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.  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.  If I turned and left him now, I’d never know if he fell.
I couldn’t 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.  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.
	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.  With the aid of it, all it 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.”
	“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 shite-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.  I 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 there wouldn’t be people looking on me with cruel eyes.  It seemed a hard lesson when he’d first explained it, but being an adult now, I understood.  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 be a little more dry.
	I took a moment to look up through the dark canopy to the flurries silently drifting down between 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 rolled over 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.  Curling against 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.  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 back to my chest, 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 was, after all, holding him in my arms.  Despite my inner turmoil, I somehow still 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 many times I did, and the sight was not helpful in calming my racing heart, or the coiling tension in my lower extremities.
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 was that chuckle again.  It sort of sounded 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.

Chapter 6 – Against the Current

No one came for us in the night.  Nor that morning, while we packed and loaded the now muddy and thoroughly frozen raft.  Cracking it out of the reeds was no easy task, but I relished the chance to have something difficult and all-consuming to focus on.
My body still ached, but the pain in my shoulder and the stiffness in my joints were welcome.  They distracted from the lifting feeling of vertigo I felt every time my thoughts returned to what had happened in the lean-to.  
It felt like I was falling into something unknown.  That’s the best way my mind could interpret the feeling in my chest, the somehow both exhilarating and terrifying panic that gripped me whenever I re-lived it in my mind.  Falling. 
I couldn’t make sense of it, but yet somehow, it all finally made sense?  So much about myself that had long been an enigma to me had snapped into place.  What it was I’d felt. . . been feeling. . . about Finnegan was just one part of it.
Since I’d hit adulthood two years ago, I’d tried not to think about how my future was shaping up to be so much different than my otter brethren.  Everything came about naturally and normally for them, within the prescribed lives the otters of my tribe were supposed to live.  They’d hit adulthood, the shaman would visit and they’d get their markings, then they’d choose a trade, or marry.  Sometimes both in the case of the most industrious young women and all the men, save those few that became devoted guardians for the tribes’ pups.  And even still, that was a trade in and of itself.  One of my cousins had even become a shaman.  Her path had been a bit different than most, but still accepted, honorable, even.  And we’d long known she had a deeper connection with the spirits, so we’d all been prepared for it. 
But nothing about becoming an adult had felt natural or normal for me.  Everything had been through that barrier of difference, of not being an otter.  There were rites of passage like hunting my first deer, or navigating the rivers, that I’d managed just fine.  I’d followed in my otterfa’s footsteps and become a fisherman, something I certainly had a knack for, and I’d gotten the first of my markings.  But building my dwelling had been difficult, since it had needed to be thrice the size.  I’d had to learn to work with leathers and hides simply to clothe myself, as nothing the tribe made was sized properly for me.  My aunts tried, but. . . .
I was used to not ‘fitting’ into just about everything around me.  Even if my family did not begrudge me for it and in fact were quite accommodating and eager to have me stay in the community, (having a bear around has its advantages, they’d say) I knew that try as they might, there were certain things they’d simply never be able to give me, no matter how much they loved me. 
Marriage, lifelong companionship of any kind, was not something I’d find as easily as my otter brethren.  I’d have my extended family, but starting a family of my own was not as guaranteed as it was for my brothers and sisters.
I’d long assumed, (and my otterfa had assured me) that I was just delayed on my path to such fulfillments because of the obvious barrier of species between me and most tribal women I’d ever met.  Part of why my tribe had encouraged me so readily to be the one to take this trip was, I surmised, for the chance that I might meet another of my kind out in the world.  And I was only twenty years of age.  Many men my age were yet unmarried, it was not so unusual.  For a woman, perhaps.  But men were expected to take a bit more time to settle in their younger years.
And to be fair, I’d met few other bears in the world, even in my travels.  Three so far, to be exact, all male.  So, the fact that I’d never felt that yearning that most young men apparently felt was perhaps unfortunate, but not unusual.  My circumstances were unusual.  I hadn’t had the opportunities most might have had.
Was I confused?  Was that it?  Was my body confused?  Because I’d been raised by otters, raised apart from other bears?  This wasn’t what a bear should have wanted, I knew that much.  Certainly not in this way.
But I’d never felt this way about an otter, either.  To be fair, almost all the ones I’d known were my family.  And most of the otters from other tribes I’d met over the years were older traders who were already married.  
But Finnegan wasn’t an otter.  He was smaller than me, certainly.  Closer to an otter’s. . . size?  Was that why this was happening?  No.  No, that was silly.
Had I ever felt this way about anyone else before?
The answer to that was complicated.  About any one person?  No.  Not that I could remember.  But vaguely.  At least in the back of my mind, although I had not known or understood what I was feeling at the time, I had felt this. . . I’m not certain what to call it.  Attraction.  Before.  And I had experienced desires of the flesh in the past, of course.  But they’d never been clear.  Taken no specific form.  Just notions of nameless, faceless people some buried part of my mind wanted to. . . know. . . in this way.  
I’d even met people throughout my life I’d found beautiful, I could clearly remember thinking so.  But it was hard to remember if it had been a more general admiration or something more specific, like, well. . . .
Like how I’d felt last night.  How I’d let a dream overtake my reason, had violated any and all physical boundaries between myself and my bedmate, a-and then. . . .
I glanced back at the wolfdog as he finished lashing down our bags, tugging at the hem of his frozen coat disdainfully.  For about the hundredth time today, I wondered if he was angry at me.  He certainly hadn’t seemed it.  But I couldn’t make sense of that man.  Finnegan had been outright flippant.  Confused, really, by my state of shock all morning.  He was acting like nothing unusual had happened between us.  
I couldn’t understand it. 
I was fortunate at least that he’d not held it against me.  I’d grabbed him in his sleep.  Buried my paws, my claws, in his fur.  I’d held him against my body and. . . and. . . .
Calm, I tried to tell myself.  We still had to keep our wits about us.  The hunter must have rested to nurse their injury, or otherwise held off on moving due to the weather.  Maybe they’d given up.  But so far, our luck hadn’t been that good.
Either way, we had to get going again.  
I saw Finnegan checking his pistol meticulously as he stood there in the frozen reeds, steam puffing out his nostrils.  It was easier to take stock of him when I knew he was distracted and not focused on me.  He had that look of intensity about him that he got sometimes, but it was more directed at the weapon in his hand.  He still didn’t seem angry, or in a foul mood.  Just focused on the task in front of him.
He looked handsome as ever.
How could he not be angry at me?
A terrible thought occurred to me then.  Bits of memory came back to me spanning our acquaintance, the many times he’d seemed expectant of me.  Almost. . . bracing.
Had he determined this was just somehow expected of him?
No.  No, that was a ridiculous thought.  How would anyone expect that?  
I couldn’t shake the notion, though.  Even as we counted off and began shoving the raft back out onto the river, aided in the morning by the sheen of ice over the shallowest edges of the water.  I lumbered aboard and held a paw out to him, clapping it around his arm and pulling him up onto the raft with me. 
The raft pitched forward as I landed on my rump with the momentum of tugging him aboard.  It sent us both sprawling.  He might have slipped right off the icy timbers if I hadn’t slung an arm around his waist and steadied him against my side.
He blinked rapidly and stared up at me a moment, his eyes blindingly green in the morning sun.
Then he gave a cavalier smile, breath puffing out his mouth, and twittered out a needlessly dramatic, “My hero.”
I snuffed, averting my gaze.  “You’d hardly have drowned in two feet of water.”
“No, but I’d be wet again,” he said, shaking out and toying with the still crispy edges of his coat.  “And I’d like to avoid that until we have to shore this thing again, if you don’t mind.”  He disentangled himself from me at that and moved towards one of the oars, taking it up and kneeling on one side of the raft, beginning to push us away from the shore.
I stayed on the other side of the raft, although nearer to the center so we’d keep the weight even.  We were compensating with some of the bags, too.  “Finnegan,” I began to say, as I took up the other oar.
“If I had to guess,” he cleared his throat noisily.  “I would say I must have clipped her more than I realized.  Or him.  Still not certain on who it was, after all.  Something must have occupied them last night.  That or we hid effectively.”
“Finnegan. . . .”  I sighed.
“Let’s not get too cocky, though,” he pushed back his coat, revealing the holster beneath.  “We’ll need to be more alert today.  Weather seems to be clearing, so if they’re still out there hunting, they’ll be on the move today.  And the path we’re taking is unfortunately rather easy to follow.”
“Finnegan,” I said a little more vehemently.
He was silent, finally.  But then he had been last time I’d tried.  So we were at this stalemate again.
Pleadingly, quietly, I asked again, “Why can’t we talk about it?”
He wasn’t looking at me, but I could see from his rather expressive and large ears how guarded he must have felt.  
More silence.  Again, I implored, “. . . Finn?”
“This just isn’t the sort of thing you talk about,” he snapped, not angrily, but more. . . worriedly?  It was hard to tell when he wasn’t looking at me.  “Alright?”  
I dipped my oar into the water slowly, aware that the current would soon take us if I didn’t begin to row.  Cautiously, I asked, “Why?”
He sighed, taking up his own oar.  “You just don’t,” he said, submerging the oar.
“But,” I stammered, “but I have so many questions.”
“God help me,” he pinched the bridge of his muzzle, then all at once, nailed me with that intense gaze of his. “Look, I thought you were. . . .”
I looked at him imploringly, waiting to hear whatever wisdom he could impart.
His gaze softened and he looked away from me, down at the water.  “I thought you were more experienced,” he finally said.  “I don’t know why I thought that, in retrospect.  Shit.”
“So,” I felt my chest clench.  “You are angry.”
That got his attention back on me and he went from frustrated-looking to concerned, all at once.  “No,” he insisted.  “No.  I mean. . . maybe at myself.  But not at you.”
I stammered, “What does that even mean?”
“It means I might’ve mis-read things, that’s all,” he blew a breath out through his nose, rowing slowly on his side.  “And reading people is something I usually pride myself in, so I feel foolish.”
“ ‘Mis-read’?”  I knew the words, but not the context he was using them in.
“Saw something that wasn’t there,” he clarified.  “In you.”
I looked down into the calmer waters we’d found ourselves in this morning.  This stretch of the river was not nearly as wide, being surrounded on both sides by rocky, more mountainous land.  The trails here were tough, especially in the winter.  The river was the best way to travel.  This was our best chance to make ground and outrun our pursuer.  I dug my oar in deep.
“Whatever it was you saw in me,” I said quietly, “it was there.  And even I didn’t know it until last night.  But it was definitely there.”
He made a noise at my statement that sounded like a groan and a sigh mixed together.  “Yes, that much was obvious,” he muttered, “from the first day I met you.”
“What?”  I asked.
“That you fancied me,” he said around his own hand, like saying it aloud was taboo.  To be fair, I suppose it was.  I’d never seen or even heard stories of something like this.  I wonder then. . . .
“How did you know?”  I asked, relieved that we were at least talking about it, now.
“Oh, you get a feeling for it after a while,” he rolled his eyes.  “Especially when the people ogling you are as subtle as you were.”
I stopped to consider that.  After a few moments had elapsed, I glanced sideways at him, and took note of his expression.  “Oh,” I said, “that was sarcasm.”
“Glad that didn’t need a translation,” he muttered.  
“But then,” I said uncertainly.  “You didn’t ‘mis-read’ me.  If you guessed that, you were right.  Clearly.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” he said flatly.  He gave me a beat to ask the obvious question, then filled in for me.  “I more meant that I thought you also knew what you wanted.  I thought we were communicating without words.”
“That needs a translation,” I said, confused.  
“It means exactly what it sounds like,” he stated matter-of-factly.  “I thought we had come to an understanding.”
“Without words,” I repeated, uncertain I was hearing him correctly.
	 “That’s just how these things are done,” he said, again in that snappish tone.  I flinched back a bit.  He tipped his ears back, looking awkwardly away from me again.  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said emphatically.  “I didn’t realize how new this all was to you.  I never would’ve-“ He stopped himself suddenly.  “Tulimak, how old are you?”
	The question was an odd one, but I didn’t mind telling him.  “I passed twenty years in the summer,” I answered.
	He closed his eyes, “Oh thank god.  You’re so big, I-I just. . . assumed you were a grown man.  I might be a louse, but a cradle robber, I am not.”
	“How old are you?”  I couldn’t not ask, after he’d asked me.  I’d been assuming this whole time we were around the same age, but I didn’t really know how to look for markers of age in canines, save probably gray fur around the muzzle.  Probably?  
	“I have a decade on you,” he told me.  Then, “Thirty.  I’m thirty.”
	I nodded.  Finn did come off a bit more mature than me, to be fair.  But a lot of that I’d attested to his being more worldly, more traveled.  Discovering he had ten years on me didn’t surprise me as much as I’d thought it would, though.
	“You seem to understand. . . all of this,” I said hesitantly.  “Much more than I do, anyway.  Can you please at least tell me why you don’t want to talk about it?”  I suspected I knew the reason, but I wanted his answer all the same.
	His eyes dimmed and he slowly churned his oar through the water.  When he spoke, his words came out wary.  “Because it’s dangerous,” he said, stating exactly what I’d been afraid of.
	My heart sank, but I’d known.  There had to be a reason no one had ever told me this was a path my life might take.  There must have been a good reason why I’d never known two men could. . . .
	“I don’t know your culture well,” he admitted, speaking lowly.  “But where I come from?  Admitting to this sort of thing can get you thrown in a work camp.  Jailed.  Even hung.  And my people brought their Faith here, so presumably the laws aren’t much more allowing in the colonies- pardon me,” he corrected himself, “ ‘Carvecia’.”
	I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.  “And before you ask ‘why’,” he sighed, “it doesn’t matter why.  Procreation, religion, some think it’s emasculating, I suppose.  Ask a Priest, they’ll give you a hundred reasons they think are important.  But all that matters is- that’s the way it is.  It’s not worth losing your life over.”
	“But you still-“
	“I do whatever I can get away with,” he chuckled.  “But I’m good at getting away with things.  I’m savvy.  No offense, but you’re not.  So, if you’ve got the predilection, fine.  But you do it out in the woods, or with someone you trust in a private room.  Treat it like it’s a crime, because it is.  And don’t.  Fucking.  Talk about it.”
	He turned, gesturing at me.  “You’re a big, strong lad.  Find yourself a wife, and if she isn’t scratching the itch, get what you need on the side.  If I learned anything from my time spent amongst the Pedigree, it’s that a marriage can shield you from the consequences of all manner of immoral behavior.  Wives give you credibility.”  He turned back around, leaning to the side to stretch his hip out.  “Throw in some cubs while you’re at it.  No one’ll blink.”
	“That’s,” I opened and closed my mouth several times before settling on, “a lot.”
	“Yes, sorry,” he conceded.  “Maybe too much information at once there.  But now I feel responsible, like I’ve got to warn you of all of this.”
	“I appreciate it,” I assured him, quietly.  My mind was spinning, running through all the new information.  One question immediately surfaced, though.  “Is. . . is this what you’ve done?”  I asked him.  “All of that?”
	“What, married?”  He literally snorted.  “No, no.  My lifestyle doesn’t really suit married life and I wouldn’t want to subject any woman to it besides.  No.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve known my share of women.  Enjoyed their lovely company,” he toyed at the hem of his vest at that, likely an old habit when fussing with his garb might have done him any good.  “I love women.  Was raised by them, in fact, so I usually prefer their company to other men, if given a choice.”
	“You were raised by women?  Only women?”
	“Ah, my mother’s. . .” he paused, “. . . coworkers.  We lived in a cooperative house, of a sort.  Pooling resources, sharing chores and child-rearing, you know.  Good for safety too, in the Risers.  There were a few other children, and my uncle Mikhail for a while.  But yes, I suppose mostly women.” 
	“An Uklashan,” I said, prompting a bemused look from him.  “A female tribe,” I clarified.  “Sometimes when the men are hunting or warring, or when a tribe has lost all of their men, an Uklashan will be formed.  An elder mother will take the position of Chieftain and all roles in the tribe will be re-assigned, regardless whether they are meant for men or women.  The tribe survives that way until the next generation is grown, or until favorable matches for young women can be found.  Some of them choose to remain Uklashan for generations though, and take war orphans to grow their numbers.”
	He was listening to me, enrapt in that way he had been the day before.  I was certain now it wasn’t false, he was just a curious man and he earnestly seemed to want to file away the things I told him.
	“U-klah-shan,” he sounded it out, again taking care to pronounce one of our words correctly.  “Huh.  That’s fascinating.  I suppose our cooperative was a little bit like that, although planned that way from the start.  Men were. . . discouraged in our neighborhood in general, unless they were there to trade.”
	“Why?”  I asked, intrigued.
	“Bad experiences in the past,” he waved a hand.  “Men can tend to take advantage of my mother’s trade, and none of them really contribute to the work load, if you know what I mean.”
	“I don’t,” I stated plainly.
	“Of course you don’t,” he gave me a wry smile.  “You’re as pure as fresh snow.”
	“But you said you had an uncle. . . .”
	“You never met my uncle,” he chuckled.  “He contributed, suffice to say.  And he was considerate, kind.  Not one to take advantage.  We had a whole community there, I guess sort of its own little village.  Found family, you could say.  We took care of one another, did the best we could in shit circumstances.”
	“That sounds like a good village,” I smiled.
	“Den of sin and heretics, as far as the rest of the city’s considered,” he snuffed.  “But yes, they were good people.  Are.”  He looked down, at that.  “I haven’t been back since my mother died.  I’m one of those men that would be taking advantage, these days.  I found a different trade.”
	“You have a trade?”  I was aware the subject of our conversation had diverted from the main topic, but I was learning so much about him all of a sudden, I didn’t want to staunch the flow.  If anything, since last night, I wanted to know even more about him.  Everything he would tell me.
	“Man my age has to have a trade,” he said dismissively.  “But it’s not an easy one to explain.  Especially not to someone who doesn’t understand our world.”
	“Please try,” I encouraged.
	There must have been something about the plaintive way I asked, because he took one look my way and cracked after a few moments, relenting.  “I’m a. . . mediator.  Of a sort.  I help settle disputes.”
	“Like a wise man?”  I asked uncertainly.  He was still fairly young, though.
	“I’m not sure what the equivalent would be in your culture, so that’s probably as close as we’re going to get,” he said.  “Amuresca has a lot of old traditions that Pedigree society in particular likes to cling on to.  My trade fits into a particular niche, a need that rich men with big mouths like to exercise before they think the better of it.  Like I said, it’s hard to explain to an outsider.  But it hardly matters any more, I gave it up when I began this journey and it’s looking as though I won’t survive it, so. . . .”
	My brows furrowed.  “Finnegan, we’re making good progress on the river.  We’re going to make it to Broen.  We’ll outrun the hunter, and-”
	He was shaking his head.  “I want to stay optimistic, I really do,” he exhaled.  “But my final contact is a long way off and my best chance now is to find a reliable Post somewhere and hope.  This whole business of trekking halfway around the world as a courier for these documents was. . . high-minded, but it isn’t turning out well.”
	I took a breath.  “Where is your final contact, Finn?”
	He gave me a long, steady look before replying, “Arbordale.”	
	“All the way in the south?”  I gasped.  “I’ve never even known someone who’s been to the southern sea.”
	“You probably have,” he assured me.  “A lot of the traders in town have likely done business there, it’s the Nation’s Capital.  But I understand your reaction.”  He sighed.  “I had two choices for this trip.  The route by sea around the east side of the world is faster overall, but two months longer on the water.  In good weather, and the weather in the Somanta is rarely good.  I. . . hate. . . traveling by ship.  I can’t even explain to you how horrible it is if you’ve never tried it before.”
	“I’ve grown up with the river,” I said, “but I’ve heard the sea is different.  Much larger.  Much deeper.  Storms that lift the water as high as some trees.”
	“Ugh,” he groaned, presumably at the memory.  “Please don’t remind me, if you want me to keep my breakfast down.  Now, granted, I was contending with the effects of poisoning throughout most of the voyage I did take, but even when I recovered, I was never truly well.  They say you get your ‘sea legs’ after a time, but it never quite happened for me.”
	“You’d mentioned the poisoning earlier. . . .” I said, trailing off intentionally, hoping he would expand on that story. 
	“If I’d taken the Eastern route, I would have arrived directly in Arbordale,” he said.  “But, hearing of the land route, I figured the extra few months travel time would be worth it.  It also should have cost less.  But this country is. . . not like home.  There are few roads, it’s outright lawless in places and the terrain is- challenging would be putting it mildly.  I vastly overestimated my chances of making this trip alone.  To be fair,” he ascertained, putting a hand up, “I didn’t know at the time I’d also be hunted along the way.  Or that I’d lose my pony.  OR that I myself would suffer the climate so poorly, and be forced to hunker down in townships so often.  It’s been a long series of misfortunes.”
	“You traveled halfway across the world,” I said, feeling the urge to reach over and put a paw on his shoulder.  I resisted.  “It’s remarkable you got so far on your own.”
	“I would have researched the trip more thoroughly if I’d had the time,” he dropped his hand against his knee.  “But certain events led me to realize I needed to be anywhere but in Highvolle, and fast.  Lad like me comes to appreciate when it’s time to skip town.  All the better that I had a destination in mind.”
	“You were being hunted in your country too?”  I asked.  
	When he turned to look at me, he seemed tired.  “Not quite as literally as the folks here seem to do it.  Not like game.  But someone clearly wanted me dead.”
	“The poison,” I surmised.
	He nodded.  “Dangers of a busy pub,” he muttered.  “I’ll never know who slipped it to me.  Or even how.  I’d have to guess my drink, though.  And the more I’ve thought on it, the more I’ve been certain it was someone working or serving there.  I ordered an Islander Caife, that’s. . . essentially just coffee, whiskey and sugar, and whoever poured it was generous with the whiskey. Too generous.  They were trying to cover the taste of whatever they put in it.”  He set his jaw in a grim line.  “It worked.”
	“You wouldn’t even be safe if you went home,” I realized aloud, the air leaving my lungs.
	Finnegan just shook his head again, slowly.  “I dug up something my old man doesn’t want known,” he said, that hint of anger creeping back into his voice.  “He wants me dead, and he’s got the resources to see it done.  I like to think of myself as a resilient man, but I’m up against a lot of coin, here.  And the bastard owns a shipping firm.  I wouldn’t, but even if I wanted to, I couldn’t hide from him if I tried.  His bloody tentacles are stretched between both these continents.  Maybe if I went to Mataa. . . although apparently he’s buying his ‘merchandise’ from there now.”
	He continued talking, but my thoughts were preoccupied with the most pertinent of the new knowledge he’d given me.  Mainly the most important fact- I couldn’t even convince him to give this up.  It wasn’t just some grim resolve, although it certainly seemed that too.  He had no choice but to see this through now.  If I was understanding him correctly, the only way he’d live through what he’d learned about his kin back home was if he revealed his illegal trade to- presumably the law in his lands?  
	If that was even enough to stop this man.  What kind of father did all of this to their own son?  
	I began to understand his hatred more than I had before.  I’d never known my parents, but they’d either given me up to the river, or met some untimely end that kept them from being in my life.  And I’d no memories of them to resent or regret.
	Finnegan knew this man he shared blood with, and importantly, was known to him.  It wasn’t as though this rich man didn’t know it was his own son he was trying to have killed.  I knew little of their relationship other than what Finn had told me concerning his mother, but I didn’t need to know any more.  Anyone who willingly inflicted all of this on their own blood, whether or not they chose to acknowledge them as family, lacked something inside that made most people whole.
	“I want to help you,” I blurted out, my mouth only somewhat ahead of my thoughts.  But I’d pretty well decided by that point.
	His ears perked and he arched an eyebrow.  “You. . . are,” he said uncertainly.
	“No, I mean,” I sighed, “I can’t bear the thought of leaving you in Broen, at the mercy of these people.”
	“I’m hardly defenseless,” he said, patting his hip where his holster rested.
	“With all due respect,” I looked him in the eyes, “you need to make up your mind on that.”
	He blinked at me and for once, had nothing to say.
	“Are you going to give up and send your papers along with a courier?”  I asked pointedly.  “Or are you capable of carrying them the whole way yourself?  Because in one breath you’re speaking of how doomed you are, and now you’re trying to assure me that you’ll be fine.  Which is it?”
	He seemed stunned.  It took him some time spent visibly gathering his wits to reply.  “You’re really holding me to task,” he chuckled nervously.  “Damned, Tulimak.  I-I was just trying to make you feel better, is all.”
	“Don’t do that,” I said vehemently.  I didn’t use my ‘bear voice’, but I put some bellow into my words, enough that I saw him lean back a hair.  I took heed to lower my tone when I continued, “I’m not a child just because I’m ten years your junior.  We live difficult lives here, too.  Perhaps, I’ve been more fortunate than you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand and don’t. . . feel. . . the consequences of action and inaction.  If I were to leave you in Broen, I would always think on what became of you.  We may be recent acquaintances, but,” I looked down at the water sloshing against the creaking timbers of the raft, “I’ve gotten to know you.  I would always remember you.  For. . . many reasons.”
 	I heard, rather than saw him shift, uncomfortably.  He didn’t reply, but I knew he was listening.  He was a good listener.
	“I don’t want to have this regret,” I said quietly.  “You’ve given it to me.  Don’t try to take it away with paltry words.  I want your honesty.”  I looked back up at him at that.  “Can you complete this journey of yours alone?”
	He lowered his muzzle slowly, hands knitted at the frayed knees of his trousers.  “I don’t know,” he admitted at length.  “But the odds are. . . not in my favor.”
	I breathed in slowly, then let the breath out through my nose.  I took up my oar once more, pushing back into the current.  We’d been listing for a time now.  “How can I help?”  I asked.
	“If we can lose this hunter, that would be a start,” he said, taking up the other oar with an obvious twinge of pain.  The rowing involved a lot of leaning to the side, which was clearly hard on his hip.  “But Broen is more connected to the roads and trade than the last few towns I’ve been through, and they found me there.  Honestly the closer I get to Arbordale, the better the chances I’ll be found by another soldier of fortune.”
	I considered that.  “Then you should take the game trails,” I reasoned.  “Stay off the roads and away from Otherwolf settlements.”
	“I haven’t any maps of alternative routes,” he said.  “And anyway, I don’t trust my ability to find my way on game trails.  I’m moderately well-traveled, but in Amuresca everything is mapped and populated, there are road and sign posts, very few uncivilized plots of land left. . . here, everything is still so wild.”
	“My father would know what to do,” I scratched behind one of my ears, thoughtfully.  “Perhaps we should skip Broen.  Continue on to my home.  It’s farther north than you probably want to go, but it would be safer.”
	He tipped his ears back, “Tulimak,” he cautioned, “I shouldn’t have to explain to you why that’s a bad idea.”
	“If we can outrun her,” I said, jerking a thumb backwards to denote the distant hunter, “no one would know or suspect you’d be going further upriver.  Your father knows where you’re headed, right?”
	“Don’t call him that,” he said softly, although there was no real anger directed at me there.  Then, “Yes.  Yes, he’d have to know the reason I’ve come this far is to report him to the authorities at the Trade Commission in Arbordale.  He’s too well-seated in Highvolle.  I’d stand no chance there.  But here, he’s a foreigner.  I don’t know what the Trade Commission will have the power to do.  It’s doubtful he’d ever be arrested.  Even if they could take a warrant out on him, he’d have to set foot on Carvecian soil for it to take effect.  But they could seize his holdings here, crumble his slave trade and cut him off from all of his markets here.  It would still be financially crippling and that would be enough to satisfy me.”
	He looked to me.  “But none of that would be worth bringing his far-flung wrath down on your family, Tulimak.  I don’t want anyone else caught in this hellfire.  This is between me and him, and anyone foolish enough to come after me.  It’s bad enough that you’ve gotten involved.”
	I smiled slowly at him, which seemed to confuse him.  “What?”  He asked, glancing about like I must have seen something he hadn’t.
	“I was worried,” I admitted.  “Especially after. . . last night.  I thought there might be a chance you were. . . .”
	Ever canny, he seemed to understand.  “Using you?”  He filled in.
	I nodded.  “I’m sorry.”
	“No, it’s,” he sighed.  “It’s understandable.  And I’m not going to deny I saw the benefit in our meeting from the start.  But I only would have taken that so far.  It was rather cute having a big bear bodyguard when I was worried about a few skinny foxes.  But then, when we got shot at on the river and you got hurt. . . .”
	“I’m fine,” I lied unconvincingly.  My shoulder was still hot and aching.
	“Don’t try that on me,” he said, snorting.  “Look, you were talking about regret.  I’ve been thinking about that a lot too, with the shadow of death hanging over me for the last few months and all.  Really gets a man to thinking about his worth.  Which in my case, is literally all in my own mind, because I sure as hell haven’t gotten much reinforcement from the world at large.”
	I wanted to reach over and embrace him, hearing those words.  It wasn’t just that they were profoundly sad, it was how much he clearly meant them.
	“If I’m going to die any time soon,” he murmured, “I want to do so knowing one thing, above all else.  That I’m a better man than my fa-“ he cut himself off.  “Than that man.  And he uses people.”  
	“You’re passing up a safe haven because you don’t want to endanger my family,” I said softly.  “And I’m practically a stranger to you.  My family even more so.  That’s not a sacrifice most people would make.”
	“We’ll figure something else out,” he promised, giving me a weak smile.  “I don’t want to leave you with regrets, Tulimak.”
	I smiled back.  For a time, we rowed in silence.  It wasn’t long though before I had to put words to what had been gnawing at me this whole morning and afternoon, and what had ultimately started this conversation.
	“So if you weren’t,” I gestured with a paw at nothing, “trying to. . . I-I don’t know. . . win me over?  Why. . . this morning. . . .”
	He gave me a long look, and for a few moments I was worried I’d offended him, until he finally guffawed.  “Are you honestly asking if I whored myself out to you to keep you around?” 
	“I-I don’t,” I stammered.
	“Relax,” he laughed through his nose, showing his fangs through his amused grin.  “I’m not upset.  Honestly, you don’t even understand why that’s as funny as it is to me.”  He straightened up a bit, tucking the oar under one arm so he could use his other hand to smooth his fur back and flare out the ruff around his neck in that way I’d noticed he did whenever he was taking stock of his appearance.  “Let me ask you something,” he said, giving me the side-eye, “why did you wish to engage in such a thing. . . with me?  Because there was no mistaking your interest.”
	I dropped my gaze to the water.  “I wish I knew,” I admitted.
	“Well there you have it,” he chirped.  When I looked back up, he’d set back to rowing.  “Who can say why we enjoy the things we do?  Maybe it’s how God made us.  Maybe it’s just as random and ultimately meaningless as eye color.”
	“Eye color doesn’t. . . seen random,” I reasoned.  “Most people have similar fur patterns to their parents.  Eyes, too.”
	He shrugged.  “So perhaps it’s in the blood?  Considering how much stock the Amurescan Faith puts in bloodline, you’d think they’d entertain that possibility.  But no, it must all be sinful, unnatural desires, tantamount to spitting in God’s face!”  He shook his fist at the sky for dramatic effect, then waved it off.  “Look, the point is, it hardly matters why.  I enjoy the company of women too, as I said earlier.  I’ve never stopped to question why that is.  I see it as a blessing, an. . . expansion of my options for earthly pleasures.  And there often aren’t many of those to be had, so I try to make the most of them that are available.”
	“I wasn’t asking why you’d want to in general,” I said uneasily.  The truth was, that part still didn’t make much sense to me, either.  It did seem unnatural, at least based on everything I’d seen in my life.   I wasn’t a child, I understood by now that mating brought pleasure, but I also understood that the reason for that particular gift the spirits had bestowed on us was to encourage procreation.  And two men couldn’t make young together. 
	But I didn’t want to offend him.  So I continued, “I was more curious why you’d want to. . . with me.”
	He seemed to hesitate a beat, before saying, “You demanded honesty, so shall it be.”
	I held my breath.
	“I’m not usually so quick to jump into bed with people, as it were,” he said.  “Believe it or not.  Growing up where I did doesn’t make for a particularly trusting individual.  But,” he gave a hapless smile, “when the alternatives are freezing to death, I make exceptions.  And I’d already noted that you’d taken a certain bumbling, adorable sort of interest in me-“
	I groaned.
	He patted my shoulder from across the raft.  “Take heart.  Social grace is overrated.  Transparent emotions won’t win you any points in politics, but you’ll never be misunderstood.  There’s something to that.”
	“I’m more humiliated that you realized something I hadn’t even realized myself,” I muttered.
	“It’s easier to see some things from the outside looking in,” he reasoned.  “Anyway.  I noticed, I suspected, went back and forth on whether or not I was correct in my estimation.  And then the confirmation woke me up in my sleep.”
	I couldn’t possibly have been more uncomfortable.
	“And considering death felt like a real, imminent possibility,” he continued, “I saw no reason not to accept the offer and indulge in something amidst this quagmire of cold, pain and fear that might actually feel good.  It’s really that simple.”
	“But you didn’t,” I said haltingly.
	He looked at me, surprised.  Recognition dawned on his features after a flash.  I wanted to bury my muzzle in my hands.  A laugh bubbled up from his throat and he physically turned to look up at me.  “Ah, I understand now!  You’re upset because I didn’t, what, partake myself?  Oh, that’s why you thought I was just doing that to keep you around, isn’t it?”
	At least he hadn’t guessed at the other reason it had been eating at me.  I could hold on to that.
	He smirked at me, leaning over my way enough that I had no chance except to look at him.  “Tulimak,” he cooed, “are you worried I’m not attracted to you?”
	Well, there went that.
	“You poor, sweet bear,” he said around continued chuckles.  “If it weren’t for the fact that it would overbalance the raft and dump us in this freezing river, I’d show you how wrong you are.”
	I swallowed, at that.
	“For one, you didn’t exactly give me the chance,” he said pointedly.  “It wasn’t but a moment after. . . everything. . . that you began to panic.  And from there it was hard enough just to calm you down.”
	“I’m sorry for that,” I said, now thoroughly humiliated.
 	“Again, I shouldn’t have assumed your experience,” he said, his tone genuinely concerned.  “We should have talked more.  I’d take it back if I could.”
	“No,” I said quickly.  He smirked, presumably at the suddenness of my response.  “No, I wouldn’t want to take any of this back,” I said, meaning it.  “Not meeting you, not any of our time together, and not. . . that.  Regardless how briefly we travel together, I’ve learned a great deal over the last few days.  About a great many things.”
	I finally got up the courage to look at him again.  “And I appreciate you talking to me about all of this.  Even though you’ve said several times now how you don’t prefer to.”
	He locked his gaze with mine.  “It is literally the least I can do.”

	When we settled in to sleep that night, not exactly as wet as we’d been the night before, but still not dry, (and the temperature had dropped further despite there not being a storm, so it somehow felt worse) I was almost too tired to feel awkward.
	Almost.
	We’d rowed through every lit hour of the day, trying to make ground.  My shoulder hurt nearly too much to bear and I could tell Finn was in pain, as well.  There was no question that all either of us wanted to do was sleep, but still, despite that, I felt a twinge of uncertainty in my stomach when Finnegan began to undress.
	We hadn’t really resolved anything.  I’d enjoyed our conversation and the ones that had followed throughout the day.  Truth be told, I just enjoyed talking to Finn.  Even if it was on dark subject matter, or things that made me uncomfortable.  I would still rather be taking this trek with him, pursued and fearing death, than be peaceful and alone on my way home.
	That realization was shocking, to say the least.
	I couldn’t account for whatever was happening between us.  Finnegan was peeling me back, revealing pieces of me I hadn’t known were there.  That thought alone. . . I was no poet.  No storyteller.  I’d hardly spoken so much aloud this year as I had in the last few days. 
	What was happening to me?
	It was, like this trip had become, unexpected, frightening, and exciting.  I felt as though I’d passed the marker for a new trail, a new stage of my life.  And whether or not he knew it or appreciated it, Finnegan was the one who’d ushered me into these new realities.
	I’d always be grateful to him for that, regardless what happened.
	I couldn’t help but notice his body shaking as he got the last of his clothing off.  It made that knot in my stomach seem less important.  I simply couldn’t afford to sit here worrying while someone right beside me was suffering.  All of this introspection was making me selfish.  
	I lay down beside him and reached forward, wrapping my paw around his hip and dragging his body back against mine.  He began to say something, but ceased when I wrapped my other arm underneath him and pulled him in close.  All he did after that was let out a long breath, going lax in my arms.
	This?  This was easy.  This all made sense to me.  Caring for another person, sharing the comfort of warmth and touch together.  There was nothing complicated about it.
	Finnegan made a low noise, a rumbling groan, and I realized that without so much as considering it, my paw-pads had been running circles over his hip bone.  I tried applying a little pressure and he groaned more audibly.
	I ran my paw further down his hip, feeling the contour of his body, bone and sinew.  His fur felt different from mine in many ways and his figure was so much leaner, so foreign to my own.  I found that I quite enjoyed touching him, even simply in this way.  And since he seemed to be enjoying it too, I kept it up until his breathing slowed.
	By then I was falling asleep, myself.  The last thing I remembered doing was draping my cloak over the both of us.