A lot had changed and time took its toll on everyone. Coszcotl was not immune to those changes, his body had thinned, his fur grayed, and his hearing wasn’t what it used to be. What was more his body was slowing down, his bones hurt for no reason, yet he pressed on. For years his Moth had endured this for him, and he hoped he could endure for his children and grandchildren still. Last spring he had been blessed with five from Dexter and again this winter it seemed his small family was growing all the more with Amoxtli and Shiloh expecting their own second litter after four years since their last. What he didn’t know was his little wandering child too had blessed him the last spring. He never forgot about his little Suomi.

She had been in and out all his life, but she had come and gone on her own terms but she never forgot where to find her family when she needed it. She was a fiery child, he remembered fondly, soon after he had taken up Taviora as his home and founded the land the little black and silver child he had found. She had been angry, and she put up a hell of a fight until he got her into his clearing, snuggled up around her until she had no fight left and passed out in his warm embrace. Ever since that day that she had been as much as his child as any he had by blood. He had been reminiscing a lot lately. When you were old though, it was hard not to think of all the things that happened. Old or not though the male was still determined to help his granddaughter keep the pack safe when he could, his bones aching and all he put himself out there now and again to check the lines he used to walk with such ease when he was younger. Really it had only gotten bad these past two winters, and this one much more so than the last with the array and nonstop blizzards and winds that even managed to penetrate the warm embrace of the forest. Still there he was anyway, walking through the snow, tired, hurting, almost as exhausted as the very child on the borders.

He pushed his way roughly through the snow, panting all the while from the effort of something that used to come so effortlessly. He knew that perhaps he shouldn’t, but his duty, his family he still felt depended on him now and then, and while his ears were growing dull, his nose and eyes were as sharp as ever. So sharp in fact that even with the winds, the strong scent of the evergreens and the smell of fresh snow he could smell her. It brought a pause to his march. Causing him to lift his head and give several deep inhales of the scent wafting in the air. It wasn’t her, Suomi. He knew his child’s smell, but it was so similar to the gentle musk of the girl his mind kept jumping to his eldest child. He shook his head, but his dusty brown toed paws carried his large, scarred from forward regardless. His tiredness forgotten mostly, as he rounded the trees and took the winding path towards the smell, constantly keeping his nose to the air and his fire opal eyes on the lookout. It had been four years since she had last been home, but wasn’t that her pattern? A year home, several wandering, she was about due to come home once more. As he got closer though it became more and more apparent that the nostalgia inducing scent was not hers at all.

That unmistakable scent, all children seemed to have, that soft odor about their pelt that took the greater part of a year or two to completely shake. The smell of a child. It would be her style then, to go dragging a child home in such weather. Though wild she was, he knew his daughter was far from dim… she was sharp as a razor in fact, which made him feel like something was wrong. That worry fueled him to move faster, he wasn’t even sure if this was Suomi at all, but as he rushed through the snow, soon he saw the disturbed snow and then the depression and little ball of black fur sticking up and being brushed by the winds.

He stood there, wide eyed and staring at what could had been almost a flash back. The child into the ground, black and silver too tired to carry on any further. He was lost for a moment as he stared, fear freezing him almost as much as the cold as he lowered his nose to the child gently running his muzzle along neck and shoulder, feeling the soft breaths, smelling the scent he was all too familiar with clinging to her pelt. But… this wasn’t Suomi. HIs mind kept playing back when he first found his child, weak and tired as he was, as his body was starting to remind him he was, he could have collapsed in the snow right next to her, but his determination to get the child to safety was overriding any protest coming from his physical form. He knew he was breaking down, and if it meant killing himself he would get her to where she was safe.

”Young one…. why are you being on own?” He asked, his english better than that when he first found his child, though still not entirely ever made to be correct. He was not sure if she was even awake, aware, to hear his words. Gently nudged and licked her, trying to clean the frozen snow from her fluffy pelt, though somewhere dry really was what she needed, he knew what happened the last time he had tried to lift a very similar looking unwilling child. This time though he wasn’t sure he could take something so fighty all the way home as easily.