Hideaway Strath bang the old hollow rubber ball around.

Even when it became clear that Fig was struggling with the branch, Towhee didn't move to help him. He didn't seem to notice her, which was just fine. She slowly dropped onto her haunches, watching him, her orange eyes dull. She knew she should offer to lend a hand, especially when he began to dig, but she simply couldn't muster up the will to do anything.

Instead, she found her mind suddenly wandering to X. Towhee swallowed thickly, her deadened emotions now sharpening to a painful focus. She had been intentionally blocking out any and all thoughts of the hawk, though now she permitted her memories to play like a movie in her mind's eye. It was better to feel something than nothing, wasn't it?

Towhee was seated in the middle of the pass, X hanging out on her shoulder, when the hawk's talons suddenly dug into the meat of her shoulder, wrenching a startled cry from the wolf's mouth. X's wings beat against the side of her head as the raptor abruptly took to the air, causing Towhee to glare after her, then arch her neck to peer at the shallow cuts on her shoulder. "The fuck," she muttered under her breath, right as the rumbling began.

And that was the last she'd seen of the bird. She'd dug herself out of her would-be grave days later but X was nowhere to be found. Surely she'd escaped the fallout? But Towhee couldn't stifle the bad feeling that the hawk hadn't taken flight quickly enough and was somewhere under all those rocks.