Redtail Rise Around me where I laid.

Fall, as Riley had come to find it, was summer’s last gasp - a Sunday before the cruelest season.

While one would think things slowed down around the changing season, Riley discovered it was the opposite. In near hysteria, the world buzzed. Bees threw the last of their energy into their housing. Squirrels gathered stores for winter in mindless panic. And the deer ate heavily, storing their winter larders on the fats of their back.

He drank from a creek that had grown quiet. Underneath the dark waterline, he stilled as he saw something stir.

Instinctively, he seized it. As he rose from the water a brilliant arc of sun drenched droplets cascaded around him; he made for the shore, sopping and burdened by the kicking, hissing thing in his mouth.

A box turtle — painted beautifully in the full splendor of fall. Riley set the thing upon the ground away from the water, amusing himself by knocking the thing about while it steadily tried to return to the creek line.

The wanderer paused, pricking her ears to listen closer to a curious clattering. It was out of place in the forest, not quite the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker's bill striking a trunk, but not quite the sound of tumbling stone, either. It was unlike anything she had heard before.

Interest piqued, Wanderer abandoned her hunt and began to hone in on the sound. Her steps were brisk and she swept her nose back and forth across her path, detecting the scent of a wolf, but not someone who was here before her departure. His scent was mixed with the Rise. Not an intruder, at least.

She spotted Riley's toy before she spotted Riley himself; the turtle shell skidded over a pebble, answering her question of what could be producing such an unusual noise. Wanderer, at 7 months old, was not immune to the draw of a game; without so much as a sidelong glance at the wolf who owned it, she dove for the turtle with a mirthful growl, intent on stealing it for herself.

He watched the turtle as it tumbled across creek bed; more than once, it spun its legs around and oriented itself. Each time the turtle got any sort of headway, it was neatly rolled away.

He was about to sink to the ground when a shape descended upon him. He recognized it immediately as a wolf, and wrongly assumed it to be the similarly shaded @Fifth -- but as she absconded with her toy, Riley got a whiff of her scent.

It was unfamiliar.

Confused by this, he rose stiff-legged and stalked after her, head low and whuffing as he deliberated. Was this a trespasser? Was he simply confused? His playful grin fell away as he contemplated; was this simply a wolf he had yet to meet?

False alarm. The turtle-thief was one of the Rise, if her pelt told him anything. Riley settled, padding after her at a slow clip with a slow-blooming grin on his muzzle.