Hushed Willows Amid a Crashing World

She didn't remember it, but she'd lived here once, had been born under these very willows. For all that this place had been formative in her earliest months, however, the passage of time had erased it from her memory. Here and now, it was nothing but a pretty woodland in the mountains.

Foxglove was charmed, though. Charmed enough to dance beneath the willows, humming breathless fragments of half-remembered songs from her girlhood. She was so wrapped up in her own little world, she hardly noticed the other wolf in the woods. Not even when she veered closer. Not even when he cleared his throat.

Until, all at once, she did see him — and promptly shrieked, tripped over her own paws, and tumbled to the ground in a flailing tangle of limbs.