Chapter 5 – He Awakened Something

	It took twice as long as it should have for us to drag the raft through the icy mud of the river bank in the waning twilight.  Our bodies were in misery by then, the hours of fear and tense alertness taking its toll, as our adrenaline had long since abandoned us.  I’d chosen the reed bank precisely because it was marshy and the overgrowth would cover most signs that this is where we’d pulled ashore, but it was a long, shallow shelf, which meant we were dragging the timber raft through half a foot of water and two feet of mud and weeds.  The oars were no use to us, and we ended up having to each sink ourselves into the half-frozen slurry and struggle against the sucking sludge and numbness in our lower legs as the water soaked into our clothing and fur.  
For all that I tripled him in strength, Finnegan was giving it all he had, gritting his teeth as he dug his heels into the icy slime and the sharp, frozen grasses cut and bit at our flesh.  I couldn’t say he was even the one holding us back, we were both injured at this point, and the effort required we use our shoulders and hips, so neither of us were at our best.  I could feel blood soaking through my fur again, and several times the wolfdog had to stop and squeeze his eyes shut, gritting through the pain.
My heart stung watching him.  I could tell he was worried about me too, but neither of us dare spoke.  Dragging the raft was causing enough noise in the otherwise unnaturally still, quiet air.  The world was subdued and soft as it only was while a heavy snow fell.  Hopefully it would muffle our sound from the woods.
The knowledge that the hunter might be out there, not far behind us, was ever-present.  I’d never known this kind of anxiety, and I’d known most kinds.  But I’d primarily lived my life in fear of social recriminations and embarrassment, humiliation. . . that sort of thing.
This was a fear so new, it was hard for my mind to make sense of it.  This was primal.  Our clan had never been at war, we’d never faced a plague, or a famine.  There were the dangers of everyday life, but they were rarely so acute.  The few times someone had died unnaturally in my life, it had come on suddenly.  It had never been so looming as this.  
I had never been hunted before.  The knowledge that someone out there now wanted me dead, wanted us dead, and had the means to do it. . . had tried to do it. . . was surreal.  It was beyond anxiety.  I almost didn’t know how to feel.
As we trudged up onshore and I began to unlash our belongings, I reached down to my stomach and pressed a hand against the spot beneath my ribs that always hurt when I was most anxious.  Oddly, I found my stomach was calm.  Hungry.  But not twisted in knots, as I’d expected.  For whatever reason, the fear of death was not giving me the stomach pain I was so accustomed to.
I didn’t know what to make of that.
“Hey,” Finnegan’s whisper came from behind me.  Something cold pressed to my wound, and I realized he was holding a handful of snow against where I was bleeding again.  My back shuddered a bit at the contact.  “Sorry,” he said softly.  “Can’t have you bleeding a trail up to wherever we’re going to camp, though.  We have got to get that bound up somehow.”
I hefted one of our supply bags and his satchel up over my good shoulder.  “We have to get the lean-to set up first,” I told him.  “Shouldn’t be hard, there are a lot of big spruce here.  We just need some fresh boughs and a fallen sapling or two.”
“I trust that you know what you’re doing,” he nodded.  “Lead the way.”
I looked up the nearby embankment.  “We need to find somewhere hidden from sight from the top of that ridge there.  If she moves at night at all, I don’t think she’ll come down through the wetlands here, she’d get bogged down like we did.  She’ll probably stick to that rise there and scan the shoreline.  Help me hide the raft.  The snow will probably do most of that for us, but we need to make sure it doesn’t leave a silhouette.”
We brought our supplies to shore, and then went about the process of covering the raft with whatever detritus we could find.  Thankfully the reeds caught a lot of washed-up logs, branches, and dead, tangled, unidentifiable river plants.  All of it was half-frozen and brittle, but that really didn’t matter for purposes of camouflage.  It did however make the process of pulling it up and dragging it over the raft harder and saw that our hands were numb and caked in mud by the time we were done.
“I’d thought my jacket was bad before,” Finnegan spoke lowly with a dry chuckle.  “Little did I know.”  He straightened up after dumping a tangle of roots over the raft, wiping his muddy paws on his equally mud-caked britches.  Then he reached for where he’d deposited his hat- which he somehow had managed to hold on to throughout all of this- dangling from where it was perched on a tall cattail.  He’d hung it there like it was a hat rack while we worked.
He plopped it onto his head with purpose, straightening his ears through the two well-fitted holes for them, and tipping it into a roguishly askew position, before flashing an equally roguish smirk.  
It was frayed, dirty and ridiculous-looking.  But he somehow managed to pull it off.
I smiled despite the aches and pains.  I don’t know how I could have ever been put in this situation without his arrival into my life, but if for some reason I’d had to endure this trial alone, all of this would have been so much less bearable.   
A sudden, new fear gripped me, in that moment.  We were taking pains to not be found tonight, and if we managed that, the rest of the trip might be uneventful.  What if we were fine, and nothing more happened until we reached our destination together?  After I got him as far as the next town, we were supposed to part ways.  But that had been before. . . all of this.  I couldn’t possibly let him make his way alone, now.
But then, what had really changed?  I knew he was hunted before.  The very night I’d met him, he’d gotten hurt by men who likely meant to kill him.  How had I ever accepted the idea of leaving him behind in Broen?
There it was, reliably.  That knot in my stomach, slowly tightening.  But why now?  Did the concept of doing what we’d both already agreed was my part in this somehow scare me more than death?  What more was I hoping for?  It was abundantly clear I wasn’t even much good to him.  He’d been the one to defend us on the river today.  Just because I was big, and stronger than him, didn’t necessarily mean I’d be able to protect him.  I’d gotten lucky with the foxes. . . .
I didn’t even really understand where he was going, or his reasons for why.  I knew what he’d told me, but the specifics were still confusing.  He’d come halfway across the world pursuing these ‘truths’ of his, and I really had no place in his story.  I’d played a small role in this foreign, strange tale, and that would have to suffice.  I was ferrying him on one leg of his journey.  I’d always have that.
What more did I want?
I wanted to know what was going to happen to him.  Obviously.  
I watched him massaging his freezing hands together, impossibly green eyes staring down into his palms as he blew into them.  Despite the pistol I knew was both on his hip, and re-loaded, he looked so vulnerable.  But there was a ferocity there, too.  It’s what kept his eyes sharp, even in the waning light.  He was a glass cannon, his fate as precarious as a man standing on a cliff’s edge.  And if I turned and left him now, I’d never know if he fell.
I couldn’t. . . physically. . .stand the thought. 
	He was staring at me.  Smiling uncertainly.  “Are you alright?”  He asked, a slight huff of a laugh in his tone.  “You look intense, suddenly.”
I averted my gaze.  “Fine,” I said, shortly.  
“I know you lost a lot of blood, but you can’t pass out on me, alright?”  He wiped his hands together once more, sucking his feet out of the mud and making for the shore line.  “I can’t carry you out of here.”
	I nodded, and followed him.  Once we made it to the shore, I gathered up our few essential bags and we began to make our way down the thin strip of woodland beneath the rise, looking for a well-hidden spot to make camp.  I’d like to say we found something perfect, but luck was not entirely with us.  No large upturned trees or dug-out rocky crevasses.  Not even particularly dense tree cover, which made sense this close to the water, really.  
	What we did manage to find was an area thick with young pine trees, still not large enough to have cleared much of the forest floor around them.  They made for a darker patch of woodland that was littered in pine needles and fallen boughs, and I was too tired to look any further.  My desire for comfort won out over my desire for the best possible hiding place.  Here, at least, there were plenty of fresh boughs to construct the lean-to, and the ground would be a soft place to lay our aching bodies for a time.  It was nestled enough against the rocky rise that it seemed to be mostly out of sight from above, but it was still not too far a sprint from our covered raft.
	I set our things down, and Finn accepted my choice without a word.  He was trusting me, knowing few of my considerations.  I could only hope I hadn’t failed us both.
	I opened my own worn rucksack and pulled out my brush axe.  Finnegan took in the sight of it with a soft whistle.  “Didn’t know you carried a weapon on you,” he said, as he began to shrug out of his jacket.  We were soaked through, so our clothing was doing little for either of us at that point.
	“It’s not for people,” I insisted.  “Or even game.”  I scanned the grove, selecting two larger pines that were near enough to one another.  “See if you can find some dry branches,” I called back to him.
	“I doubt anything out here in this weather will be dry,” he replied as he unbuttoned his vest and left it open, his white undershirt plastered to his lean chest.
	“Look for dead branches fallen and caught in the boughs of live ones,” I instructed.  “The snow above on the live branches can shield them, and the dead wood will burn better.  It’s the best chance we have.”
	I began to hack away the lower branches on the two trees I’d selected, clearing a few feet on each and collecting the boughs.  I’d brought my oars, tucked under my arm, up from the shore, and found two crooks of the remaining branches on which to lodge them at an angle.  Then I began to lay boughs out between them, creating the basic shape of our lean-to.  
	It was usually just barely big enough to shelter me, and we’d have to share it.  But it was the best I could do, if I set the two supports too far apart, no bough would be long enough to stretch between the two.  And my tent hide was essential to keep the snow out and the heat in as well in as possible, and it was only so large.
	Normally I’d take an hour or two to construct my lean-to each night, taking care to ensure it was as comfortable as possible so I could be certain to get a good rest in.  Tonight, the more I swung the brush axe, the more my body screamed at me to lie down.  I knew in time, it wouldn’t give me a choice in the matter.
	As I began scuffing through the dirt under our ramshackle shelter, looking for and tossing any sharp rocks I found aside, I heard Finn returning.  He knelt down beside where I was hunkering, depositing an armful of brown, fragile branches and sticks.  Some of it looked like it might be dry enough to burn, most of it probably wouldn’t.  But I had no doubt he’d found what little there was to be found.  There’d been a snow the night before, as well.  Finding anything dry right now would be a struggle.
	I hadn’t been planning on relying much on fires on the way home.  It was nearly impossible to keep dry kindling on the raft, and most of the time I wouldn’t have been nearly so wet when I settled in for the night.  But given our circumstances tonight, we had to try.
	He shook the shed pine needles off his arms, glancing up through the dark canopy of snow-covered branches.  “If we can even get a fire going, do you think she’ll see the smoke?”
	“Not with so much snowfall,” I shook my head.  “But we can’t keep it going all night.  Just long enough to dry off and warm ourselves.”  I struggled back to my feet, trying not to show the shudder in my legs.  “Help me spread the hides out over the top of the shelter,” I said to him, gesturing to where the large covering was folded with our things.
	Together, gripping either end, we sloppily covered the lean-to with the bull moose hides.  It was large enough to spread end to end over the whole lean-to, with a long piece in the front that could be tied up or flopped down over the opening to try and keep some of the heat in.  It was moderately effective.  Nothing like the dug-in clay bank homes of my otter tribe, or the ’brick’ and wood structures the Otherwolves built, not even as decent as a good tent or tipi, but it was portable and went up quickly.
	While I continued to stamp down and clean up the area inside the lean-to, Finnegan sorted through the kindling he’d found and selected what seemed the driest.  I showed him how to dig out a small pit to place it in, using primarily my claws, and talked him through the process of steepling the sticks together, which he did very exactly and carefully.  He was probably just trying to make himself useful, but seeing him commit himself to the simple task so diligently was endearing all the same.
	I stripped a few of the remaining pine boughs of their needles and made a carpet coating the already rather soft forest floor that would be our sleeping area, then unpacked my old furs to lay over it.  My rucksack was also watertight, like Finnegan’s, and had my most essential gear in it.  The furs, old sheep hides, were hardly plush, but they bundled into the rucksack well enough and that was more important.
	When it came time to see if I could get a fire going in the little pit we’d dug right alongside the opening of our lean-to, I’m fairly certain both Finn and I held our breath.  I struck the flint and fire steel for a good few minutes, repeatedly, without anything taking.
	Eventually, Finn sighed and reached deeper into the lean-to where he’d stowed his bag.  He disappeared for a few moments while I continued in vain, trying to get the fire started.  When he returned, he was crinkling something in his hands.
	“Try this,” he held it out to me.  It looked like a crumpled ball of-
	My eyes widened.  “Isn’t that-“
	“It’s not an essential document,” he insisted softly.  “It’s just some of my notes.  And anyway, it’s no good to anyone if we die of exposure.  Right?”
	I took that chance to observe his physical state, and it was worse than it had been at dusk.  Decidedly worse.  He was shaking violently now, body stiffly convulsing now and again as a full shudder racked his figure.  He was bearing it with as much dignity as was possible, and I doubted the cold would actually kill him, but there was a chance he’d suffer some kind of frostbite to his ears, or worse.
	And I wasn’t much better off, I realized.  My body maintained heat better, but not when I’d been wet this long.  Not while I’d been panting and exerting myself.
	I took the crumpled paper from him, and all that took was one strike to get a flame going.  It was like a miracle.
	A miracle we ended up having to keep feeding for a little while to ensure it paid off.  The fire was hesitant to take a hold of even the driest kindling we’d found, the cold and the wind beating it back whenever it seemed to be growing.  We fed it four more of Finn’s papers before we’d really gotten it to a survivable size.
	Once we had a fire though, everything just seemed to feel. . . better.  Less terrifying and oppressive.  It chased away the dark, the cold, and slowly returned the feeling to my paws.
	“God,” the wolfdog crooned, flexing his toes and fingers in front of the flickering warmth.  “My kingdom for a cup of tea right now.”  Before I could ask, he flicked an ear at me, smiling.  “It’s just an expression.”
	“I may not have tea,” I said, leaning over him for a moment to grab at one of the frozen sacks I’d had on the raft that I’d dragged to camp with us.  “But I do have fish.”
	“Shit, that’s right,” he brightened considerably at that, only growing more so when I untied the bag and reached in to snap loose a few of the frozen salmon.  I broke one clear in half, leaving the tail bit in the bag, but I hardly cared.  “You mentioned that,” he said, eyes gone wide as I slowly settled the two. . . or well, one and a half. . . frozen fish on a flat rock I’d set near the fire when I’d first dug the pit.  I had a skillet somewhere in my bag, but I didn’t care enough to go digging for it now.  I’d removed the rock from the lean-to area earlier, it would do in a pinch.
	“I packed them with ice as soon as I caught them,” I assured him, “and it hasn’t gotten warm enough to thaw them since, so they’re still very fresh.  You could honestly eat them as they are if you wanted.”
	He leaned his arms over his knees and watched the ice begin to slide off the scales as they started to cook, shaking his head.  “I’ve always preferred my fish cooked.”
	We sat there in companionable silence for a time, his eyelids settling heavily at half-mast as we watched the popping fire begin to sear the salmon skin.  “Back home,” he cleared his throat quietly.  “Back home you have to cook the fish, if you’ve caught it in most any port, or any major trade river.  The waters in our rivers have gone strange.  Sickly.  Too many people, too much drainage, all. . . trickling down.  It’s no surprise, when you see how the streets get in the slums.  Hell, even in the better parts, sometimes.”
	He stared into the fire for a while, passing the silence peaceably.  The salmon skin began to crisp, and he inhaled the scent, closing his eyes.  I felt the pull of my own eyelids, my head drooping briefly.  
	“It’s not like that here,” he said suddenly, pulling me back to wakefulness.  “I mean, it’s wild.  Uncivilized.  Brutal, even.  But it’s unspoiled.  Clean.”
	“I’m curious how you can say that when we’re covered in mud,” I pointed out, combing out some of the dried dirt on my fur with my claws.  At least it was drying.
	“There’s a difference,” he insisted.  “Only someone who’s never walked the shit-caked, moldering streets of the Risers in Highvolle could say that.”
	“What’s the difference?”  I asked uncertainly.
	“The difference,” he sighed, “is between mud. . . and filth.  You put enough people- especially poor people, who’ve got no choice except to rag pick, burn refuse and eat vermin- cram them into tent cities and windowless, ancient ruins of buildings, and that’s what you get.  Filth.  You know why they call it ‘The Risers’?”
	“I’ll be honest, all of this is completely unknown to me,” I admitted, leaning an arm against one of my knees and shaking my fur out a bit so it would dry faster.  “Like hearing stories of the realm of spirits.”
	He laughed at that, coming out a bit hoarse, but earnestly amused-sounding.  “Oi, you really don’t know my world, then.”  He tugged himself with some difficulty out of his vest, then even more slowly, the fabric catching on each still-wet clump of fur, began working his shirt off.  His voice seemed to relax, somehow more at ease, like he wasn’t watching his words as carefully.  I swear, even his accent changed, becoming less annunciated.  “The Risers are like. . . hm. . . like the ditch the gutter empties out into.  D’you know what a rain gutter is?”
	“I. . . think so,” I said, thinking back on some of the Otherwolf buildings I’d seen, both in the towns I’d visited and the small settlement they were building on my otterfa’s land near the river.  “It’s like a sluice.”
	“Sort of,” He waved his hand.  “It controls the flow of water anyway, so you’re half-right.  I won’t even begin to explain cesspools or nightmen to you.  Suffice it to say, cities like Highvolle are choking in their own shite, filth water and viscera from butchers, fishmongers, even our own dead citizens, from time to time.”
	I couldn’t hide the horror on my face, and he just nodded at me.  “I know,” he sighed.  “It’s just what happens when so many people live so close together, I suppose.  Anyway, it all has to go somewhere.  And water doing what water does, it all flows down.  Eventually to the rivers, but along the way. . . the Risers.  It’s what they call the lowest ring of the city, where most of the runoff pools.  The houses have to be lifted, or the lowest floors shelled out, because it’s just permanently full of that mire and muck, nowadays.”  He shut his mouth for a few moments, staring into the fire.  Finally, hesitantly, he spoke again.  “That’s where I hail from.  Home.  Or at least, it used to be.”
	Remembering his flippance earlier in the muck of the reed bank suddenly made a lot more sense.  It twisted up my fond memory of watching him plop his hat on his head, like he hadn’t a care in the world.  I’d thought he was just trying to find cheer in a dismal situation. . . not that he was honestly accustomed to this.
	“There’s a grim comfort in mud and death, for me,” he said with a false smile.  “It’s all I’ve ever been told I’m entitled to.  By everyone except my mother, anyway.”  He finally freed himself of his soaked shirt, standing and spreading it out on the ground in front of the fire.  I wish we had somewhere to hang our clothing, but it would freeze regardless where he put it.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him yet.
	“But,” I looked down at what had clearly once been a fine garment, “your clothing.  Your hat. . . .”
	“Second hand,” he chuckled, “all of it.  And if I’m being honest, probably stolen or pawned.  I learned how to put together a good outfit from my mother, though.  And my uncle Mikhail.  Well, more like. . . family friend.  I always called him ‘uncle’, though.  Like family.  And the man knows how to look posh on a budget.”  He leaned back to sit again, wincing as he stretched out a leg.  He seemed to think nothing of leaning against me, his heat bleeding into mine where our fur touched.  “How you present yourself to the world is more important than substance, sometimes.  It’s better for someone to assume you’re of means than to be of means and not look it, in most interactions.  Gets you started off in all intercourse with a marked advantage.  You clearly took note of my appearance when we first met.  Kindly disposed you towards me, didn’t it?”  He asked knowingly.
	I blanched, looking away.  “It did,” I confessed.
	“I’ve always tried to make the most of whatever I’ve got,” he said, smoothing down the fur on his fine-featured face, and running his palms down his neck ruff, straightening it out.  “For those of us born to poverty, sometimes our bodies are literally all we have.”  I felt his eyes on me, and hesitantly looked back at him.  His muzzle was shockingly close to mine, his eyes alight with the reflection of the fire.  “You, Tulimak,” he said, reaching across the short space between us, and laying a hand on my bicep.  “You use your big body as a tool, right?  You understand.”
My mouth felt dry, and I wanted very badly to. . . I don’t know.  I thought perhaps to move back from him, because that was my default when I felt I was too close to someone else’s space.  A lifetime of bumping into people, nearly stepping on people, shoving people, just generally being too big had taught me never to get this close.  Finnegan didn’t give me a choice though, he existed within my space effortlessly, bending and shaping his interactions with me around my hulking figure.  Sometimes using me as a shield, sometimes as a support to lean on or to warm himself near.  He always had a convenient reason.
	What more did I want?
	That thought had been pounding in my head since the realization on the river shore.  It felt like a thing misremembered, like something was on the tip of my tongue, unfulfilled, and I just couldn’t put the pieces together to know what it was.  So much had happened in a few days’ time, it was easy enough to pass the feeling off as confusion that would abate once this whole nightmarish endeavor was over, and I had time to process everything that had happened- and nearly happened- to me.  But for now at least, it was like a muscle cramp, a tensing in my chest that wouldn’t ease.  I was on the precarious edge of something.
	And I couldn’t shake the feeling that Finnegan knew exactly what it was. 
	The way he looked at me even now, it was expectant.  And I didn’t know what he was waiting for.  I didn’t know what to say, what to do.  I felt helpless.
	He’d asked a question.  At least try to answer that.
	“I. . . don’t know,” I admitted, feeling useless.  “I-I guess.  I want to understand you better, Finnegan,” I said earnestly.  
	He leaned back, perhaps sensing my discomfort.  “Hm,” he moved his gaze back to the fire.  “Let’s hope we survive the night, then.  I’d like the chance to get to know you better, too.”
	I looked away again.  “I think you’ve got me pretty well figured out.  You seem insightful.  And it’s not like I’m all that complicated.”  In truth, I felt completely laid bare around someone as worldly and knowledgeable as Finnegan.  There was next to nothing about myself I hadn’t already told him.  And that’s because there. . . honestly wasn’t much to me.  
	“I’m not so sure about that,” he replied quietly, his voice softer still against the muffling atmosphere of snow falling all around us.  I normally liked the world like this, when it got quiet and subdued.  But for some reason tonight, it only served to enhance my fear, uncertainty and yearning.  I was achingly tired, but couldn’t surrender to exhaustion. 
	I tried to remind myself that this anxiety I was feeling right now was rational. . . we were being hunted.  But some part of me knew that wasn’t the only reason for it. 
	He was looking at me again.  I glanced at him out of the corner of my vision.  He was leaning back on his palms, his chest and belly fur bare and drying in the warmth of the fire.  His fur was sleek in places, layered and heavier in others, specifically over his shoulders and clavicle.  Remnants of his wolf heritage.  That white patch down his throat went further down still, peppering his upper chest, and reappearing lower on his abdomen.  Otherwise he was almost entirely black, save the one little bit on his tail-tip.  No wolf had that kind of coloration.
	His body couldn’t decide who or what it was.  Like my own, brown fur bleeding into white down my spine, the mask over my eyes.  We were straddling two peoples, trapped forever in our patchwork bodies- he’d called mine a ‘tool’.  Said he used his to his best advantage, even if it wasn’t very much.  He’d been intending to say, I suppose, that we were both making the best of our unfortunate circumstances of birth.
	But the implication there was that we were, both of us, unfortunate. 
	And to be honest, though I’d always been self-conscious of my big body, wanting desperately to fit in more with my otter siblings, I’d never thought overly about being mixed.  My problem had always been that I was a bear, not an otter.  Perhaps being mixed is why I’d not been raised by my bear family, and in that case it was unfortunate.  Not because there was anything wrong with my otter family, but because there were many things I’d simply never learn or experience without other bears in my life.  But I’d never thought about it in that way.  I’d always bemoaned other things about who I was.
	For Finnegan, it wasn’t about his size or how well he fit in physically with his own people.  It was all about who his parents had been.  Our circumstances were similar in some ways, but wholly different in others.  And that’s probably why we dealt with them differently.  I couldn’t hide my lineage under fine clothing, or falsify the kind of confidence he wore like a second skin, so I didn’t bother to try.  I was always acutely conscious of how different I looked from everyone around me, but I didn’t try to fit in as he did.  I didn’t have that option.
	But honestly, I’m not so sure either of us was either right or wrong in our approach to how we felt about ourselves.  My otterfa, who was easily the wisest person I had ever known, had told me many times that I would never find a place in the world where I’d be safe from people looking on me with cruel eyes.  Cruelty was everywhere, in all peoples, in every land.  Even if I’d been born fully white-furred, or even born an otter, there would always be someone who would think white-furred bear, or otters, were ugly.  People would think less of me for being big, for being small, for being a tribesman.  It was inescapable.
	If Finnegan’s fine clothes made him feel better about his lineage, about the flaws he clearly saw in himself, that was good.  But I wished he could see him the way I did, not because of a fine shirt or vest, but right now.  Even muddy in places, stretched out on my tattered sheep furs, tousled fur drying in the crackling firelight, he looked beautiful.
	Oh.
	Oh, spirits.
	“The fish is done,” I said suddenly, snapping my eyes away from his.  He blinked dazedly at me- how long had we been staring at each other?  How long had I been staring at him?
	“. . . uh-huh,” he said from behind me, as I fussed with the hot stone, using my claws to move it closer to us.  Disappointment was laced in his not-words, or at least that’s what it sounded like.  I was left once again wondering what I might have done to offend him.  But of course, I knew.  I’d been staring again.
	What was wrong with me?
	I had some ideas.  But I hadn’t any life experience to compare them to.  So I wasn’t sure. . . .
	We ate our fish in silence.  Finnegan seemed very pleased with his half a salmon, but I barely tasted mine.  I was starving, but my mind just wasn’t on food.
	I must have been eating slow, and was certainly lost in thought, because at some point I lost track of Finn and nearly jumped out of my skin when I felt cold press against the wound on my back again.
	“Calm down,” he eased, kneeling down behind me.  “I’m just cleaning this up a little more.  Seems to have stopped bleeding.  Good thing too, because I don’t know how we would’ve wrapped it.  Your shoulders are. . . fshhh. . . .” he made a noise through his teeth which I didn’t know the meaning of, but I could only infer it meant ‘too big’.  I slumped a little, and he slapped my opposite shoulder lightly.  “Don’t move,” he chastised.  “Let me work.”  He reached outside the lean-to and balled up another handful of snow, packing it down in his palm before returning to the wound.
	“You know healing?”  I asked, curiously.
	“Not in the slightest,” he chuckled.  “But I’ve gotten in enough scuffles throughout my life to know cold’s good for swelling.  And that it’s bad if you leave little chunks of fish in a wound.”
	“Is that what did it?”  I asked, incredulously.
	“Yes, sorry to say,” he sighed, “you were injured by exploded, frozen fish chunks.  To be fair, it was the shot that really did the damage.  But what a story, eh?  I would lead with ‘there was this one time I got impaled by a salmon. . . ‘.”
	I laughed, my back shaking, and he batted at me again.  “What’d I say?”  He scolded me.
	“I’m sorry,” I couldn’t stop grinning.  “You’re ridiculous.”
	 “Don’t let that get around,” he snorted.  
	I smiled again, taking note of his knees on either side of my haunches.  Working up some nerve, I reached down and gingerly touched one.  “How is your hip feeling?”  I asked.
	“Awful,” he admitted.  “But considering what we put ourselves through today, hardly surprising.  And the cold isn’t helping.”
	“You should take your britches off,” I said without thinking about it.
	There was a pause.  Then a far too amused, “I should, should I?”
	“They’re. . . soaked through,” I explained quickly, suddenly immensely glad he was behind me and we weren’t face to face.  “Our clothing’s going to be frozen in the morning regardless, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t allow our fur to dry.”
	He hummed in consideration.  “You make a fine point, honestly.”
	I knew vaguely from my travels that the Otherwolves were a bit more hung up on modesty and preferred to cover more of their bodies than most tribesman, and Finnegan certainly fell into that category, since he covered himself ankle to wrist most of the time with multiple layers of clothing.  So I tried to give the man his privacy while he stripped out of his soaked trousers.  I myself wore little more than my breech cloth over my lower half, but I wanted to honor his cultural traditions.
	As it turned out though, it was unnecessary.  And counter-productive.  He’d been behind me in the cramped lean-to grunting and struggling with the wet garment for over a minute or more before he whined out a call for help.
	“Please,” he groaned, “I’ve been bested!”
	Turning, I took in a truly pitiable sight.  The wolfdog had. . . half-managed the task, but the combination of wet clothing and wet fur, along with the fact that he was clearly having trouble bending without being in pain, meant he was trapped midway through the process, lying on his back.  I tried not to snort out a laugh as I gingerly untangled and dragged the remaining length down off his legs.  He shook the last of the offending garment off with a growl, kicking it needlessly and presumably accidentally out into the snow.  Then he groaned, flopping down onto my sheep furs.
	“Just leave them there,” he grumbled, stretching out his limbs greedily.  “I never want to put them on again.”
	“You’ll change your mind about that in the morning,” I assured him, sighing and hunkering down to crawl outside just far enough to grab them, and spread them out beside his shirt.  They would also be frozen in the morning, but they might at least a little more dry.
	I took a moment to look up through the dark canopy to the flurries silently drifting down through the cracks in the grasping branches.  It was impossible to say how long the storm would last, and were I on this journey alone, and unhindered, I would probably have hunkered down here for a few days.  
	That would have been nice, I thought.  To be here with Finnegan, passing time in our little snowed-in shelter, cooking fish, talking and being amused by his antics.  I think I would have really enjoyed that. . . .
	But we’d have to leave in the morning, no matter what.  If we weren’t found in the night, that is.
	When I kneeled back down to make my way into our little sanctum, I had to stop for a moment to catch my breath.  Finnegan had turned to lie on his other side, the hip that wasn’t bothering him presumably, and that meant his back was turned to me and the fire.  The firelight threw the contours of his slender, lithe figure into stark relief, the path down his spine marked by layers of slightly thicker fur with hints of silvery-white that caught only in the light. 
	He shifted, stretching out a long leg and rubbing at the prominence of his hip, down the curve of his thigh.  
	I was all at once, stunningly, and acutely physically aware of what I wanted.  
The realization froze me in place and sent my mind reeling.  How-why was this happening?  Why now?  Why him?  Why here, of all places, when I couldn’t escape or ignore what was coming over me?
I stayed there, kneeling in the snow, not knowing what to do.  For far too long.  Long enough that snow began to gather on my shoulders, and in time, Finnegan called out for me.
“Tulimak?”  He murmured, paw still rubbing at his hip.  “Please don’t worry me.  If you’re relieving yourself or something, just let me know you’re alright out there?”
“I-I’m fine,” I said, getting back on all fours and crawling back inside slowly, remembering that yes, we were still being hunted, and he had every reason to be concerned.
Bigger picture.  All of this. . . .
. . . whatever this was. . . .
. . . it would have to wait.  We still had to get through the night.
I tried so hard to put whatever space between us I could.  But it’s as though circumstance and the elements themselves were conspiring to make my life tonight an anxious misery.  And Finnegan wasn’t helping, whether he realized it or not.
“You can get closer, I don’t bloody care,” he mumbled, fumbling back with a paw to grab at me blindly.  I moved forward an inch or two at best, just enough so that my back wasn’t against the flap of our cover.  When I didn’t entirely close the distance, he did, giving a contented noise.  “You’re like an oven,” he chuckled.  “Thanks for blocking the chill from outside.”
“I-I. . . .” I don’t know what I’d been planning to say.
As it turned out, it didn’t matter.  For all that I was on edge, Finnegan was apparently. . . not.  Because his breathing evened and he very obviously drifted off not long after that.  
By all rights, I should have, too.  I ached, I was exhausted in every way a person could be.  But I lay there awake for some time, trying to make one very important decision.
What to do with my arm.
The last time I’d ever slept beside someone, I’d been a cub.  Once I’d started getting really big, I’d gotten my own sleeping area, and eventually, my own living space.  I literally couldn’t remember what the feeling of a warm body next to mine felt like, let alone how I was supposed to position myself to not get in their way.  If I lay my arm on my side it would fall in the middle of the night regardless, if I bent it back I’d be sore in the morning, and my shoulder was already sore, so. . . .
As so often happens when you’re overthinking something and tired, it was in the midst of deliberating whether or not it would be alright to put my paw over his hip that I fell asleep.

The night was long, restless, and punctuated by dizzy moments of waking to a sound outside, or a half-remembered dream.  There was a warmth in my arms I was unaccustomed to, and it both comforted and frightened me, intermittently.  
Sometimes that warmth would move closer in against me, or shift away, leaving the spots it had occupied to grow cold.  I’d reach for it, and sink my paws into soft, pliant fur and more besides.  I stretched my fingers out over the expanse of that warmth, feeling the leaves of fur between them.  I breathed it in, the scent slowly becoming dreams.  But I knew they were dreams.  There was a comfort in that.  The waking world was so much more complicated.
In my dreams, the discomfort and pain in my body was dissolving.  Slipping away, being replaced by far more pleasant sensations.  The tenseness in my muscles, the anxiety always tying me up in knots, unraveling almost visually, coming apart.  My paws were kneading that soft heat, stress slipping away and falling off me in rivers.
In my dreams, that warm feeling was pushing back.  Turning and curling around me like licking flames.  It was only a dream, so I was permitted this.  I touched and was touched back.
Something far more acute and pressing jarred me through my half-conscious state, pulling me forcibly into the waking world.  A noise, and simultaneously a feeling.  A sound like a gasp, punched-out beside-against?-me.  And an all-consuming need.
“Auhhhh, fuck,” Finnegan’s growl of an utterance were the first real words I heard upon fully waking.  “So this’s happening, after’all. . . .”  
It took me a good few seconds to come to grips with the reality of what I’d woken to.  The lean-to was cast in purplish twilight, so the sun was only barely making itself known somewhere beyond the tree line.  I could vaguely feel the chill air threatening outside, but that was because of the intensity of the warmth pooling in my chest, stomach and lower, from every inch of my body in contact with my bedmate’s. . . and right now that was every inch.  Because I had the wolfdog pulled in against me, both of my arms caging him in, my palms spread flat over his hip and stomach respectively, fingers and claws buried in his fur.  We were still lying with his chest to my back, there was hardly room to do anything else, but the curve of his body was fit so snugly against mine, he was almost off the ground.
And even through the fog of my waking dream, I could feel how hard I was between my legs.  Pressed between his legs.
Which meant he sure as hell felt it.
As I tended to, I panicked.  In fact I was about a second away from shoving him away from me and backpedaling out into the snow. . . when his paw slipped down beneath my loosely-tied breech cloth, and gripped me.
And everything pretty much stopped working at that point.  My voice, my body, my mind.
His paw was feverishly warm as it closed around the base of my sheath, and slowly stroked upwards, gripping slightly more snugly as it moved towards my tip.  When he gave a gentle squeeze there, I whined out a breath, and I swear to you, he chuckled.
He chuckled.
That, at least, alleviated any worries that he was doing this. . . I don’t know. . . out of fear?  I still held him in my arms, and despite my inner turmoil, I somehow hadn’t managed to let him go.  
“Wasn’t sure,” he mumbled, his words drawling out lazily.  I had no idea what he meant by that, because my mind was too busy screaming that I should do something, anything, soon, because he’d begun to move his paw again and oh-
. . . oh. . . .
His palm was so much softer than my own, and so much smaller, his fingers wrapping around the expanse of me, each running upwards at a slightly different pace, following the motion of his hand.
My jaw was hanging open, and I knew some very bear-like noises were escaping me, despite my best efforts to stay silent.  I dared not look down, except of course the times I did, and the sight was not helpful in maintaining my self-control.
I should be stopping him.
Why wasn’t I stopping him?
What I did was. . . lie there. . . shivering despite the heat. . . and let him touch me for what amounted to a very short time, when all was said and done.  I know this for a fact not because I was at all keeping track of time, but because when I stiffened my arms around him and came messily with the most bear-like noise yet, he seemed pleasantly surprised.
There came that chuckle again.  It sounded almost smug, but I’d be hard-pressed to tell you for sure, because I was lying there weak and shaking in the wake of what had just occurred.
I was still in that state of shock when he slipped his hand free and patted my own where it was still pressed against his belly.
I didn’t entirely know what he meant, so I did the only thing I could think to- I let go of him finally, releasing him from my hold.  He shifted a bit, arching his back and stretching out a leg, grimacing as he did so.  Then he glanced over his shoulder at me, one ear half-tipped, expression bemused.
“You could’ve just asked last night, y’know,” he huffed.
“What just happened?!”  I finally managed to exclaim.