Dreamsinger's Tale

The spring grass grew long and lush in the glade, and a brook where peepers shrilled in annual courtship ran close by. There, Huntress Skyfire flung herself down, panting and hot after a long run through the forest. She drank and splashed cold water through her hair, then shed her bow and her spear and her sweaty, winter-musty furs and rolled onto her back. Mother moon peeped like a needle of bone through the leaves. Skyfire regarded its thin crescent and sighed, not quite content. Something was missing, lacking, not right. Hard as she ran, fast as she could shoot an arrow into fleeing prey, she could not quite catch up with whatever it was.

    Her wolf-friend, Woodbiter, arrived at the clearing. Old now, and surly where he had once been full of antics, he had leaves sticking in his coat. With his ears canted back, he crouched in the grass, panting also. The breeze that wafted through his fur carried the scent of something dead.

    **Rolled in a scent patch. Again,** Skyfire sent. She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

    Woodbiter regarded her with unwinking yellow eyes. **Go hunting now.** The wolf's image held the savory taste of hot blood, the thrill and the kick of prey as his jaws closed and snapped the spine.

    '**No.** Skyfire rolled onto her elbows, irritable as a she-wolf past her heat. **No.** She was hungry, but hunger was not what drove her. She would go hunting, but not now, not tonight.

    Woodbiter endured his elf-friend's gaze for the span of a heartbeat, then whined, rolled, and showed the pale fur of his throat to appease her aggressive mood. **Hunt alone,** he sent.

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