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Chapter 10 - Part 1: The Timberwolves

She was sleeping.

Curled up beneath a fallen spruce tree, Nadie Sinclair had tucked her furry form into a tiny recess created by the rotten spruce boughs spreading from the fallen trunk overhead. Her tail was draped over her nose; combined with the spruce "blanket" wrapped around her, she was snug and sound asleep...until the blonde, furry mess next to her woke up.

Nadie groaned in her mind, and willed one of her eyelids to open into a slit. The afternoon sun was still blazing through the trees above--despite the fact that there were still two more hours of daylight left, both Nadie and Humfrey had been more than contented to take a quick nap whilst Hutch and Tara ventured on ahead, looking for a more welcoming shelter for the coming night.

Sleeping during the day certainly had it's advantages. With the summer having come to a close nearly two months ago, the nights now brought temperatures that regularily dipped below freezing. A daytime snooze could be done beneath the warm rays of the sun, making for a pleasant, albeit short, rest.

As well, neither wolv really had the energy to stay awake for a full day anymore. In fact, out of the four of them, only Hutch maintained enough strength to get through a day without napping.

Nadie watched drowsily as Humfrey stood up and shook out his thinning summer fur. She winced at the sight of him. If she wanted, she could easily count each and every one of his ribs; his skin was draped over his skeleton tightly, also exposing the nubs and divots of his spine. The little blonde wolf was slowly but surely starving to death.

We all are.

Nadie watched him drag himself away from the fallen spruce, his nose in the air and his tail held out straight behind him, as though he had caught the scent of a prey animal. Go get'em, Humfrey. I'm so tired!

A wolf simply could not starve itself and make it through a day without collapsing. It had been several months already since the four of them had left Atikaki--none of them truly knew exactly how long it had been; they had all been walking for so long--and now, fall had come, only to find the little pack still walking. Every potential den, every prospective cave had turned out to be flawed, leaving the four wolves with nowhere to call their own.

One den was inhabited by a pack of dumb, non-speaking wolves. Another housed a particularily viscious wolverine. But all of them lay far too close to civilization for any of them to even consider staying for more than a night. All four of them had seen the devastation that could be caused by curious intruders, and it was something none of them ever wished to see again. So further and further north they'd pressed, hoping to find something far away from man. Something untouchable. Something...safe.

At this rate...that'll never happen.

The unmistakable scent of a rabbit wafted across her nose, and like a lightning bolt, she was up on her paws, her ears erect and her tail wagging. Ugh, it doesn't even smell very big. Probably only a mouthful or too.

Perfect!

Nadie leapt forward, forcing her exhausted body to move as she held her nose to the ground, slowly honing in on the little lupine.

"Get back here!"

Humfrey's frustrated voice filtered into her ears from a flat, grassy clearing just up ahead. Nadie squinted her eyes, catching sight of her friend chasing a tiny grey bundle of fluff around the clearing. She could see every one of his bones moving beneath his flesh as he raced over a flat of exposed granite, deftly snapping his jaws around the rabbit victoriously. Happily, he dropped his catch on the ground, licking his chops hungrily before taking the morsel back up in his teeth.