woodmen

Fortunately, pups don't take a lot of care, especially in the first few fortnights when their eyes aren't even open yet and they can't do much more than waddle and nurse. But that's also unfortunate, because tending the pups was the best part of Heriwulf's day.

Ljota didn't sleep. After Hildegund left, the skin-changer only stretched out her long legs and stared at her bedroom ceiling in the dark. She hadn't felt like starting a fire when she came in, and she certainly wasn't going to bother with it now.

There is something about having a litter of pups that lifts the spirits. Perhaps that's true for everyone, but if so, it may be more true for someone like Heriwulf, who spends so much of his life's energy on the care of hounds that their spirits influence his. In the past he'd always found this cheering up to be welcome, for he tended to be a serious and sometimes dour fellow, his eyes fixed on the pragmatic needs of the day, his heart darkened by the tragedies he'd seen and endured, his outlook tending towards the pessimistic. Or so people told him.

She had to leave. Her sister was gone, and she was the only reason Eira had really stayed. Every now and then Eira still left large baskets of baked goods at the steps of the clan hall. But she could not stay in a place which held such memories of her sister.

She loved all of her clan. But her sister, she had loved closest and dearest. Eira had always told her sister that she was her very heart. Yet somehow, her heart beats on after her sister's no longer does.

She awoke, shaking and gasping, her mind clouded from her dream. She sat up, pushing the furs aside, and comforted Fang. The hound cuddled and quieted while the woman considered her disturbed slumber.

She'd had similar dreams before, but they had been disquieting in a different way. The biggest way was in seeming impossible, but there had also been, perhaps because of that, an element of danger in feeling trapped by being held.

It only took one time making the long hike from Staddle to the lodge, carrying two bales of hay, for Heriwulf to conclude that there had to be another way. Bales of hay don't weigh very much; surely carrying two over the few miles through the Chetwood would be no great hardship, particularly if he had the whole day to do it, two bales at a time over several journeys?