Arrow Lake every breath of borrowed time is heavy in my chest.

She watched her son battle with the creature, refraining from helping anymore than making sure it didn't go anywhere. When she worried the process was being unnecessarily drawn out, she almost jumped in and ended it, but Mesa beat her to it, sinking his teeth into the struggling prey. When then thief had finally succumbed to its brutal end, she moved sit in front of her son and his kill. Good job, she praised. She took his hesitance to kill at first as just inexperience, something he would get better at as he grew older and hunted more. She looked him over. Are you injured? She couldn't see anything obvious, but the otter had dealt a pretty good bite to her leg, and she wondered if it had left any similar marks on Mesa that would need to be tended by Mahler.