile on his face. "The same as any animal's, I expect. And you're right, Cosmo — it takes a whole village to be a village. The village chief is not any more important than the rest."

He slowed his pace to sniff at a moss-covered rock. The faint trace of some long-gone traveler reached his nose, and Katmai moved at once to lift his leg on the offending scent.

"I suppose you don't mark borders as much when your home is a sled," he commented, wanting to learn more about the specifics of Cosmo's life. "Or did you keep a territory as well?"