Blackfoot Forest in the springtime of the year

No other forest quite felt like the one back home, largely because no other forest seemed to contain a single wolf, let alone the generations of wolves that Spine was accustomed to seeing. But rather than feeling homesick, the tawny female reveled in it. It was quiet. There were no older siblings to (try) to order her around, simply because they were three years older. Nor were there any younger siblings attempting to use her as a jungle gym or punching bag.

No other forest quite felt like the one back home, because no other forest even came close to containing the chaos Spine had lived with for her only two years of life.

Truthfully, there was only one family member her heart ached for, and he had left before she did. Spine had not known what sorrow was until she saw the life flicker out of her grandfather's eyes, the proud male that had filled her young head with stories of myth and legend. At that moment, she decided she would live the rest of her life in his honors. She slipped away that night, and with a forest teeming with Blackthorns, no one had even seemed to notice that she was gone.

"There has to be one here somewhere," she mused aloud, golden eyes scanning the thickly grown trunks. Spine had begun the search on the night she left, but in the weeks that had passed, she still had not found what she was looking for.