Bitterroot Valley she said it didn't seem like that long ago

Her voice attached a trace of something to his name, a feeling, but Miska could not place it. Not fear, not quite wariness. Something.

"You can kill it then, if you like," she invited without giving her own name. Miska conducted a quick search of her face, eyes narrowed, before he followed in the doe's final earth-bound steps.

It was over quickly. A strangled sound, ineffectual flailing, loss of consciousness, death. Miska held the soft flesh of the creature's throat in a vice grip until he could no longer feel the rapid beat of its heart against his teeth. When it fell, he bent down to whisper softly, soothingly in its ear - old words to guide it to the open plains of the great beyond.

"Sss!" he called back at Angel, popping the sacred moment like a party balloon. "Food for you is ready. What is favorite part - eyeball? Hole in back?" The black wolf snickered. "I knowing such wolf. Very ugly. Mouth smelling always of shit."