Awkward. That's how Navi felt, standing there in front of someone who was important to her mother, supposed to be important to her. But...Navi didn't know this old goat. She knew his name, bits and pieces about his life—but her mother wasn’t much of a story-teller, to be perfectly frank. She didn’t have to be, because, in time, Navi’s own eyes and ears would know for themselves. Her mother always told her a wolf could tell so many tales and have none of them be true, so it was best to trust your own eyes, your own ears. Besides, these pack wolves were talkers, or so Navi was told, and she would get more than her fill of long-winded stories about things she probably never needed wanted to know, anyway.

That was well and good in theory—leaving the story-telling out of it as much as possible in leu of the inevitable socializing she would get in the forest pack—but it certainly left the girl in a strange predicament. Navi had been banking on her mother’s familiarity with these wolves to sort of…set the ground rules of social intercourse, in a way. The way Navi figured, her role in all of this was to wait until her mother gave the prompts, answer in fifty words or less, and then skirt off as soon as possible to find something better to do. There was none of this “one-on-one with perfect strangers” stuff in the plans, but the plans sort of went down the river when her mother, well…

A heavy paw fell on her then, finding its way under her rump and pulling her forward, and her attention gathered away from thoughts of all those uncertainties. Wide-eyed and bristling back up like a porcupine, Navi squirmed and tried to anchor herself against earth beneath the snow, but it was no use; he was very strong for an old geezer, and she wasn’t exactly big for her age. So, try as she might to push herself away, the girl found herself smothered by the thick, cream-colored fur of the brute’s chest.

As if reading those last thoughts on her mind, the old wolf questioned the whereabouts of her mother, and Navi found herself suddenly frozen, no longer squirming against his control. Her dark red gaze shifted downward, ears turning back, and she thought, “Yeah, so do I, old man.”

What was she supposed to say? “I left her to die like three days ago”? That was the blunt truth of it, but it wouldn’t be winning Navi any favors. Hell, she wasn’t exactly in her own favor for what she did, despite it being exactly what her mother told her to do. She had wanted to stay, wanted to hold on to some hope that her mother was going to get better, but… All reason stood against hope, and both she and her mother were more than aware of it. At least in this, in making that final stretch of their journey alone, she had honored her mother’s last demand of her. She just…wished she could feel something good about. Or, at the very least, wished she knew, even a little, how to cope. But, right now, there was an emptiness in the long breath that escaped through her nose, and, even though she opened her mouth to answer the old wolf’s question, no words formed on her tongue.

Thankfully, the old man seemed to understand her silence. Navi closed her eyes against a sudden tightness in her chest, just trying to gather herself enough to give him a single word or, hell, a nod, but instead, and as much to her own surprise, found herself turning her face into this perfect stranger’s neck, hiding silent tears she told herself she wasn’t going to shed.

Was that a good enough answer.