Yoska had been unable to meet Tuari while he was in Moladion, but he had fortunately been able to leave happy, nonetheless. He was able to meet his niece, Citlalli, who had shared with him stories of her siblings, and by extension, Tuari and her mate. He had come to understand that another of his nieces, Itzel, had been born without hearing like himself, and that Tuari had chosen her mate and position within Taviora as a more permanent part of her life. From there, Yoska had learned what he could simply from watching, and from exploring the scents and other wolves of Taviora and beyond. So, although he had not met all his kin once more, he had been satisfied with the knowledge that they lived peaceful, contented lives within a safe place. Luk and Jinan were somewhere else but knowing that Tuari had found a place in the world made Yoska assured that his brothers had too.

And so, he had left Moladion some months later. Like his father Amutaq, he had been born with a fierce need to explore, a ceaseless restlessness that moved his paws along every path of the world. His time in Moladion had been an outlier, an unusual thing, and so he felt a sense of relief he had not expected when he looked over his shoulder and no longer saw the peaks of Spirane behind him. He wondered if he’d be able to find his way back again, or if he ever would have need of such a thing. Yoska was never a wolf to ponder questions of ‘what if’ or ‘should I’ for more than a few moments, so he breathed them out into the world with a sigh and continued his journey. There was always more to see, to feel, to know than what was familiar.

Yoska had become adept at such journeys after so many years. He spent the daylight hours basking in the glory of the world, and the hours of darkness safe within hollows – without his ears, he knew himself to be a peculiar thing, and the bigger, crueler beasts of the world had a taste for peculiar things.

It was those daylight hours he treasured most. He met vagabonds and true loners alike; he would follow them on their journeys at time, or they would follow his. In any case, he walked alongside many strangers and many strangers became friend, companion, but never home. Eventually, they came to a place, stood across from one another, gave their affections and then, their paths diverged. He would spend his nights thinking of them all; the way they walked and ran, the way they would all struggle at first to communicate with just their bodies – or with words simple and slow enough for him to read – and then the way they would move in sync with one another, as if born of the same blood, or raised in the same place. Yoska loved it all. Yoska loved the way that he was kin with each and every wolf of the world.

He never did settle, in land or love alike. Once, he had stayed with a woman – Mercy – for some year or so. They had met in a vast field that stretched on for weeks, a place of nothing but tall, swaying grass that turned to hard, white snow in winter. They had walked it together, and they had shared the winter together too. Come spring, they had found themselves in a pine forest that reached up and beyond the clouds themselves. Mercy left with love in her eyes and, she had said, with love in her belly too. Yoska had not understood, but he had come to accept it. Whether others had left in a similar fashion, he never knew. Mercy had been the first one to be so forthcoming, and it had made him stay put for some weeks. In that pine forest, he lived but soon enough, he left it too. His father’s blood was strong, but Yoska’s had become even stronger. A wish wasn’t enough to keep him still.

It took some years, but eventually those years did catch up. He’d not been running from them, but they had always been far away in the back of his mind. Growing old was simply something Yoska had never been concerned with, something he’d never been able to hear poorly spoken of. For him, it simply meant he ran a little slower, that he didn’t walk quite so far each day, and that he might feel the heat of summer or the cold of winter just a little more. He adapted, as he always had. He settled earlier in the evening, before it became dark, and rose a little later in the day after basking in the morning light to warm his joints. He settled for smaller prey and was the guest of a larger kill rather than the host. These things, he felt, were completely natural. He had, after all, walked alongside older wolves in the past. He understood to slow down, as did his companions. Never did it occur to him that he had become the elder, or that he had become the wiser, older Yoska others saw. He had been born Yoska, and he never stopped to think he had become a different Yoska to others.

Yoska was eighteen when he finally found himself at an impasse. His heart desired to continue further and further – to a new coast! a new forest! - and yet his legs had grown weary after so many years of just that. He bargained, at first, by basking longer and resting deeper, but eventually the impasse came. When it did, he was in a place that felt somehow like Moladion and yet, it was not. He rested in a large valley, two peaks on either side of him. From one, a river flowed, and from the other, a pine forest rose from the shrubs and tall grass of the valley. It was from the forest that the wolves came – seven in total, all scraggly and wide eyed with hope. Five were young, one of which was young enough to make Yoska wonder if he had even started chewing on bones yet, but the other two were older – like him, like Yoska. They were kindly, and the youngest was their son, their heir. The others, they explained, were once wanderers too.

It took him weeks, months perhaps, to truly become one of them. They tried, but Yoska’s heart had been roaming further than he thought. Eventually, it returned and settled in next to the others. They called themselves a pack, the elders having discovered the valley just two years prior. It was the first time Yoska had truly been considered part of a pack, and so he stayed on the outskirts when he could. Still, the younger wolves came to him. They learned from him – they learned to speak with their bodies, to move their mouths deliberately so that he might read their words, and he in turn learned from them. Eventually, a year later, it came to be that he slept among them and basked among them in the morning sun. He took long walks with the elders and said farewell to them when the time came.

He was twenty-one when it came to be – his time to say farewell, that is. He had watched the youngest, the heir, become a true leader. Two others had joined them by then, a joined pair, mates since childhood, persuaded by the heir’s generosity and compassion. Yoska was glad to see them all blooming, and his heart was strangely warm with having found his place among them and having helped guide them. He was twenty-one when he found the meaning of ‘home’ and ‘family,’ and twenty-one when he found himself a pleasant place in the sun to rest his eyes for all the years to come. His final thoughts were of the coming spring – the pack was expecting children – and what the spring might look like in Moladion and every other place he had been. He thought of each of the wolves he had met. When he breathed his final breath with a smile, he thought of Tuari. He thought of Tuari and took eternal comfort in knowing that she, too, must have been smiling too.