Chapter 13 – New Moon Basin

	I jumped down into my pit home, foregoing the ladder.  It was a deep drop, just about my height, but I was angry and I wanted to feel the impact of my paws on the packed earth.  The walls shuddered and some of the dirt from the roof shook loose, the remaining embers in my fire snuffing out from the sudden displacement of air.  I felt rather than saw Finnegan wince, above me.
	It wasn’t enough.  Nothing would be enough, right now.
	“Tulimak,” he called down, concerned.
	“Is your bag packed?”  I asked, my voice a growl that barely exited my muzzle.
	“It’s not as if I own much,” he sighed, taking the steps down the ladder and dropping down beside me.  “Let me just fold the clothes your sisters washed for me.”
	I began moving about my small home, grabbing up my clothing, belongings and food haphazardly.  I hardly cared how I packed them, I just began stuffing it all into my travel bag.  I could worry about unpacking and sorting later.
	“Whoa, calm down there,” I felt Finnegan’s hand settle over my arm, fingertips gingerly wrapping around my bicep.  Unthinkingly, I shoved his arm away.  I immediately regretted the careless gesture, especially when the unintentional force of it knocked him off-balance and he stumbled back, nearly into the ladder.
	I gasped, immediately turning around, my muzzle in my paw.  “I-I’m so s-“
	Finnegan recovered after only a brief waver on his feet, shaking his head.  “Forget it.  I’m fine.”
	“I didn’t mean. . .” I squeezed my eyes shut, gritting my teeth.  “I’m so sorry.  I-I’m just. . . .”
	“Angry,” the wolfdog replied.  I still had my eyes closed, but I felt him crossing the space between us again.  This time when he reached out for me, he closed his hands around my wrists slowly and hesitantly, dragging my paws away from my face so that he could look at me.  “I know,” he said.  “I understand anger.  Trust me.”
	“Someone like me can’t,” I swallowed, “get angry.”
	“It’s not your fault you’re big, Tuli,” he said softly.  “I said I’m fine, didn’t I?  Hey.  Hey?  Look at me.”
	I blinked my eyes open, looking down into his.  “He’s been,” I snuffed, “lying to me.  My whole life.”
	He sighed out through his nose.  “He must have a reason. . . .”
	“How can I judge that for myself,” I demanded, “when he won’t tell me?!”
	“I can’t give you those answers,” he said.  “But I’m here for you.  Alright?  Whatever this is.  We’ll figure it out.  Right now, you need to try. . . to calm down.  We don’t have long, and trust me- you don’t want to leave here angry at your family, or say something careless you can’t take back.”
	I shook my head, shaking.  “I don’t know what to say to that man right now,” I grated out.  “And I am angry.  I don’t know how to not. . . be angry.  Why does it matter what I say to him now?  He won’t talk to me about what’s most important.”
	“Tuli, I don’t need to explain the danger we’re in here,” he said quietly.  “You knew that when you decided to come with us.  You’ve been shot once already.  You know what could happen to us out there.  I know you understand the importance of leaving here with a clean conscience, knowing you left the right kinds of memories with your family.”
	That got me to look down at him again.  His eyes had never left my face the whole time he’d been talking to me.  I lifted one of my damnably big paws up to his cheek.  “You’re not fighting me on coming with you,” I said.  
	He shook his head, giving a slim, rueful smile.  “I guess I’m selfish like that.  I know I couldn’t stop you if it’s what you really wanted, and anyway. . . I want you with me.”  He paused.  “But I hope I’m not the only reason you’re coming.”
	“Good save,” I said between sniffs, my nose embarrassingly wet.  
	He chuckled.  “Well. . . yeah. . . .”
	“No, I really do want to look into how we can avoid this land grab,” I insisted.  “Father’s clearly already given up.  Just rolling with the waves, like he always does.  I’m sure he can find. . . somewhere. . . for us to settle.  But that’s giving up our ancestral lands to these men who’ve taken advantage of him.  Taken advantage of us.”
	“Yeah, fuck that,” he agreed.  “Cockers,” he gave a bitter ‘tch’ through his teeth.  “I promise I’ll try to help you figure out the legal bits.  As well as I can, anyway.  I’m hardly a legal scholar, especially in this country.  But I’m a canine, and that might be all it’ll take to open a few doors.  We’ll do all of that first.  Alright?”
	“I don’t want to talk about turning you over,” I muttered.  “Spirits.  How can so many terrible things happen all at once?”
	“That’s usually how it is,” he said.  “Tough times bring more and more hardship.  Shite like this causes you to rush, to get desperate, to make mistakes, forces truths out of people.”
	“Or not,” I said bitterly.
	“Give him until you’re at the town edge,” he reasoned.  “Trust me, alright?  Just seem like the reasonable one and give him nothing but silence, force it out of him.  People, when they’re tense, when they’re feeling scrutinized, tend to want to fill silence.  Then they talk too much.  Usually give you just about everything you wanted.  Sometimes more.”
	“Your insight is scary sometimes,” I said, my voice still rough.
	He chuckled.  “You love it.”
	“I am scared,” I admitted for the first time in the flurry of the last hour, “about leaving home.  I mean, really leaving home.  This isn’t just down-river.  Even my father has never been to Arbordale.  It’s going to be overwhelming, traveling so far from everything and everyone I know.”
	“Not to mention all the gunmen on our tail,” Finnegan reminded me.
	“None of them have anything on you,” I said, brushing the edge of his ear with the back of my claws.
	“I like your confidence in my abilities,” he said.  “And that we’ve gotten to the point where you can see the utility in it.  But there are a lot of them, Tulimak.  And I highly doubt they’ll be civil enough to duel me one at a time.”
	“We have Odina, and each other,” I leaned down and rested my far larger forehead against the top of his.  “I trust your confidence more than my own.  You aren’t telling me to stay. That means we must have a chance.”
	“I hope so,” he said quietly.
	I tried to stoop lower to kiss him, but every time we’d kissed in the past, we’d been sitting.  This was a first.  I craned my neck down, trying to tilt my head at the right angle.  He smirked against my cheek and wrapped his arms up around my shoulders.  Then all at once, coming so naturally that I hardly questioned it, he leaped up and I grabbed him around the waist and beneath the knees, dragging him up against me so we were eye level with one another.  He got that overly-pleased-with-himself smirk and I kissed it off of him, his body warm in my arms.
	When he lazily pulled back, he took a brief glance downwards at the ground below him, his tail swishing about over my forearm.  “Is this even hard for you?”  He asked, amused.
	“Not really,” I admitted, shyly.
	“Speaking of ‘utility’,” he grinned, “I can think of quite a few things we could employ your ridiculous arm strength for.”
	“Are you ever serious?”  I asked, dryly.
	“I am being seri- oh my God,” he gaped over my shoulder.  “Put me down, put me down.”
	I dropped him to his feet, my heart jumping in my chest.  Had one of my family come down the ladder?  But when I turned, he was just heading over to one of my dug-in shelves, where some of my older possessions were stored.
	“I didn’t notice this last night,” he said in wonderment, gingerly reaching into the nook and pulling something out to inspect it.  When I saw what he held, I was hit with a wave of memories so suddenly it nearly knocked me off my feet.
	Finnegan cradled the little woolen toy in his palms, turning it over once to inspect the bead eyes and the sewn in nose and mouth.  A delighted noise bubbled up out of his throat.  “Oh my God, it’s a bear.  Isn’t it?  It’s a little bear!”
	“That’s. . . my little brother,” I said quietly, knitting my hands in front of me.  
	He turned to look at me like I was a yawning newborn cub.
	“I mean, not actually,” I said awkwardly.  “Obviously.  But, when I was little, all of the other children in town had siblings or relatives that looked like them.  I. . . obviously. . . didn’t.  So my parents gave me that, so I’d feel less alone.”  I walked over to him, laying a hand, (now larger than the toy itself) on its worn, but still soft head.  “My mother made it for me.”
	Finnegan’s expression sobered at that.  After a further moment, he went to place it back on the shelf, carefully. 
	“She knew,” I said after a solemn space had passed between us.  “Dad knew.  She must have known, too.  They didn’t keep secrets from one another.  They both must have known about my real tribe, whoever they were, from the beginning.  They were both lying to me about how I came into their lives.”  I hung my head.  “But then, I thought he didn’t keep secrets from me, either.  So maybe she was just as in the dark as I was.”
	I felt Finnegan slide his hand into mine.  “Tuli?”  He said.  “I’ve only known your father a day, but- and I’m going out on a limb here, I’ll admit- I really think he wants what’s best for you.  He seems to truly love you.  I mean, that’s just a surface read, but,” he shrugged.
	“I know he does,” I admitted quietly.  “I don’t doubt that.”
	“That being said,” the wolfdog sighed.  “Love can manifest in a lot of different ways.  Not all of them good.  Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes in the way you treat them.  Your father’s fallible.  The way you talked about him before all of this, I think you might have idolized him a bit.  Part of hitting adulthood is seeing the shine come off the people you look up to.  Hit me a little bit earlier, but I went through something similar with my mother.”
	I ground my teeth together inside my muzzle, then slowly let out a long breath.  “Well he has less than an hour to make it right,” I said.  “Then we leave.  Let’s get finished packing.”

	As we stepped out of my pit home and covered the flap back over with its caribou hide, I produced something I’d been holding beneath my cloak, offering it to Finnegan.  I’d dug it out of my previous travel bag, which I’d swapped this time for a larger one.
	He looked over the pistol for only a moment before taking it and pushing his jacket aside, re-holstering it.
	“You kept wearing your hip holster,” I noted.
	“I had a feeling you’d return it to me,” he admitted.  “This thing takes a few minutes to strap on.  Sometimes you don’t have the time.  Better to be ready.  Thank you for trusting me enough to return it to me in your village, though.”
	“It makes a statement,” I rumbled.
	“To your father?”  He guessed, uncertainly.
	“To Odina,” I corrected him.  “She’s still planning on turning you in, Finn.”
	“That’s the agreement,” he nodded.  When I began to open my mouth again, he held up his hands.  “Look, it’s a long way off and we have other problems right now.  We can hash that out another time, alright?”
	I looked past him, taking stock of the tribespeople I could see dotting the village, peering out of the communal longhouses or poking their heads up out of other pit homes.  We seemed to be the center of attention, unsurprisingly.  By now, news of what was happening had likely spread all around our little community.  Likely, very few yet understood the implications of the situation.  My family, perhaps.  Most of them simply watched us as we walked towards the main gathering area, where a distant crowd of figures waited.  I could hear arguing, but not make out voices yet.  
	One of my uncles, leaning against a longhouse with a pipe in his mouth, called out to me in Nontawlik, “Tulimak!  Good luck to you on your travels.  We’re sorry to see you leave again so soon.”
	I managed a smile in his direction.  “Thank you,” I said earnestly.
	“Whatever these matters of yours in the Otherwolf world,” he inclined his head towards Finn, “settle them and return as swiftly as you can.  For your father’s sake.  And for the tribe.  You will be missed here.”  He gave me a whiskery smile, and mine grew.
	“Thank you uncle,” I said, my throat hoarse.  As we walked the remaining distance into the center of town, it really began to set in.  These people, this place that had taken me in and treated me as one of their own, for whatever reason. . . I might never see any of them again.  And that wouldn’t be hardest on me.  When someone died, the suffering they left behind fell on the shoulders of those that loved them, that relied on them.  It’s not as though life for me in this tribe had ever been perfect.  I’d felt lonely, cumbersome and out-of-place my whole life, and some of the otters here hadn’t been as kind about my presence as my close family had been.  But we’d adapted.  I’d carved out a niche here, found a place within these people so different from me.  And over time, I’d become valued.  Not just in spite of, but sometimes because of our differences.
	A too-small pile of split logs attested to that.  I saw it out of the corner of my eye as we entered the main circle.  Everyone in the tribe took on what we called ‘village work’, like maintaining homes and fish racks, or getting water.  My task, since I’d grown taller and stronger than any of the otters in the tribe, had always been to cut wood for the communal fires.  In my absence, the pile had dwindled significantly.
	Considering something for a moment, I leaned down near the wood stack and wrapped my hand around one of the axe handles, tugging it up out of the stump it had been resting in.  Someone must have been cutting wood earlier this morning.
	I lifted the tool, so familiar in my palm.  Never before in my life would I have balked at holding an axe, never would I have felt any sense of trepidation.  But as I slowly pushed the handle down into my belt, stowing it, a pall of uncertainty fell over my heart.  
	This axe was no longer a tool.  As of this moment, it had become a weapon.
	I was still processing that when my father’s voice cut through the cooling afternoon air, my chest tightening at the sound of his voice.  He was behind us, I knew the sound of his footsteps, and he wasn’t alone.
	“Tulimak,” he called out, a twinge of desperation in his tone.  I stopped in my tracks and hung my head.  
	Finnegan leaned his muzzle up, speaking lowly.  “Remember what I said, alright?  Don’t turn this into an argument.  Just talk matter-of-factly, give him very little.  And say goodbye, no matter what.”
	I turned slowly, taking in the sight of. . . my entire family, as it turned out.  My father, my brothers, my sisters, even Alasie.  He’d brought all of them, and they were carrying bundles in their arms.
	“This isn’t,” he said in a staggered breath, “some last ploy to stop you.  You’ve made your intentions very clear, and I-I. . . .”
	His words died at that and he looked to me imploringly, perhaps hoping I’d break and change my mind.  Or just say something to assure him.  I had to force myself to keep my muzzle shut, my guts twisted into knots.  There was a pain in my stomach that I knew I’d be feeling for days.  
	“We gathered some essentials for you,” he said at length.  He and my brothers and sisters all set down a bundle.  They looked like foodstuffs, medicine, furs. . . even my littlest sister had wrapped up what seemed to be a very large, frozen fish for us.  I couldn’t help but smile at her.
	She was the first to break away from my family and run up to me.  I kneeled and brought her into my arms, hugging her tight to my chest.  “Stupid bear,” she hiccupped against me.  “You shouldn’t travel in winter.  Mom always said.  You’re going to lose toes.”
	The rest of my family soon joined her, gathering around me.  Only my father hung back, while I hugged each and every one of my siblings.  My brothers wished me good fortune and that the spirits be at my back, my sisters told me to keep my wits about me.  
	My father eventually stepped closer.  I looked up at him, biting my tongue inside my muzzle.  He was usually such a collected man, but right now, his expression was twisted in pain and fear.  It reminded me of how he’d looked while mom was sick.
	I had to say something, anything, to assure him.
	“I’ll return, otterfa,” I promised.
	“You cannot know that,” he said.  “You cannot.  Tulimak, your place is here.  It has always been here.”	
	“That’s why I have to protect it,” I said, heeding Finnegan’s words and stating my position as simply as possible.  “I can do something for our tribe that will really matter, otterfa.  I have to try.”
	“You don’t know that there is a thing you can do!”  He raised his voice.  “You have no reason to believe that, Tulimak.  No experience that says this is a task you are suited for!  You’re abandoning your tribe on a whim-“
	I stood, slowly.  “Goodbye, dad.”
	“I am not trying to stop you,” he insisted.  “You’re a man and you can travel the world as you please, but Tulimak, I want you to feel the weight of this choice-“
	“I am,” I said, looking down at my siblings, and stroking Alasie’s head once more before parting from them.  “I’m sorry, dad.  I have to do this.  Please respect my choice, regardless how it turns out.”  
	He took a step back, staggering like the wind had been punched out of him.  
	I looked over the parcels my family had offered, sighing.  “I don’t have any more room in my bag,” I said.  “I don’t know if I can bring much of this.”
	I turned to look towards where the other gathering, a second drama was playing out.  Odina was in a pitched argument with Sawyer.  Truth be told, Sawyer was the only one making a scene.  Odina was speaking to him calm and low-voiced, as ever.  I could take a guess at what they were discussing.
	My intention was to head over their way when their argument finished and ask if she could help us carry supplies, but my father must have taken it as my parting from him, completely.  Because the moment I turned around, he cried out, “Tulimak, please!  Not like this.”
	I craned my neck back around to look at him, brow lifting.  
	“Not like this,” he repeated, softer.  “Your mother and I never. . . there was so much I wanted to say to her. . . .”
	I turned to face him completely, remaining silent, but looking towards him openly.  
	He slowly released a held breath.  “Please do not leave here angry with me,” he pleaded.  
	I swallowed, shaking my head slowly.  “I love you, dad,” I said.  “The fact that I’m upset with you right now doesn’t change that.”
	“I took an oath,” he said, voice wavering.  “I swore to them, it was the only way they would entrust you to me.  They would have killed you otherwise, son.”
	“What?”  I breathed.
	His gaze fell.  He looked so much older in that moment, the shadows settling into the lines on his face, the waning sun catching all the grey in his muzzle.  “There is a place,” he said at length, “far to the south of here.  A basin in the earth, created long ago when the sky rained stone.”  He looked up to me.  “It is where you are from.  Where your tribes. . . both of them. . . once dwelled.”
	“I’ve heard the stories,” I said.  “About the great pits in the mountains.  The trappers fear them.”
	He nodded.  “Those lands are not safe for anyone, Tribesman or Otherwolf.  The spirits there are restless, angry, from all the blood spilled on their soil.  The feral beasts, the hunters, have overtaken the forests.  As, perhaps, they rightly should.  In the struggle to retain our place there, the tribes lost everything.  The Otherwolves lost everything.  All that remains are graves.”  He took a moment.  “What remains of your tribal alliance is there, hidden in the New Moon Basin, where they are safe from further recriminations.  They made many enemies amongst the Otherwolves when we were still warring, Tulimak.  It was the only place they had to retreat to.”
	“How do you know all of this?”  I asked.  I heard Odina and Sawyer approaching us, not trying to hide their footsteps.  Sawyer followed his mother, looking angrier than I’d ever seen him.  Nuka trailed behind him, holding his hand.
	My father looked to Odina, but then sighed and continued.  “We were all part of one great alliance, back then.  But, when certain tribes began massing for war against the settlers. . . .”
	“They abandoned us,” Odina spoke.  Her voice wasn’t decrying in tone, just matter-of-fact, but it was hard not to see her words as the condemnation they surely were.  
	“I had only just become Chieftain,” my father said defensively.  “Our people have never been warriors, Odina.  I did not see your path as a way forward.  Not for us.”
	“It wasn’t,” she said, surprising us all.  She looked around, then shook her head.  “I am not going to argue against the facts.  Our efforts to ward off the incursion of the Otherwolves were in vain.  You all know what became of my tribe.”  She looked to me.  “And his, I suppose.  Although I’ll admit, the bear tribes preferred an isolated existence, I didn’t know them well.”
	“They were proud,” my father said.  “So. . . proud.  Fierce.  Determined to remain unyielding.  So determined, in fact, that they united two tribes as one, by way of marriage.  The chieftain’s daughter, and one of their largest and more renowned warriors.  I only met him once.”  He tensed his jaw for a moment, lifting his eyes to mine.  “You look just like him.”
	“You said they’re still there,” I uttered.
	“What remains of them,” he said sadly.  “I have not had word from them in some time.  Your father was gravely injured when they sheltered here, Tulimak.  And he was the last of the men.  They have been an Uklashan since his death, which came soon after you were left with us.  I don’t know how many remain in the basin.  But not many.”
	“Then,” I stammered, “why didn’t they want me?”  I hadn’t meant for my words to come out so strangled, but my voice was escaping me.
	My father gave a frustrated wheeze, gripping his chest, “This was why I didn’t feel you needed to know this, Tulimak!  Your life here- was it not good, before all of this?”
	“Of course,” I insisted, “but-“
	“Did I not treat you as one of my own?!”
	“Yes!”  I said.
	“When your tribe came to us for sanctuary,” he shook his head slowly, “your father was at death’s door, your mother had a terrible wound, your tribe was barely six strong.  They had fled their last three encampments- they weren’t even taking the fight to the Otherwolves then, they were just trying to survive.  But the Carvecian militias had taken their previous attacks on their settlements very seriously, they were hunting them.”
	“Your parents,” he let out a breath, “confessed to me that they were considering smothering you.  As a mercy.”  He said the last part, reaching out to grip my hand.  Which I very much needed at that point.  “You were so small, you were sickly, underfed. . . a-and I knew. . . we could not help them, but we could help you.  Hide you away, raise you amongst us while the Otherwolves forgot.”
	He gripped my hand in both of his, squeezing tightly.  “Your mother made me swear to her that you would never know them.  She was ashamed, Tulimak.  They could not care for you.  And more than that. . . they were ashamed by their failure in defending their land.”
	“They were more ashamed they lost their land than losing their son?”  I demanded, sharply.
	“Your mother made an incredibly hard decision I pray you never have to make,” the older otter emphasized.  “Giving up someone you love, letting them slip from your life, because you know you cannot give them what they need to thrive, any longer.”
	The double-meaning in his words was not lost on me.  I leaned down slowly, taking a knee.  My father’s eyes widened and without any hesitation, he moved forward into my arms, wrapping me tightly in his hold.  For a moment, I felt like a cub again.  I wanted to disappear into his fur, to be enveloped by him, to feel safe again.  
	I was that cub again, tired and torn up by brambles, clutching to his chest after pulling myself up the hill I’d fallen down.  I’d had to make the climb myself, but then he’d been there, holding me.  Promising me he’d never let me fall again.
	When he pulled away, he had tears in his dark brown, oval eyes.  It didn’t matter that they were so different from my own.  Those were my father’s eyes.
	“There was nothing lacking in the life you gave me,” I said to him, through staggered breaths.  “Nothing.  You, and mom, and the whole tribe, were all I ever wanted or needed.”
	“That isn’t true,” he said with a pained smile, looking past me to where Finn, Odina and Sawyer stood.  “But I’m so proud we were able to help get you this far.”
	“Thank you for telling me all of this,” I said, slowly slipping from his hold.
	“I haven’t told you just to clear my conscience,” he said, leaning down to pick up one of the bundles my family had left for me.  As he spoke, he began gathering up the others as well.  “I’ve told you because. . . I think it is time you go to them.”
	“What?”  I wasn’t certain I understood what he meant.
	“The basin,” Odina said in a flash of realization.  “I should have thought of that.”
	My father nodded.  “It may be a good route to take to escape your pursuers.  It’s a few days south from here, in the direction you’re headed.  And the Otherwolves fear it.”
	“Perhaps not these men,” Odina said.  “But it’s worth a try.  At the very least, the mountains would be a good place to make a stand.”
	“You said it was dangerous, though,” I reasoned.
	“In the winter, most of the feral hunters will be hunkering down,” Odina said.  “But if the bear tribes do indeed remain there, they will not take kindly to our presence.  They were individualistic, even before they were scattered and broken.”
	“Which is why I must accompany you,” my father said, shocking the both of us.  Even Finnegan seemed to pick up on the sudden change in the timbre of the conversation, although we’d been speaking in our tongue most of the time, so I’d have a lot to explain to him later.
	“They owe me a great debt,” he continued, gathering the bundles into one and un-shouldering a bag from over his back.  Had he been planning this the whole time?  “If I cannot talk you out of this, Tulimak,” he said as he began to pack, “then I will take you at least that far.  Even Odina does not know the land in those parts as I do.  And I am a Chieftain.  If anyone is to negotiate with your tribe on our tribe’s behalf,” he nodded, “it will be me.”
	“I had hoped to leave my children in your tribe’s care,” Odina said.  “For the duration of this trip, Takoda.  I would of course not expect to do so freely-“
	My father waved a paw.  “Done.  You’ll be protecting my son, after all.  They are welcome here.”
	“I’m part of this hunt, mom,” Sawyer growled out, his tribal speak as poor as ever.  “You could use another gun-“
	“Enough,” Odina snapped, a true rarity for her.  It shut her son down and fast.  “You have a responsibility to your sister.  Consider all we’ve been through, to get to this point.  Do you want that to be for nothing?  You will stay here, you will look after her, and you will live the life we fought so hard for.  Whether or not I return.”
	The two of them began to talk again, in hushed tones.  It didn’t seem like my business, so I turned my ears away.  
	Finnegan, who must have been terribly confused, had at least gleaned enough to know that both of our families were feuding over the current situation.  And he seemed very ashamed over the fact, if his body language was any indication.
	“I am so sorry,” he said to my father, “for all of this.”
	“You weren’t the one who wanted to come here, I was,” I reminded him.
	“Yes, let my son take the credit for his foolhardiness,” my father said, his voice back to being stern and fatherly.  “This was careless, son.  Bringing him here.  We will have to leave deliberate evidence to draw them away from the tribe, you know.  Which will cost us precious time.  And there is still a chance in the future this may come back somehow to harm your family.  I was quite serious before when I said I wanted you to understand the weight of your decisions.  Every choice you make has a consequence.”
	“I know,” I said, slumping.  “I-I knew at the time, too.  I’m not going to say I didn’t.  I just thought- I didn’t realize it could get so-“
	My father put a hand up.  “You act on your gut,” he said, patting his belly, then smiling just a bit.  “Very otter of you, honestly.  And we aren’t always given good options in life.  This situation may never have had a good outcome, no matter what you’d done differently.  I know that frustration all too well.”
	“Are you certain?”  I asked, looking to his satchel.  “The tribe needs you.”
	“I can only see you as far as the Basin,” he said.  “I will not endure the entire trip, I fear.  And I don’t want to slow you down.  Tulimak,” he looked up at me intently, “if there is any chance of solving this issue with the land, it is my duty to aid you.  I made mistakes in my dealings with the settlers.  I can’t be so proud now as to deny someone else the chance to try, where I failed.”
	He glanced sidelong to Finnegan.  “Him, I am still uncertain of,” he said, still in our language.  “I can’t say I buy his story.  But you believe in him, for whatever reason, and as a father, I must respect your beliefs.” 
	He shouldered his bag, walking past us towards the rest of the family.  “Now tell him to stop slumping like a beaten pup.  He’s supposed to be a ‘warrior’, isn’t he?  We might need him to kill people.” 
	Finnegan couldn’t understand us, but he at least seemed to pick up on when someone was talking about him.  “Huh?”  He blinked at my father.
	The otter glared at him for a moment, before pronouncing an Otherwolf phrase I’m sure he’d heard somewhere, “Buck up!”  He said.  “You have a small coalition of people here putting their necks on the line for you, and my son is very devoted to you, for some reason.  He is a kind, giving young man who is risking his life for you, and you don’t deserve him.”  He brushed past Finn at that, grumbling, “I don’t care how charming you think you are.”  
	Finnegan watched him go in dumb shock, before turning back to me.  “Honestly,” he muttered, “I like him even more now.”