All summer he had been waiting for this. Almost every day he’d paced the borders, making sure everything was safe and secure for their arrival. He’d been making his daily rounds, a new sense of anticipation bubbling up within him. She was near, he could sense it. Today must have been the day. So when her call lit up the mountain air, he set off into a gallop towards the southeastern corner where they were sure to have arrived. Fit as he was, it did not take him long to reach them. But he did not come blustering upon them, instead slowing as he drew nearer to them. Finally he walked forward, emerging from over a knoll in these foothills that made up the perimeter of Spirane.

Sleekwing remembered them as tiny balls of wet fur, nestled at their mother’s abdomen. It was all he had really seen of them that night when they had been brought into the world. He’d not seen them since, and with every fiber of his being he wished he could change that now. But the past was the past, and there was nothing to do for it now. Instead, he continued forward, his eyes resting on each juvenile in turn before finally coming to alight upon their mother. Eyes of dark blue, ringed in lavender, could not possibly contain more pride than they did in this moment. He was so grateful to her in this moment that she had wanted to bring them here, to let him be a part of their lives. If only he knew that in some respects his children’s nerves matched his own at this moment.

“Welcome,” he said, almost at a loss for words as his eyes roamed over each child in turn. The girl that Malina had only just finished grooming; her coat a mingling of so many generations of his family, with the obvious touches of Malina in the blacks and that marked ear. The other girl, a lighter grey streaked with smoky hues and accents of white, with eyes that held trademarks of her mother’s. And the boy; he’s slate coat so reminiscent of Sleekwing’s mother’s, his markings striking. But of course the most prominent of those markings is those which he has taken directly from his father, the slighter in size light grey wings that branch from his shoulders. The marking that had been their sire’s namesake.

His tail wagged joyfully behind him as his gaze finally returned to Malina, so pleased with their arrival he could hardly contain it. “I hope the journey was not too taxing,” he said with a smile. Surely it was a bit different for them, to have made their way to this higher altitude. But there was much further to climb. The den he had found for them to share – large enough that they would not be uncomfortably close – was up within the heights of the mountain, so that they might get a chance to truly experience life as a mountain wolf. It was hard to do so from the foothills, after all.