Silver Moraine I have seen sinking ships go down with more grace than you

The night was long and cold for such a young child all on her own. Long and cold and very, very lonely. There was no mama in this place, no Uncle @Everett or @Dusty Rose. No warmth at all.

Foxglove huddled in the dirt among the rocks, listening to the sounds of the night with wide eyes and tall ears. A familiar sound reached her then. A coyote's call — it wasn't Dusty Rose, but even so, he was the only one she knew who sounded quite like that. Naturally she associated the sound with safety.

So she lifted herself on trembling legs to follow it, on and on until she thought she saw a figure in the distance. The figure spotted her, too — and the sounds changed then. Something about them rose the hair along her spine. Foxglove could only stand and stare, not quite realizing that she was being sized up for a midnight snack.

The sound of a meal would've drawn him either way, but he was especially interested tonight. The kid's scent was all over the place, and he was afraid to charge ahead and lose it — but not as afraid as he was of getting anyplace too late. So when coyote screamsong turned to questioning cackles, his ears pinged toward the sound and the rest of his body followed.

He was fleet-footed on their trail. These were the coyotes who called to him in the night, doing their best to entice him away from the relative safety of the pack. It was a game the coywolf knew well, and the siren song, though sweet, had never pulled him from his bed. He felt vindicated then when he reached them, and all at once, true colors were revealed.

They had not wanted him. Not for anything but sport.

"Fuck off!" he shouted at the quartet, intersecting the meeting somewhere between Foxglove and her would-be connoisseurs. His fur had puffed up all over, making him look twice as bulky as usual, and he hissed at them — he hissed and he gaped, but with the overbearing presence of a wolf rather than the slinking threat of a coyote.

The coyotes sang in a choppy staccato, excitement and nerves and indignation all at war. One of them feinted toward him as if they might entice him to play. Dusty Rose had seen a hunting dog fall for this, once or twice. He'd feasted in the aftermath along with the rest of his family.

The coywolf stood his ground.

coyotes in any concentration enraged mountain boulder.

with new cubs in the rise and perhaps more to come, the giant man was on alert. the moraine was far too close to redtail for such challenge.

two figures, one a child, the other vaguely wolfish, were menaced by the pests. mountain boulder was among them on broad and noiseless feet, snapping one way and then another, paternal instinct setting him between unknown pup and the hunger of vermin.

Fuck off!

It was Dusty Rose! Foxglove's ears perked as she took off toward him, skidding to a halt beneath him where he stood against the noisy, shadowy figures. She was starting to understand in some instinctive way that she was in danger — that they were both in danger.

FUCKOFF! She echoed, attempting to make herself larger as Dusty Rose had done. Foxglove didn't dare step out from beneath him, but she did her best to imitate his hissing. She added in a few of her own barks for good measure; she was much better at those.

The arrival of another of her own kind slipped entirely past her. It wasn't as if she could do much about it either way.

He's never get the chance to find out if his display would be enough to warm them away, not whether he could've taken the for significantly smaller but similarly vicious creatures on his own. Part of him wanted to be moody about that, but with the kid sheltering beneath him, he supposed he could only be grateful.

A soft sigh of relief escaped him as the coyotes, now uncertain, assessed this new threat and found it untenable. They made their loud, dismissive complaints — the coywolf snarled at an unfamiliar but obviously derogatory hiss of, "Lapdog!"

He assumed the insult had been leveled at him.

"Holy shit, bug, you did it," he said to Foxglove, his relief palpable. His eyes found Mountain Boulder, only just now beginning to look shaken. "They fucked right off."

To the male, he said, "Hey, uh — thanks, man."

the older wolf resembled the fleeing coyotes more than mountain boulder liked. the girl too did not seem quite wolven.

risewolf rumbled, not quite a note of threat, but one of warning to the guardian of the child, to get her gone before the pack circled back. he did not think that they would after losing blood, but neither was he comfortable with this pair close.