a drive that ran deeper than curiosity. She realized she must track down and confront this singer without help from the other Wolfriders.
The limbs which led to her hollow were smoothed with many climbings. Skyfire pulled herself upward out of habit, her mind preoccupied with unfamiliar concepts. Against her nature, she must plan, for the tribe must not suffer for her pursuit of the singer. She must lead the hunt through the night, and then in the gray hours before daybreak, slip away.
The hollow in the tree was dim and invitingly cool, but Skyfire did not sleep. Curled in her furs, her bright hair wound damply over her shoulders, she wondered how an elf could track a shadow. For the singer was shadow, a figure spun of dreams. In the depths of his gray-silver eyes she could easily become lost.
The mild weather of spring quickly gave way before the darker foliage and the stronger sun of summer. Like most elves, Skyfire abandoned use of' her sleeping hollow altogether, preferring to curl up like a wolf in the dappled shade of a thicket, her body against cool earth. But while the winds stilled, and prey grew fat and plentiful, and the Wolfriders became sleek with easy hunting, their chieftess grew lean with muscle. After the nightly kill, she ran, until she could traverse the dense forest in silence at speed. She learned not to thrash through briars, but to twist and duck and dodge through the narrowest of openings without slackening stride. She practiced leaping over streams, from rock to fallen log, to banks treacherous with moss. Her feet became very sure; for the first time, Woodbiter had trouble keeping up.
*'~Gray-muzzle,** she teased once, as the two of them lay panting in companionship in a forest glade. She licked the corner of his lips in the manner of one wolf showing affection for another.
Woodbiter's eye rolled and met hers. **Killed deer,** he sent in wolfish reproach. Except for rank, distinctions were never made between members of the wolf-pack once a cub reached adulthood. A wolf either hunted successfully and held his own, or else failed to survive.
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