Aoibhe might have been closer to the other pups in her litter had her father’s favoritism not been aimed so pointedly at herself and Orpheus. At least, it had been mistaken as favoritism by their mother, brothers, and sisters. Aoibhe herself suspected it was actually guilt that made Dahrius so attentive to his two snowy children. They were for him a representation of those that came before, lost ones who could never be returned. Oh and how she had loved him, the great smiling beast who allowed her to tumble alongside his long-legged strides until she was too tired to keep going. He had been a tired old man at the end, full of the sadness of one who carries the burden of too many mistakes in his bones. Yet he had taught her to be who she was…Aoibhe wasn’t sure what exactly he’d taught Orpheus… maybe a sense of humor? No, because Orpheus rarely found the same things funny that Aoibhe did, and vice-versa.

This was a chance, she decided as she spoke to the red splashed wolf, to find others more like her and forget about being ‘Aoibhe and Orpheus, but Mostly Aoibhe’. Her brother was whisked from her mind like dust out the door—likely enough to blow back into the first open window—but at least the worry was gone for the moment. He had been her pack for the past year, but the fact that he didn’t want her did wear on the snowy girl in its own way. He could not like her and she would still like him… but sometimes you wanted someone to like you back too. Po here, he seemed to like her back. So she would stay right here in the grass as long as he did. Then maybe she’d go find Orpheus. Yes, she’d go find him later.

Her eyes and ears followed all that the boy did, intent on the way he quickly translated a second word from her more varied vocabulary. He had all the information, but not the sounds that went along with it and Aoibhe wagged her tail in encouragement and pantomimed a bit of sneaking herself once again, before sitting up onto her haunches. “Sneaking, yes. You’ve got it.” A happy wriggle passed over her as he got her name too, perhaps set off by his own excited bark. Aoibhe quickly chose the more familiar of the two names he offered, already having labeled him a friend in her sunny mind. “Nice to meet you, Po.” She manages politely before standing up to pace a few steps, energized. She looked out over the grass, nostrils twitching to pick up the smells of pollen and feathers as they blew toward them over the green tendrils. She looked back to Po then, and set down once more in the grass. “You weren’t up here earlier, where did you come from?” She would definitely have smelled him if he’d been here earlier, and found him first! …Or tried to anyway, so that she wouldn’t have been by herself for so long. This was much more fun already.