Blacktail Deer Plateau Season's greetings

Patting her paw once over the newly filled cache, Saena grunted appreciatively, pleased with her work. Catching a hungry hare hadn't been easy. The petite juvenile spent the majority of her morning tracking the thin animal across the Plateau, at one point having to relocate it due to a distraction. After those frustrating hours, it had felt good to burst out of the snow drifts and feel the hare's plush fur between her teeth.

Before Saena could finish the construction of the cache by marking it, a howl specific to her broke the silence. She looked up quickly, ears perked, and wracked her brain. The call was unfamiliar, though she hesitated only a moment on account of that. Soon, she was padding down the plateau's narrow towpath, wondering if it was Ciervo come to call.

But the man waiting in the pack's buffer zone was not Ciervo. It was no one Saena had ever seen in her life. She paused at a fair distance from him, flicking her tail uncertainly. Her head was slung low and her ears perked forward suspiciously as she asked, "should I know you?"