It was a dreamless sleep—perhaps more a lack of consciousness than anything else. One moment, the girl had been swaying on her own legs, and, the next, everything went blank. Navi had nothing left in her to fight the enervation; after several days of continuous travel, the last three on her own, the exhaustion had finally reached its peak, and, at the first bare signs of relative ambient relief, her body had quit. Just shut itself off, leaving her in a small pile of fur in the snow between the thick roots of the towering evergreen, and it would be some time before her eyes opened again.

She felt it, though—the gentle touch, the warm breath permeating the cold, damp fur of her neck. There was a vague registration, but it was not an unfamiliar feeling, and so Navi’s tired mind did not immediately call to action. It did not immediately recall that she was supposed to be alone, that such a caress could not be that of her mother. Indeed, her scantly woken mind quickly drifted back to absolute nothingness, unconcerned and perhaps even a little comforted. It wasn’t until the stranger’s voice prodded her subconscious that Navi was finally stirred into proper alarm.

The girl’s eyes gave a tight squeeze as she fought the tempting undertow of deep unconscious, her ears folding back as she quickly blinked away the haze, opening her deep crimson and gold-flecked eyes to the cold, white world. She hadn’t so much as turned her waking attention to the stranger before her legs made a mad scramble for purchase under her small body, something that took some effort with the careless way she had been sprawled. But, with the sharp jerk away from the presence she could feel hovering over her, Navi found herself thrown over the tall root of the pine only to lose her legs once more. Toppling into the snow on the other side, the girl corrected herself out of sheer determination, emerging from the snow in a defensive stance, thin legs spread wide, head tilted down to protect her throat, and every inch of her dark coat dangerously raised, silver lining showing through the gaps of ridged fur.

“Why are you touching me!?” Navi demanded, her tone completely undecided between indignant protest or sarcastic disbelief. It was the first thing that came to mind: why would a stranger walk up to someone and just start touching them? And he wanted to know why she was on her own—as if that wasn’t a disconcerting follow-up. Unwanted physical contact followed by a reminder that she was all alone, all the more reason to be weary of a stranger.

“I don’t know you! Don’t touch me!” Navi spat the words out between heavy breaths, her small body heaving with distress and face a scrunched contortion weary rage. Her heart had all but taken up residence in her throat, beating hard and fast and fueling her tired limbs with a heavy dose of adrenaline to keep her on her feet. And, in all her shock and awe of a rude awakening, her conscious mind had yet to register the old wolf before her for what, and who, he was, for everything her mother had told her or as the very thing for which she had come to this unknown world.