I moved down the mountainside in search of relief from the heat. True, there were many places within the mountains that could offer sanctuary from the beating rays of the sun, but it was the depths of the Aplos that I sought today. The steep trails of my homeland became more undulating as I reached the foothills, and then finally the ground beneath my paws became something resembling flat. As I moved across borders staunchly marked as my own, I looked back at the towering peaks of Spirane. Though the world around us had become so turbulent, things were for once peaceful with our pack. I did not take such a thing for granted, but I also knew that there was no better bed for unrest and chaos to breed within than that of calm and harmony. It had happened to us before, and as history had proven it was only a matter of time before it happened again. Whether in the next years while I reigned still, or after Nymeria proved her readiness to take the throne, there would always be those looking to pull us down from the peaks. It was our responsibility to show them we would not be so easily uprooted.
Returning my gaze to the south, I picked up an easy flowing jog and continued on my way. The river's headwaters lay within Spiranian territory, and yet it was the wider, slow-moving waters that I hoped to take my refreshment from today. As I came upon the nearest banks of the river to our borders, I decided to continue following them for some time. Though the river was ever changing in and of itself, the land that surrounded it remained the same as the years wore on. And there were many memories for me here. It was upon these very shores that I had first met Jericho, a lightning storm the backdrop to that intense moment when we had touched and everything else had seemingly fallen away. The memory felt painful now - I missed him so much, every day, but he and Sansa had left together and at least I knew that they had each other, wherever they roamed in the world beyond Moladion's borders.
When I finally moved from the banks and into the shallow waters of the broadened body of water, it provided relief from more than just the heat. Even more painful memories welled up within my mind, of sparring with the first wolf I had loved upon the banks as he pushed me to become stronger in the shadows of the mountains that my mother had lost on pain of her life. Of a time after I had righted the wrongs of a foolish usurper, when the river had been frozen in winter, when Leonidas had let himself be taken through a crack in the ice, when I had saved his life. That had been the last time I'd ever seen him, and it was that night that he had given me my Young Dragons.
Suddenly, I dunked my head under the river's surface, wishing to cast away these memories. I held my head there until my lungs screamed for air and finally I flung my head up and gasped in a breath as water cascaded down my snout. Shaking my head, droplets flew in all directions. That was when a splash upriver caught my attention, and I turned to see who - or what - had caused it.
I did not expect yet another memory to stare me back in the face. Maw parted slightly in disbelief as I watched the dark shewolf splash about, soaking her pelt through. Could it really be her? I blinked, hard, thinking that perhaps it was merely a trick of the light and a similarly marked wolf to the one I had not seen in so many years. Back when we had been little more than a ragtag band of pups with big ideas about how the world around us worked. Back when it was me and Rhiannon and Taliesin and Leonidas and...