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 was 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 and 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 mind you, 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, just by their very nature.  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.  “Now’s really not the time for levity.”
	“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 dad 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 slowly.
	“I know he does,” I admitted quietly.  “I don’t doubt that.”
	“That being said,” he 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.  I’m sure 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. . . 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, still in the living world.  I knew that first-hand.  
	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 and grown, together.  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.  He was behind us, I knew the rhythm 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.  And say goodbye, no matter what.”
	I turned slowly, taking in the sight of. . . my entire family, as it happened.  My father, my brothers, my sisters, even Alasie.  He’d brought all of them and they were each 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 since I was still kneeling, biting my tongue inside my muzzle.  He was usually such a collected man, but right now, his expression was all 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 anything 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.”
	“No.  Please.  I promise, I am not going to force you to stay,” 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 do,” 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 at 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 your family,” 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.  “The trappers don’t go there.”
	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 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 of their settlements are graves.”  He took a moment.  “What few survived. . . your tribe 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. . . .”
	“Tribes like the Tawnahowac 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.  I only heard tales of their ruin.”
	“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.  And before that, they’d fought for generations.  So it was quite the concession.  The chieftain’s daughter from the Great Northern Bears and one of their largest and most renowned warriors of the Ice Bear tribe.  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 pressed.
	“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?  If they were so few in number?”  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.”  As he said the last part, he reached out to grip my hand.  Which I very much needed at that point.  “You were so small, you were sickly, underfed. . . if they’d kept on the run with you, you would have died a far crueler, wasting death.  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 their anger towards the bear tribes.”
	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 to defend their land.”
	“They were more ashamed they lost their land than losing their son?”  I demanded, sharply.
	“They were fighting for a homeland they could raise their families in, Tulimak.  Yourself included.  When they lost that, 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 once more.  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 said.
	“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?  “Or at least, that is the way they choose to see it.  I can’t imagine being given a greater gift than what they entrusted to me.  But nonetheless, 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 village’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.  “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.  “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 you should come?”  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.  Not in the winter months.  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 and as a father, I want to 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 still 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 do not 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’m starting to like your father.”

	Snow fell that afternoon and into the evening, which made leaving behind evidence of our flight that the Jackwalds might find easier than expected.  My brothers and sisters carefully covered our presence in town by brushing away our footprints and burning large bundles of sage to cover our retreat.  We scattered the remains of Odina’s camp out on the clay flats so that it looked like we’d left in a hurry, and left deliberate footprints from there to the river, as well as doing nothing to mask our scent.  
	Odina had told us one of the men amongst the Jackwalds was something called a ‘bloodhound’, which seemed to worry both her and Finnegan.  I didn’t have to guess very hard at what sort of specialist that might be.  Although apparently in Amuresca, it was more than a profession- there were entire family bloodlines of them.  If I hadn’t been so distracted with everything else that had happened today, I’d probably have asked Finnegan to explain the idea of canine bloodlines to me more in-depth, because it sounded fascinating.
	We were all worried for the Tawnahowac village and the family we were leaving behind.  But even my father seemed to think it likely that these hunters would not spare the time, even out of spite, to harm them when they were on a hunt.
	It was hard to know when they’d pick up our trail.  For all we knew, they might have opted to stay in town another night.  They had horses, reliable trackers and good information.  It was impossible to know how confident they’d feel.
	Once we’d crossed the river, we were careful to cover our trail up the banks into the woods.  We did our best past there as well for at least a mile, sticking to areas of pine undergrowth, where the ground was flat and needle-covered.  It might have seemed counter-productive since it meant we were leaving very clear tracks, but with the fresh snow, that wouldn’t be the case for long.  Broken underbrush would be a lot more noticeable, which there wasn’t much of under the large pines.
	For all of Odina’s expertise and my father’s added wisdom though, both seemed fairly certain we’d still be tracked and followed.  The question would be whether or not they’d follow us as far as the New Moon Basin.
	We weren’t able to make more than ten miles’ headway the first day before we had to encamp.  We were heading into the mountains, so some of the terrain was steep and difficult, we never ever foraged this far.  And we’d gotten a late start as it was.  We tried to press on through the darkness, but after the first time someone had fallen down a sheer hill of loose snow and pine needles, we’d given up that idea.
	Me, by the way.  I’m the one that had fallen.  Because of course it was me.
	Camping was. . . interesting.  Initially I’ll admit, as selfish as it may have sounded, I’d been very relieved that my father was coming along.  The moralistic part of me knew I shouldn’t feel that way, but I couldn’t very well deny it to myself.  Ever since I’d embarked on this terrifying and often painful adventure, I’d wanted my only remaining parent by my side.  For absurdly childish reasons.  Comfort, primarily.  But also guidance.
	Now, I had him.  And I’d realized somewhat lamentably, far after the point that I probably should have, that having my father traveling in close quarters with me alongside my new, secretive romantic partner was. . . complicated.
	I’d yet to talk to him about Finnegan and I, he hadn’t brought it up so I could only surmise my sister had not yet explained what she’s seen to him and honestly, even if I could manage the courage, what was I supposed to say?!  
	Hey, dad.  This foreigner who brought down near calamity on our village and whom you now know to be a wanted murderer is someone I’m interested in courting, like one might a wife?  Oh but don’t worry, he’s made no promises of fidelity to me and neatly dodged any idea of a future with me because he seems to think our being together is a death sentence.  So it’s not as if I’m really going to court him.  We’re just sharing a bed until he either flees for his life or we turn him in to the law, who will likely hang him.  By the way, he wanted to hide all of this from you and I’ve sort of been going along with that because I have trouble saying no to him.
	Yeah.  That’s about how that would go.
	So that night Finnegan and I slept in separate bedrolls.  We had no lean-to for this trip, but we’d found a good area of thick spruce and an overhanging rock-face that sheltered us well enough.  The snow was still falling when my eyes got heavy, but it was gentle, big flakes falling soundlessly and calm.  The sort of snow me and my siblings would have relished playing in back during our more innocent years.
	At the very least, we had the best bedrolls my tribe could put together for us, not the worn sheepskin I’d brought along on the raft because I was afraid anything better might get wet.  And I was emotionally exhausted and for once, well-fed, with my father sleeping right beside me.  So I had no trouble drifting off.

	Something roused me, some far-off noise in the forest, rustling at my consciousness.  I lifted my head slowly, peering through the dim twilight, searching the swaying, powdered boughs for any sight of the hulking shadow.  I knew it was there- could feel it- but it eluded my vision.  Everything was indistinct, the world a shifting collage of pine and snow, purple and blue hues. 
	I found my feet underneath me easily enough, moving inexorably towards what I somehow instinctively knew was there, beyond the tree-line.  I could feel it pulling at me, predatory, overwhelming and terrifying, but I felt compelled to answer its call all the same.
	The climb up the rock face was hard, my every movement exhausting me more than it should have.  My legs burned, my arms ached, I felt my footing give way more than once.  But when I arrived, claws digging at frozen rock, paw-pads raw, at the slate summit. . . I found myself face to face with the creature itself.  And it was far more than some spectral shadow.
	The Ursark were storied predators, feral ancestors to all bearkind.  I had seen a few of the smaller, more stooped, black-furred feral animals throughout my life, sharing our land.  They were just similar enough to evoke curiosity, but subtly different in form and vacant in expression in that way feral animals were.  It was the sort of encounter that left a palpable air of uncanny discomfort inside you, especially when like me, you’d known few other actual bears in your life.
	This creature, though. . . it was no stooped, small predator of rabbits or minor threat to fish lines.  The Ursark that stood before me was a beast unlike any I’d ever imagined, let alone seen.  Its body seemed to tower into the heavens themselves, fifteen heads tall at the shoulder at least.  Its muzzle was shorter than my own, eyes wide-set and black as the night, with starlight dancing through them just the same.  Upon its titanic shoulders was a mantle, a mane of thick fur, long enough in places that it collected snowflakes.  But what truly stood out was its pelt, impossibly dense fur split like a shadow had fallen over its body, following its spine and cutting its muzzle in half.  One side rich mahogany brown, the other cream white.  
	It was standing atop the thick, ancient stones pushed up to form the rise, its massive shoulders hunched.  Its head hung below them, empty eyes boring through me without any indication of what motives might lie behind them.
	It took me a moment of still, shocked reflection to realize it was bleeding.  Following the seam of fur down its body, almost as though the two halves had been cut in twain and only pushed back together, the crimson oozed out from where it seemed fused together.  The blood pooled beneath it in the earth, collecting where the great stones jutted forth from the ground.
	As I watched, frozen in place, it slowly lowered its broad muzzle to the caking blood in the dirt and began to nose at it.  Terrifyingly, after enough nudging, the blood-soaked earth began to move.
	At first it simply roiled, like boiling water.  Then it formed what clearly resembled a small muzzle, opening its maw and crying out in the night air.  Transfixed, I watched it roll itself into more of a body, mewling and clawing towards the enormous creature whose blood had birthed it.  The little cub grew with each passing second, the stars in the sky beginning to move past us in a blur.
	Once it had freed itself from its earthen womb, it began to gather up paw-fuls of the bloody earth around it, its own efforts aiding its growth.  Bit by bit, its body began to resemble something closer to my own.  For a time, the enormous Ursark helped it, seeping more of its blood into the soil and using its far larger paws to gather earth.  
	There was no doubt now.  The thing being made, and now creating itself of earth and blood, was a man.  It soon built itself a form nearly as large as my own, unstable and marbled with cracks, pieces falling off almost as fast as it could replace them.  When it finally turned to look at me, its muzzle was all at once hard to perceive and terrifyingly familiar.  And its chest had a hole where its heart beat, exposed to the world, blood leaking out in rivulets.
	It reached for me.  
	I took a step back.
	A voice shattered through it all, piercing and solid in an indistinct collage, pulling me back with a crash of sensations into the waking world.  All at once, the vision shrunk before me, the stars slowing their spin across the sky and all the world re-coalescing into hard lines and shapes.  The air was cold, the earth beneath my feet felt real and solid, my breath puffed out in front of me, lungs rasping.
	“Tulimak!”  The sharp whisper and a hand tightening around my wrist were the final viscerally real things that pulled me into consciousness.  I blinked slowly, still processing what was happening- where I was.  I was. . . that’s right.  I was traveling.  With my family.  With Finnegan!  Right. . . we were on the run.  Again.  I was. . . where was camp?  Where was everyone?
	I looked around, noticing with a start first off that I was feet away from a rocky ledge and a long plummet.  It looked, upon retrospect, like the one that was sheltering our camp.  We had no fire, but I could distantly smell the distinct scent of my father’s fur.  I was nearby.
	It was still dark.  Had I been dreaming?  I’d been dreaming.  I’d walked, climbed, all the way up here?  Asleep?
	So who was-
	The face staring up at me in the dark was not the one I expected.  Not Finnegan.  Not even my father.  It was a young, gangly mountain lion.
	“Sawyer?!”  I exclaimed.
	“Tch-shhhhh!”  He hissed, glancing back down the rise.  “Don’t wake the others!”
	“Oh,” I mumbled sleepily, “I’m sure Odina’s already awake.  I don’t know why she let me leave. . . she must’ve assumed I had to relieve myself.”
	“Les’ keep it tha’ way- what’re you even doin’ up here?!”  He demanded in another sharp whisper.  “You were about t’stumble down the damn cliff over there.”
	“Dreaming,” I slurred, still coming to my senses.  “Or maybe. . . I don’t know.  It felt like more than a dream.  What are you doing here?  I mean I’m. . . supposed to be here, I’m pretty sure.  You’re supposed to be back at the village.”
	“I’m tailin’ you, obviously,” he growled out.  “Like hell I’m lettin’ my mother do this alone.  Doin’ a pretty good job at stayin’ down-wind and unnoticed, too.  Or at least I was, until I saw you about t’walk off a damned cliff.” 	
	“Oh, Sawyer,” I looked at him sympathetically.  “She is going to be so angry.”
	“By the time she finds out it’ll be too late.”
	“Kid,” I sighed.  “You know I have to tell her, right?”
	“Ah just saved your life!”  He said, scandalized.  “You wouldn’t!”

	I did.  I was appreciative that the young mountain lion had blown his cover in order to help me avoid what would surely have been a much worse fall than the one I’d had earlier in the day, but he was fourteen and I wasn’t very well going to hide his presence from his mother.  Especially given the situation.
	Odina left camp as we were all rousing in the early morning twilight, returning a short time later with a sulking, angry Sawyer in tow.  They were arguing again.  And once again, I tried to distract myself from the family drama that wasn’t my business.
	My father glanced past me for a moment as the bickering mother and son moved past, then looked to me.  “A vision?”  He repeated.  “You’re certain?”
	“I. . . no,” I admitted.  “Not certain.  It could have just been a dream.  But it was so vibrant, otterfa.  So real.  It reminded me of two years ago, when I received my markings.”
	“You’d been fasting for days, then,” he said pointedly, “and smoking.  But. . . the spirits can make themselves known to us in many states.  In times of sickness and great strife.  Perhaps your ordeals of late summoned forth a spirit of your people,” he put a paw over my heart.  “Perhaps it is watching over you because you are returning to your homeland.”  He sighed.  “I am not a shaman, son.  It is hard to say.”
	“Or you’re having stress dreams,” Finnegan muttered from where he was reclining nearby.  He hadn’t bothered getting out from under his bedroll yet, preferring its cocoon to the frigid cold of the morning air.  “Now I can’t stop imagining what you’re like smoking hashish, Tuli.  Must’ve been a riot.”  
	I looked his way.  We’d been speaking in Amurescan out of habit, because I preferred not to hide things from him or essentially talk behind his back while in his presence, as my father seemed to have no trouble doing.
	I felt my father’s paw on my chest press into my fur, bringing my attention back to him.  I couldn’t help but remember the ‘man’ I’d seen the Ursark birth, its chest open, blood pumping from its heart, spilling out like a waterfall.  My father’s paw over my own heart was comforting.
	“You can tell me everything while we travel today,” he assured me.  “We will try to understand this together.  River spirits I understand well enough, but this. . . this is new.  I can only promise I will do my best.”
	I smiled a little.  “Thanks, dad.”
	Finnegan gave a long yawn that ended in a slight whine, which he self-consciously covered his muzzle after.  “Oof. . . sorry,” he cleared his throat.  “I didn’t know you sleep-walked, Tulimak.”
	I began to speak, but my father cut me off.  “Oh, you wouldn’t believe the places we’ve found him,” he waved a paw.  “This isn’t even the worst.  The river, once.  And you have to be so careful waking him up, you know.  Especially if he’s in some precarious position.”
	Finnegan seemed vastly amused by the concept, but I wasn’t.  “It doesn’t happen often,” I insisted.
	“It isn’t even always just walking,” my father continued, further embarrassing me as thoroughly as possible.  “Once, as a child, he raided the fish racks-“
	“Dad!”  I covered my muzzle with my paws.
	“’Sleep-eating’,” he chuckled.  “How do you discipline that?  This one gets up to the most trouble while he’s in bed, I swear.”
	Finnegan physically ducked his head under his blanket to laugh.  I, meanwhile, wanted to die.
	Odina became my savior when she rejoined us not long after, already hiking her bags up over her shoulders.  “We need to move out,” she announced.
	I looked past her at Sawyer.  My father was the first to ask, though.  “So the boy’s coming along, then?”
	“No choice,” she said in a curt, clipped tone.  It was the closest I’d ever heard Odina to furious.  “Care to tell them what you’ve told me?”  She inquired of her son.
	He spoke up hesitantly, “Ah saw them horsemen comin’ at us from town,” he said.  “Ah stayed behind’n hour or so, so’s my ma wouldn’t find me out too soon.  Might’ve stayed longer too, ‘cept I saw them.  Couldn’t’ve been no one else.”
	“So unless my son is lying,” Odina said with a glare his way.
	“I wouldn’lie ‘bout somethin’ like that!”  He insisted.
	“-then they aren’t far behind us,” she continued.  “Now they might have needed to slow down to catch our trail, but I can’t risk sending him back with so little space between us and them out there.”
	“And you need me,” he insisted impertinently.
	“Your sister needs you!”  She snapped back, showing her fangs.  “What is all of this even for, if you get yourself killed, boy?!  The coin’s a temporary fix without land.  You had one responsibility-“
	“Mom,” he interjected, his voice coming out shaky, but earnest, “I was scared fer you.  These boys, they ain’t foolin’.  This’s a real posse, mom.  I wanted to be with you fer this.  I didn’wanna wait around like I used to, thinkin’ you’d never come back.  I couldn’t.  Not again.  Not anymore.”  He swallowed, readjusting his rifle sling over his shoulder.  “Ah’m a man, now.  But I still. . . need you.” 
	Odina, and indeed the entire camp, had gone mute in the wake of his words.  My father was still a hairsbreadth away from me and I suddenly wanted to reach out for him, to embrace him.  I felt the young lion’s fear so palpably.  I’d been trying not to become involved in Odina’s family’s trials, since our paths crossed.  In a very real way, she was the enemy.  She wanted to take Finnegan away from me.  Send him to his probable death.
	But as immature and boarish as Sawyer was, his love for his mother, and indeed the entire family’s bonds, were undeniable.  I couldn’t push back my compassion for them, regardless how much I disagreed with their way of life and the circumstances that had brought us together.  
	I wished in that moment that I didn’t know all of this.  That I hadn’t seen it.  Every new thing I learned about them made condemning them harder.  And I needed to condemn them, in the same way that I needed to be able to justify fighting these men coming after us.  Because otherwise, how could I defend Finnegan?
	But not knowing wouldn’t have changed the situation.  This was where we were.  This was the truth of it.  And there was probably so much more I still didn’t know that would make it all even harder, even more complicated.
	Was it possible for two people on opposite sides of a conflict to be in the right?  I’d always thought of wars, or even smaller-scale things like what was happening here, to be between a bully and a victim.  A well-armed private militia killing unarmed miners.  An overwhelming power like the Carvecian military, against a few small tribal nations trying to defend their homeland.  Surely, that was as clear-cut as it came.  It was unthinkable to imagine that I’d ever sympathize with the predators, there.
	But Odina had been a faceless predator to us, once.  And now, I was watching her son pour his heart out to his mother about his fears of losing her.  I might disagree with how she made a living, but that didn’t mean I wanted to take this woman away from her children.
	It was so. . . so confusing.

	The voyage into the mountains took us another four days, which we spent primarily in wary, hyper-vigilant silence.  We kept a watch at night, we talked very little during the day so as to keep our senses tuned to the land around us, and we never lit a fire.
	My body was aching and cold, taut as a bowstring, by the time the basin came in sight.  It’s not that the trip itself had been any more strenuous than it should have been.  The cold nights were hard, certainly, but the weather had cleared considerably since the first day, consisting of bright, sunny days and blue skies, star-speckled horizons at night and a nearly full moon.  Winter aside, it was good weather for traveling.
	But the fear. . . the paranoia. . . it gets to you.  Being on the edge of a blade for so long wears down your reserves, saps your energy and makes you jump at every shadow.  We were all feeling it as we entered the valley.
	The basins were, even from a distance, some of the most beautiful and striking land I’d ever seen.  It was testament to the stunning view that we stopped for nearly an hour to eat and look down across the valley when we reached the first vantage point in the mountains.  The land seemed to go on forever here, evergreen forests overlapping and fading into blue waves of sweeping mountainsides off in the distance.  The basins themselves were like great depressions in the earth, the forests growing down around the edges but slowly fading off to browner, sparser earth the further you got towards the center of each.  Two had lakes in the center, the same cerulean as the sky.
	The largest of the craters was the one my father denoted as our destination.  The New Moon Basin was aptly named, as a full half of the rim of it seemed pushed up out of the earth, gray even in the distance, denoting a ridge of rock blasted out in a semicircle.  The other half was covered in forests which stretched down to a small lake.  I imagined I could see smoke trails, proof of my long-lost relatives still living there, but the valley was rife with drifting, low-hanging clouds, so if I’d seen anything it was probably that.
	“The last I had heard from them,” my father breathed out, “the tribe still took up residence here.”
	“It’s defensible terrain, regardless whether its occupied by his blood anymore,” Odina said, pointing down towards the basin.  “That rock ridge there?  Assures only one way in or out of the basin.  Good place to get trapped, but if your goal’s to hold a place, I can see why they’d choose here.”  She was checking her rifle, cleaning a piece of it.  “If the Jackwalds are willing to follow us this far, they’ll catch us once we leave the mountains and get to even terrain.  Best we make a point here, and dissuade them.”
	I kept my gaze on the valley, trying to find some meaning in each sense.  The smell of this place, the sight of it, the sounds of the forest. . . this was where I’d come from.  My birthplace.  I’d thought it would ‘call’ to me somehow.  That after all this time, coming here might make me feel whole, connected to something I’d lost.
	What I felt, overwhelmingly. . . was fear.