Quidel watched Moema’s coarse brown fur ruffle with the bulging muscle beneath, her arms growing to the size of boulders in the simple act of raising a sharpened stick above the trickling stream. Ankle deep in water that would have risen past Quidel’s knee, Moema was stiller than winter at the first light of morning. She reminded him of a giant sycamore that towered over the forest, her trunk thick and strong, her sturdy branches spread at her sides, with roots that reached deep below the soil and held her firmly to the earth. There was not a sound in the forest when her shoulders flexed back. The birds held their breath as she hurled the spear and plunked it in-between a pair of rocks, a silvery fish flapping on the other end.

Moema pried her catch free from the rocks. The hooked claws on her feet clicked against the pebbles in the stream as she tip toed out of the water. Even though they had been friends for all of two days, Quidel had to suppress the instinct to flee when she bent over him to present her catch.

Sweetly smiling as a mother does, her gentle grin lifted her muzzle in a pleasant way without revealing too much of her fearsome teeth. “Here, Quidel,” she said, her voice a whisper of spring with a stony timber. Her small brown eyes lifted curiously. “Is something the matter?”

Quidel turned a lip at the wriggling fish. His good eye was squinted so tight it resembled the slit on the left side of his face, from where his left eye was plucked. “I usually prefer my food dead.”

Moema examined him from another angle. Wolves were strange to her. Quidel was the first Wolf she’d ever met person to person. Two days ago she ran across him lying unconscious in the shade of a spruce tree. Flies had already begun to pick at his wounds and his fur was matted, dull, like dirty snow, with ribs showing through his chest and legs frail as twigs. An experienced mother like Moema should have had no trouble nursing him back to health, if only Quidel were more interested in healing than having everything his way. Though her understanding of Wolves was poor, Moema was well educated in matters of caring.

She held the fish towards Quidel persuasively. “Its only salmon, dear, it won’t bite. And you need to get well.”

“Its slippery, I’ll drop it. Can’t you kill it?”

Shaking her head fondly as though Quidel were nothing more than a picky cub she lifted the fish up and crushed its head between her molars. “Would you like me to gut it too?” She had already slid it off the spear head and was beginning to strip the fish of skin and bone while Quidel watched with mild nausea. She held out the gutted fish, a floppy slab of pink meat that stank so awfully the stench made Quidel dizzy, and if he weren’t on his rump already he’d have needed to sit down. Ears flattened back, tongue between his teeth, Quidel reluctantly reached for the squishy flap of nourishment.

“Reduced to this…” he muttered, letting the fish slide down his throat like a giant glob of snot. He almost gagged. Moema, who giggled incorrigibly at this sight, was awarded with a one-eyed glare.

“Just like my little Nita,” said Moema, eyes teary with joy. “He was as picky a cub as they come, wouldn’t eat a thing that I gave him. Berries, honey comb, salmon, meat – none of it was good enough for little Nita. Mother’s milk was all he wanted, no matter how old he got.” She fixed him with a curved black claw. “I gave Nita a good many bops to the nose before he set himself straight. Don’t you go being a Nita cub, Quidel, or your nose will be sore, too, by the end of the day.”

Quidel sat and glared, and glared and sat, but kept his mouth shut about anything that would offend a Grizzly Bear. Defending his life was more important than defending his horror, which was already a lost cause, in his weakened state he’d be easier prey for Moema than a salmon leaping in the stream.

Moema swung her paw at the air. “You take yourself too seriously… are all Wolves this way?”

“No. The rest are nothing but rowdy, unorganized, pups who wouldn’t know their teeth from their tail.” His words were too sharp, he’d cut himself with his own criticism, and now all he could do was frown about it.

Moema sighed happily. Quidel was every bit as haughty as Nita in cub hood, and every bit as clumsy with his anger. Nita had passed into Grizzily hood many years ago, he was a noble bull now, proud and true, and Moema had not seen her first born since. She was glad to prop her muzzle on her pads and pretend Quidel was her little ball of fur. “Oh, is that so?”

Sensing he was the object of Moema’s affection yet again Quidel didn’t bother to glare at anything but the grass on which he sat. He’d had enough of being angry at her. It only made her infatuation worse. “My pack is dead, Moema. I’d appreciate it if you kept your lovey-eyes to yourself.”

Moema sat up. Sorrow cursed her face, weighting the lines that made her eyes so warm like a shadow that distorts the light in thick foliage. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea you were all alone. What happened to them?”

Quidel looked at his bushy tail, its prestigious silver coat that had spoiled in his pack’s absence, now a dryer shade of grey that the elderly Wolves wore when their bodies would soon be soil upon the earth. His eye-gash quivered as though under attack from flies, though the air was clean for the moment. “Do you remember when the rains came?”

Moema nodded. “The moon was beginning a new cycle of turning, as it will tonight.”

“Yes. My pack lived on a ridge to the east. We were called Kisecawchuck.” He looked at Moema to see if she knew the name. Moema narrowed her eyes thoughtfully but said nothing. Quidel continued somberly. “My pack had lived on that ridge for generations, it was our home. We all thought we were safe there. Then, after the rains came, something… unexpected came down from the mountain. The water from the rains softened the soil under the rocks, in the middle of the night they came tumbling down on our pack, boulders even larger than you. We had no time to escape; I was caught under the slide with the others. A sharp rock cut my eye but somehow I managed to keep my wits and stay awake under the many rocks. I don’t know how long it took me to crawl out of there, but by the time I reached the surface I could find no sign of my pack. I haven’t heard their call since.”