Where was Thistle? It had become a nearly daily routine, that question. Hawthorne would return to his mother’s den after an adventure only to find his sister had gone off on one of her own. While that may seem fine and fair, it was not; Thistle was small, much smaller than either of her brothers, and seemed to have a near magnetic attraction to trouble when left to her own devices, and, more often than not, Hawthorne would stumble upon her in his search only to save her from whatever predicament she had put herself in. And so, “Where was Thistle?” was a much necessary ritual for young boy.

Hawthorne’s half-matched sandy tan and earthy brown paws jogged a familiar path through the spars mountain wood, much farther away from his mother’s den than the boy would have hoped. It seemed like Thistle was getting bolder as the week went on, wandering farther and farther away. Perhaps he should not be one to judge, as he found himself climbing higher and higher into the rough mountain terrain each day without supervision, but…he was a bit better equipped than his dainty, careless sister. The earth-toned boy came to a short stop in front of a wall of particularly thick and brambly brush, his nose inspecting a tuft of fur stuck to the thorns. It did indeed belong to Thistle.

With a deep breath and heavy sigh, the lanky boy flattened himself against the cold, snow-matted ground, his pale green eyes squeezing shut as he pushed his head under the thorny bush and followed, with a bit of a struggle, with his body. His fur caught in the brush, pulling against him as he clawed at the snow to reach the other side. With a few sounds of struggle, however, there was a small snap of tinder, and the bush let go, launching to boy out into the snowy clearing in a heap of fur and limbs. Groaning in his frustration as he found his feet again, Hawthorne wondered, for a moment, why he continued to do this day after day, but… He knew it was a useless one-sided argument to have. It was his job as a brother to look after his sister. It always would be.

Shaking the snow and dirt and twigs free from his coat, the boy’s gaze swept the clearing only to find that he was not alone. There was a second where his heart jumped, thinking to have found Thistle, but it soon sank back into its proper place as the stranger’s unfamiliarity set in. And strange was, perhaps, a decent assessment, as Hawthorne could not say he had ever seen a wolf with such stranger proportions.

Trying not to stare with too-wide eyes, the boy scented the air from across the clearing, finding the familiar scent of Spirane on the other’s fur. Safe enough, then, he supposed. “Excuse me? Sir?” Hawthorne addressed the stranger, finding some effort in the task of keeping his eyes fixed to the mismatched gaze of the other instead of the oddly stumped legs and general smallness of his body. “Have you seen a girl come through here?”