Sly Fox Sand Dunes and there in the deep i lay

he'd stayed with the shadow wolves until his paw had healed, and then he'd run. 

he'd run for a long while, though with no idea of where he'd been running to. days passed quickly at first, and then they turned to long tormenting hours. what weight he'd once carried was now middling, ribs beginning to display themselves along his sides. 

he hunted well enough to keep himself alive, and that was all. 

the autumn days were cool at first, and then they turned bitter. he'd not minded the chill, he'd been born to alongside a glacier after all. but as he thinned so did his resistance to the cold. he sought warmth and had run to the desert as a refuge, unknowing this place might serve as his grave. 

it been days now and he could not find his way free of the sand. alone atop a dune the boy collapsed and lay there, waiting to be picked apart by the buzzards that hovered overhead.

Beau had always been a runner, but for once he found that something was pinning him in down.

Leto. Oh, he loved her so.. but he could not yet understand her. The wolves she surrounded herself with, Beau could tell that they were not what she thought them to be.

He had stuck to her side for some time, but now he had wandered. He would return, but for now he would indulge himself.

But a body laid upon a sand dune had not been what he expected of the day. He was quick to pick up his pace.

Not quite a yearling, but surely not far off. They were young. He leaned to nudge them, frowning. You breathin'?

the buzzards above slowly descended in long swooping circles around the boy has he lay there, and sparrow did little else but stare. he expected one of the birds to fly down and steal an eye of his, but they never did. instead they simply teased him, screeching out raspy hisses as they circled in the sky. without warning they abandoned their wretched game and soared off to higher reaches of the sky.

he'd not known why the vultures left, until eventually a voice called out to him. the nudge summoned some movement from the boy, though it was little more than a turn of his head. breathing? "i dunno, am i?" he answered back with a scratchy croak of a voice.

Eyes searched the face of the young boy, clear concern painted on his expression. It was soon hardened into something more neutral.

He nudged him again, a bit harsher this time. C'mon then, up ya get. He grunted. What are ya? Eight moons? Can't let em' buzzards win just yet.

His head lifted, scanning the surrounding area. It was not visible from here, but he knew there to be more water to the west.

He did not know the boy, but he could not leave a child to die.

the shift in tone was noted with a silent flicker of the boy's ears. "why?" he challenged to the stranger's encouraging words, eyes rolling over to get a look at the man who pestered him to move. "i ain't got nowhere ta go."

couldn't find his way home. couldn't find his mama. couldn't find his ma. didn't know if his siblings were ok. hell, he couldn't even keep himself alive. how did he think he was going to be of any use if he found any of them again? 

the words of that woman repeated in his head. run and die. he'd run, and now...

You always got somewhere to go. Ya' sound like a dimwit, talkin' like that. He wondered, if only for a moment, how he had gotten here in the first place.

He couldn't take him back to Verapaz. No, that would be a far worse fate - but then where was he to take him? The boy was weak, Beau could not leave him on his own. Not without risking his own peace of mind.

You got a ma? Somewhere to get back to?

being called a dimwit was enough of an insult to stir some motion from the boy, an irritated furrow of his brow given to his rude company. but it was the question of his ma that brought his pot of self-loathing boiling over. 

"i ain't got no ma!" he spat at the man as he roused himself back to his feet. the outrage, though directed at the unfortunate stranger before him now, was more of a punch to sparrow himself than it was to anyone else. 

"no tengo a nadie," he muttered to himself as he spun away from the man. "leave me alone," he grumbled before beginning to march off in some odd direction of the desert.