Redhawk Caldera Solutions to my gloom.

What Towhee feels for the caldera is growing in Bassetki for the entire smear of wilderness that edges the northern sea, from Silver Creek to Broken Boulder.

It is a godless land. She can feel it.

Bassetki approaches the nest of redhawks because she is hungry. The path of many guardians has worn a literal trail around the squat mountain, and the priestess does not cross it when Towhee comes lumbering into view – partly out of respect, partly because the ground is so saturated with the grasping dead that Bassetki is afraid they might pull her behind the veil.

"Mother Elder," she calls out, for this is what she sees – a wolf bearing the weight and honor of many years. The golden wolf adjusts her posture accordingly, then waits for Towhee and her evidently bothersome hind leg to approach.

"I come for company in the hunt, Mother Elder," she says from a place respectfully low to the ground. "Have you a man of no account to lend me?" She means slave, but has learned from previous encounters that this is not the cultural norm.