It had been a most interesting conversation that I’d had with the mountain wolf two days prior. To learn more of the inner workings of the mountain pack had been good, and I felt that I had collected enough pertinent information to bring back to Isola and Kane. That night I had slept in the shadow of the mountain, nestled in a den that had perhaps once belonged to one of the many lone wolves that wandered Moladion. The next day I had enjoyed the bright winter weather, the sun shining through the cloudless sky to warm my pelt. I’d thought perhaps to find Dessa, my adventurous daughter, spending much and more of the day exploring the expanse of land east of the Aplos river to no avail. There was one large pine that held traces of her scent upon its bark, but they were old and I doubted she had been there more recently than summer. I’d then moved on towards the crags and the grotto, but as the light began to fade early in the evening I was still without so much as a fresh hint of her scent. So I’d hunkered down beneath an overhang of rock to protect me from the chill of a winter’s night within the crags.

When I woke that morning I knew I could delay my duties to my Queen no longer. I wanted to return home before spring, when new mothers and other New Year tidings might absorb much of her time. So I jogged away from the crags, deciding that I would resume my search for Dessa when spring had melted away the snow and she would perhaps become easier to track. Now I moved towards the borders of my final stop before returning home – Iromar. The pack was considered an ally only in the sense that a treaty had been agreed upon between the two alphas, but I thought what I might learn here would be more beneficial to Isola and Kane than anything I could have gathered from Taviora or Spirane. Perhaps, with a new leader at its helm, the swamplands and the plateaus could finally find stable ground upon which to form a new relationship. It would be a great thing, to overcome all the history between the two packs, and I knew that my coming here today could hardly solve all the problems at hand, but things had slowly been getting better. And if I could help to build goodwill between the packs, then I would do everything in my power to do so.

I had cut almost directly across the open expanses covered in snow from the crags to the borders of Iromar. I was just north of a large u-bend that took the river in its final descent towards the sea. The sun had risen from the horizon, but the morning was still fresh and chill. Frost clung to the bare bits of bush that still protruded from the snow, as well as the branches of the sparse moorland trees. Something about it made the pack seem more inviting, the mesmerizing twinkle of snow and ice blanketing the otherwise dreary atmosphere. I paused a good five feet outside the alpha’s marked borders, not wanting there to be any mistake about my respect for the pack’s boundaries.

I broke the stillness of the morning air with a low howl, an melodic song that requested the presence of either the alpha or one that dealt directly with the affairs and standing relations between packs. My visits to Taviora and Spirane had been much less formal – first spending a week’s time with my mother and then calling upon any wolf of the mountains that might like to spend an afternoon speaking with a friend of the pack. But here I knew that matters were more sensitive, and I intended to talk to someone who could truly give me the information I required, and in turn acknowledge that which I brought forth.