Whitefish River Drawn Back Again

His question she answered honestly, words slipping easy from her maw. Not every stranger was a battle, every encounter a minefield; this she came to understand as she slipped slowly away from the prime of her life. She was not old, no, but the blazing bonfires of her youth had burned down. "I have not been here for many months," she began, pausing as she spoke. "perhaps you know how this land has changed."  The man carried no pack scent; and a wanderer always tended to have more and better information than a pack wolf, she'd found.