Chapter 17 – Parting Ways

	It wasn’t long before I came back to my senses, but my perception of the chaos that surrounded me was vague and drifting.  I couldn’t tell you much about the next day.  I’d been taken to the cave at some point, I remember seeing the paintings on the ceilings.  Someone had told me to open my mouth and I’d been given something for the pain I was in, but while it helped, it turned every waking moment I had from that point forward into a blurry, confusing dream.  
	Finn was near me.  I could smell him, could even feel him when I reached to my right.  He was close, very close.  I saw his familiar features, muzzle tipped to the side, lying prostrate beside me.  I could smell his blood.  My blood.  Vaguely make out the features of people I knew, people I cared for.
	The figures on the ceiling danced and fought wars, I watched their stories unfold in between unconsciousness.  
	The first real moment of clarity I remember was during one of those times, when I’d been looking at one of the paintings, a shaman performing rites for a group of young ones.  The figures were all sketched in painted clay, but I could tell they were bears.  Some of them white, some of them brown.  Things were starting to make sense again.  They weren’t moving any more.  The rock walls had definition again.
	Someone was holding my hand, squeezing it.
	I turned my head and found evergreen eyes staring back at me.  The wolfdog looked haggard, his features drawn and exhausted, fur clumped and rough.  Despite that, he still managed the slightest of smiles when I turned towards him.  When he spoke, his voice was rough as gravel.
	“G’morning sweetheart,” he said, his fingers weakly tightening around mine again.  “You really with me this time?”
	“. . . I. . .” my tongue felt like dried-out leather, “. . . Finn. . . .”
	“Yeah, it’s me,” he forced another slight smile.  
	“I. . . was shot,” I mumbled, nearly incoherently.
	“We both were,” he said, blinking slowly.  “Odina, too.  Really just a graze, in her case, but she hurt her leg pretty bad in the fall.”  He slowly slipped his fingers out of mine and leaned towards me, wincing with the slight movement.  He brought his palm up to my face and cupped my cheek.  “They caught you in the forearm.  That cloak. . . parka. . . you were wearing spread a lot of the shot out, or it might’ve gone through and hit you in the chest.  But they had to dig what was left of the bullet out.  You don’t want lead in you,” he grimaced, “trust me.”
	It was then that I realized my other hand, the one he hadn’t been holding, was bandaged all the way up my forearm.  When I tried to move it, an ache washed over me, the pain making itself known through the muddiness in my head.  
	“M’I going to lose it?”  I asked.  I’d known and heard stories of people losing limbs to rifle wounds.  Sometimes they’d take off a limb even if they weren’t sure, because it wasn’t worth risking the infection.
	“Kissima thinks the hides you were wearing probably saved you that,” he said.  “But for what it’s worth, even if you do, you’ll still be handsome to me.”
	I gave him what I’m certain was a sleepy but incredulous look, and he dissolved into hoarse chuckles.
	“What about you?”  I asked, flexing my palm a little to see if I could still feel my fingers. They all seemed to respond, it just hurt to do it, so I stopped.
	“Went clean through me,” he said tiredly.  He reached down and slowly, gingerly pulled up his shirt, which looked to be one I didn’t recognize but was clean.  He showed me where he was patched, along the side of his ribs.  He was clearly still bleeding through the bandages.
	“That looks bad,” I murmured.
	“Nnnhh, I got lucky honestly,” he said.  “No surgeon can dig a shot out of the torso.  I’ve never caught one in the chest before, but I’m once again glad I’m slender.  Barely clipped my side.”
	“That looks like more than a graze,” I said worriedly.
	“The important thing is it came out th’other side,” he said, his voice clearly denoting he was under the influence of something, too.  “But you’ve been out more than I have, Tuli.  How’re you feeling?”
	“Like I had a lot of that ‘tonic’ from Broen,” I replied.
	“Yeah, they mixed the last of that with something Kissima and Uki made,” he said.  “Don’t know what it is, but it’s bear strength, that’s for damn sure.  You really don’t do well on drugs’r spirits, do you?”
	“You should see me when I smoke,” I said.
	“I’d like to someday,” he said sedately.  “I’d like to do a lot of interesting things with you, Tuli.  See you all kinds of ways I never have.”
	“I’d like that too,” I said.
	We both stared up at the ceiling for a while.  It had taken me until now to realize we were in the common area, there were no paintings on the ceiling in the cave I shared with Finnegan.  There was no one else near us right now, but there were mugs and bowls near the fire and a few scattered possessions, suggesting we’d not been left alone much.
	If I turned my head all the way to the left, I could see the blanket-covered form of Odina, her back to us, presumably asleep in her own improvised sickbed.  
	The reality of that night came roaring back to me, all at once.  I nearly choked on it, the memories causing a physical reaction that left my muzzle in a gasping gag.
	“Tuli?”  Finn went to grip my hand again.  “What’s-“
	“Sawyer. . .” I hoarsely whispered.
	I hoped, somehow, that I’d remembered it wrong.  That he was somewhere else, also sleeping off a wound.  But the way Finnegan’s features immediately darkened and fell confirmed my worst fears.
	“It should have been me,” Finnegan breathed, barely audibly.
	“No,” I said, still coming to terms with the fact that it was real.  With the memories. . . .
	Odina, cradling her son against her.  Her fourteen-year-old son, with a hole the size of an apple in the back of his skull.
	“I was lining up a shot when he broke cover,” Finn continued, lowly.  “I couldn’t grab for him in time, he got past me, h-he. . . he just ran. . . .”
	“He wanted to get to his mother,” I said quietly.
	“He was a fucking child,” he growled out.  His eyes looked glassy.  I had never seen Finnegan cry before.  “He was my responsibility, and I-I. . . I fucked up.”
	“He was in the safest place he could be,” I shook my head slowly.  “He broke cover.”
	“He shouldn’t have been here,” he snarled out.
	I watched his expression carefully, trying so hard, as I had many times in the past, to understand what was roiling beneath the surface.  For someone so seemingly expressive, Finnegan could be incredibly hard to understand, sometimes.  I could see anger, regret, deep and intense sadness.  But it was hard to know where it all turned.  Was he angry at Odina for bringing her children on her hunts?  Was he angry at Sawyer for coming with us when he’d been told to stay behind?
	Maybe it was the drug cocktail, maybe it was coming so close to death, but this time I decided just to follow my impulses and outright ask.
	“Are you angry at him?”  I asked plainly.  “At Odina?”
	He looked to me, still with unshed tears.  “I’m angry at myself, Tuli,” he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.  “None of you.  None of you would be in this position if not for me.  Odina would still have her whole family.  You would be safe back with yours.  None of this. . . carnage would have come into your lives.  At all.  I feel like I’m an. . . an unwanted. . . stain. . . that trods mud into everyone’s lives, making everything worse everywhere I go.  Everyone I’ve ever known, literally everyone, would have been better off if I’d never existed.  I ruined my mother’s life,” he grit his teeth for a moment, “I ruined the lives of so many strangers I never bothered to know.  I’ve been an instrument of death for exactly the kinds of men who exploit people like me, like you.  Poor people with no recourse.  I became a part of it.  And even when I gave that all up and tried, tried to fight back against just one of these men, the only way I knew how, look what happened.”
	He stared past me, to where Odina’s form lay.
	“Sawyer didn’t die because of you,” I insisted softly.
	“No, he died because he’s poor,” he snapped.  “And just like me, he had to do something dangerous to make coin.  The only real differences between he and I are that he’s still young and had a chance at something better, and someone alive that still loved him.  But for some reason he’s gone, and I’m.  Still.  Here.”  He annunciated each word with a pound of his fist on the furs between us.  “And I don’t. . . know. . . why.  It doesn’t make any fucking sense, Tuli.  It doesn’t. . . .”
	His voice got very small on the last few words and he turned his muzzle into the furs of our bedspread, squeezing his eyes shut tightly.  Every fiber of his body curled in on itself, his tail and ears, his whole thin frame, pulled wire taut inwards, like he wanted to will himself somehow to disappear.  He clutched at the blankets and began to shake, his breaths hissing past his teeth.  I wasn’t sure if he was crying or trying not to, but it made my chest burn to watch him.  
	I’d gotten my answer.  For once, the thoughts that were playing out past those green eyes I was so entranced by, he’d spilled out in a torrent for me.  I’d suspected for a long time now that Finnegan might have a lot of self-loathing.  He took great care to put up a polished façade, so it was easy to miss.  But this went beyond that.  It went beyond even my own worst thoughts about myself.  In all my years of feeling cumbersome, of feeling in the way or different, I’d doubted nearly everything about myself.  My body, my intelligence, my wisdom, my feelings for other people.
	But I’d never doubted I was loved, or wanted.  I couldn’t imagine a world where that was the case.  Even through the recent arguments I’d been having with my father, he’d been certain to tell me he loved me.  And I truly felt he meant that.  If a canyon were to rise up and separate the two of us, we’d always have that thread.  And if I lost him, which I would someday, I’d still have my brothers and sisters.  And now Uki and Kissima.
	Finnegan had no one.
	Of course he thought everything terrible that happened around him was his doing.  If I had no one to shore me up when I was low, I would unravel.  Finn was forged in a hotter kiln than I had been, he’d been denied many of the things I’d taken for granted my whole life.  He was probably a lot more resilient than I was in a lot of ways.  But everyone had their limit.
	Losing his mother must have been a tipping point.  When I’d lost mine, I’d still had a family to fall back on.  More than I knew, apparently.
	He really thought there was no one left in the world who wanted him here.
	“Finn. . . “ I reached for him, being careful of his wound as I gathered him against me.  I used my good hand and the upper portion of my injured arm, tugging him to my chest.  He was still shaking and he wouldn’t look at me.
	I lowered my muzzle to his, brushing our whiskers together.  “Do you really think no one loves you?”  I asked in a low whisper.
	“Don’t you dare,” he breathed out fiercely.
	I’d expected he’d rebuff me.  It’s why I’d said nothing for so long now, even far past the point where I was fairly certain of my own feelings.  Steeling myself, I pressed on.
	“I love you, Finn,” I said, the words leaving me like a sigh I’d wanted to release for far too long now.  I leaned over him, stroking his back with my good hand, while his body shook and he continued to hide his face from me.  I could tell he was sobbing, now.  “I think you love me, too. . .” I said a little more uncertainly, “. . . but it’s hard to know what to do, or how to feel, when everything keeps falling down around us the way it has.  I know you blame yourself for a lot of it.”
	I paused.  “And I know how that feels.  I feel. . . incompetent, clumsy, stupid. . . all the time.  Even just saying this, I know my father, even you think I’m foolish for the way I feel-“
	“Your feelings for me,” he dragged a breath through his nose, “aren’t getting people killed.”
	“You keep saying they could,” I pointed out.  “That two men can’t, shouldn’t, be together.  But I can’t stop feeling this way, no matter how many times I’m reminded how dangerous, how pointless it is.”  My gaze softened as I looked down on him.  “I can’t stop loving you, Finn.  Nothing that’s happened has made the feeling fade.”
	“I knew,” he said, his nose dug in against his sleeve.  I saw a sliver of green past his lashes.  “I knew and I did nothing to dissuade you.”
	“It’s okay,” I assured him, stroking one of his ears.  “I’m not a cub.  Considering what’s happened over the last few months, I’m more afraid of losing the people I love and the place we rely on for survival than having my heart broken.”
	He finally looked up towards me at that.  I continued, finding the will to push the words out coming far more easily than I’d thought it would, “You were right awhile back when you told me I’d be able to move on.  I don’t want to, but. . . I will.  If that’s what I have to do.  Whatever happens from this point, I’ll survive it.  I’ve made choices that led us here, too.  I’ve made mistakes.  We’ve both made mistakes.  I just wanted you to know how I feel while we’re still together, because. . . because it sounded like you really didn’t realize it.”  
	I leaned down, touching our foreheads together.  “You aren’t alone, Finn.  Not anymore.  Not so long as I can possibly stay at your side.  And. . . even if. . . even past that, if it comes to that.  Always.  There will always be someone out there who wants you in the world.  Even if you can’t be with me anymore.”
	“. . . why?”  he croaked out, at length.
	I sighed softly.  “Do you really want me to say it again?”
	He was silent, swaying slightly on the one elbow he’d propped himself up on.  After a very long time, long enough that I wondered if he was going to answer me at all, he did, in one word.  
	“Yes.”
	I sat up a little bit more, so that I could embrace him fully.  “I love you,” I said again, in Amurescan.  And then, a few moments later, in Nontawlik, “Inkonuvit ek nua.”
	His palm gripped my good arm, fingers wrapping around my bicep.  “Teach me how to say that,” he murmured.  He tilted his head up slowly.  The ardor in his gaze was always enough to emotionally floor me, but right now it looked razor thin.  Like anything I said or did wrong now could crumble him.
	I’d just given someone at rock bottom a thread to hang from, and I realized with terrifying clarity that he’d need me, now.  In a way no one had ever needed me before.  I hoped to all the spirits who were listening it hadn’t been a mistake.
	I kissed him, because I was afraid to say any more.  He folded against me and let me, and we lay back down together to rest our wounds.
	He fell asleep again before I did, but as I lay there, holding him, one thought rose above all others in my mind.
	Spirits, please let this not be another mistake.

	When I woke next, everyone was there in the commons area.  It was quiet, distressingly so.  I felt various eyes on me as I slowly sat up, the blankets collecting around my waist.  I could tell by the chill in the air, despite the crackling fire, that it was night outside.
	Kissima and Uki were sitting opposite us, the two bear women staring somberly into the fire.  Their paws were covered in earth, the clay-laden soil in this area staining Uki’s feet a coppery color.
	My father was nearer to me, kneeling with his gaze cast down to his lap.  His expression was strange.  When he briefly looked at me, he seemed almost ashamed.  But he forced a slight smile when he saw me sitting up and moved closer to me.  He was obviously still uncomfortable, but he seemed to be stifling it, like someone trying forcibly to lower their hackles.
	“How are you feeling?”  He asked quietly, taking the palm on my injured arm between his hands.
	“The pain woke me,” I admitted, “but my head is clearer.  I prefer it like this.”
	He nodded at me, his brown eyes sympathetic.  “You’ve never liked the effects of medicine,” he said with a half-hearted huff.
	I stared past him, towards the person whose gaze was burning through me.  Odina was awake, sitting on her bed, her leg stretched out and splinted.  Her eyes alone were predatory and intense, but that wasn’t what worried me.  She had her rifle slung over her lap.
	Finnegan was already sitting up beside me and had likely been awake far longer than I had.  I couldn’t be sure if there’d been discussion while I was asleep, but I’d been sleeping fitfully so it seemed unlikely.  
	He looked only slightly better than he had when I’d last seen him.  He was still submissive in posture, back bowed, ears back, tail tucked.  His arm was wrapped around his middle and he’d begun to bleed through the thin, oversized shirt he’d been dressed in.  It was an Otherwolf shirt, so it had probably belonged to one of the Jackwalds.  
	He was staring at Odina, and she back at him.  The two of them were practical mirror images of one another.  The obvious exhaustion, the unbrushed fur and the pain plain to see in their entire countenance.   But where he wore guilt, she radiated a ferocious anger that made my chest tense just to look on it.  My instincts screamed at me to run from her.  But I could not abandon Finn to her wrath, regardless how justified it was.  Right now, I feared he’d simply let her avenge herself on him.
	“Say what you mean to say,” Finnegan said, his voice ragged.
	“My son is dead,” she spoke the words, strangely, with the same calm she’d always embodied.  But no one could miss the deep and profound grief beneath them.
	“I’m sorry,” Finn all but whispered.
	“Your guilt will not return him to me,” she said.
	“No, but it’s all I have to offer,” he murmured.  “You trusted me with watching over your child and I failed to protect him.  I am more sorry than I can ever say.”
	“I entrusted you. . . to him,” she corrected him, her tone harsh.  “You were the commodity, Ambrose.  You were the job.  A job which has now cost me more dearly than the price on your head can ever repay.”
	Finnegan closed his eyes, his knuckles clenching over his knees.  “Do you mean to kill me, then?”
	“No-“I began to say, but my father shook his head at me, squeezing my hand.  He gave me an affirming look, and I went silent.
	“I am not saying you bear no guilt for this,” she continued with a low snarl.  “You can decide how much you wish to carry that with you.  It will have no effect on my grief, either way.  But Ohitekah was my child.  I brought him into this world and ultimately I failed to protect him from it.”
	“Ohitekah?”  My father said.
	“His birth name,” she said quietly.  “Named after his father.  We chose an Otherwolf name for him when we got him citizenship.  He picked it himself.  It made him fit in more in their communities.  But he will always be Ohitekah to me.”
	For some reason, I saw Uki smile.  “Well-named,” she said.
	“What?”  Finnegan looked to me.
	My muzzle fell slowly.  “It means ‘brave’,” I explained gently.
	Finnegan looked like the air had been punched out of him.  He slumped further, even though I know it must have been agony for him to bow with his injury.  “I’m so. . . so sorry,” he breathed out.
	“Enough,” Odina growled out.  “I am in no mood to hear this all again.  I believe your grief is genuine, Ambrose.  But it does nothing for me, or my son.  The only thing that will ease my pain now is action.”
	“Hear it again?”  I repeated back.  “What’s wrong with letting him apologize?”
	“I heard his confessions of self-hatred already,” she said.  “The last time you woke.”
	My fur prickled.  “You were awake for that?”
	“In. . . the interest of being open,” my father said from beside me, surprising me.  “I also overheard most of your conversation.  I was in my own sleeping area, but it’s a shallow cave, and the sound here. . . carries.”
	“Kissima and I did not, we were burying the dead,” Uki said to me, as if assuring me that only half of the people here had overheard my extremely private conversation with my lover was of any comfort.
	I looked to my father, his odd state making a lot more sense to me now.  “You heard?”  I asked, the unspoken part hanging in the air.
	“Yes,” he said staidly.  “All of it.”
	“If you wish to pour your heart out to your mate in privacy, you could have chosen a better place and time for it,” Odina said, her tone annoyed, but little more than that.  “But I am glad for your lack of discretion, because now I feel I understand the both of you better.”
	I tensed, awaiting her verdict.
	“My husbands. . .” her words fell off for a moment, then returned with renewed strength, “both of them. . . died for nothing.  In the end, their sacrifices did not save our family.  My first mate died with my tribe, trying to re-take our lands.  My second was shot by ranchers, in a property dispute.  We lost the land, anyway.  I was left alone with my two children and no way to feed them.  I starved for years so that they could eat.  I told myself they would never live as I had to.  That I would do absolutely anything to provide some kind of decent life for them.  With Ohitekah- with Sawyer dead, that hope has died, too.”
	She looked down for a moment.  “My daughter will know the same struggles I have.  Unless she binds herself to a man of means, and even that will be no guarantee.  Marriage did not save me, either time I attempted it.”
	“You’ll always have a place with the Tawnahowac,” my father offered.
	“No offense meant to you or your traditions, Takoda,” Odina said, turning her sharp gaze on him, “but you’ve shunned your own people for marrying outside the otter tribes.  You’ve been distancing yourself from your own son since, I’m assuming, you learned of what I just overheard last night.”
	It was my father’s turn to look ashamed.  “I. . .” he glanced briefly towards Finn and I, “. . . I may be re-thinking our traditions in the future.”
	“My daughter and I cannot spend our remaining years sheltering in one of your spare pit homes, as outcasts,” she said, her tone becoming a bit more civil.  “I want more for her than that.  And in any case, I didn’t miss the Otherwolves’ talk in town about annexing your land.  You will have your own troubles come the thaw.  We would be an additional burden on you.” 
	“You can still turn me in,” Finnegan said, steeling his voice.  “What was all this for, if not that?  It’s literally all I can offer.  It’s something.”
	“The coin will mean little if we cannot purchase land and build some sort of future for ourselves,” she replied coolly.  “It is more likely to be a danger to us in fact, if anyone knows we have it.”
	“Then we’ll get you citizenship somehow,” Finn pressed, his tone growing desperate.  “Fuck, we’ll find a way, alright?  Tuli’s people, too.  I’m slick, I know my way around cities and my own people.  Let me do this for you.”
	“That is not enough,” she said.
	“What will be enough?!”  He demanded.  He didn’t sound angry, just determined.  “Tell me what I can do.”
	“We have a common enemy now, Ambrose,” she said, a rumbling growl beneath every word.  “The man who did this. . . to all of us.  The man who hired the Jackwalds.”
	“My sire is in Amuresca,” he blew out a breath, tail thrashing behind him.  “He’s untouchable.  Believe me, I’ve tried.”
	She gave him a long, quiet look.  At length, she reached down and pulled her satchel to her, undoing the ties that bound it.  “Your story,” she said evenly.  “Is it true?  All of it.  Everything you’ve told us.  If you’re lying about anything-“
	“I am not.  Lying,” he said, his posture gone rigid, the fur along the back of his neck rising.  “I’m not always the most trustworthy man, I know that.  But I swear to God, to you all, to whatever spirits you pray to, let them strike me down here where I sit, everything I have told you about my fath- about my sire. . . is true.  Everything about why I’m here, about his company is in those documents.  You’ve seen them!”
	“I have,” she agreed, pulling a folded, crumpled piece of parchment out from her bag.  “So you’re saying if we were to look into it all, everything you’ve claimed would be proven out?”
	Finnegan gave a long sigh, lifting a hand to his brow.  “I don’t know- I guess, sure. . . maybe I’ve misinterpreted a thing or two along the way?  I can’t say for certain that I really understand his operation.  But you’ve seen the manifests, damnit.  What do you think is going on?!”
	“I think you truly hate your father,” she said matter-of-factly.  “And you were looking for something you could use to destroy him, legally and otherwise.  And you think you’ve found it.  You’ve pursued it to the ends of the earth.  I believe that you believe in this mission of yours.”  She narrowed her eyes.  “But I also don’t think you did all this for noble reasons.  Be honest with me.  Are you trying to unearth all of this to help these people your father’s company is exploiting?  Or is it just to avenge your mother?”
	“You said we had a common enemy!”  He growled out.  “You want revenge, too.  What does it matter?”
	“The point I am getting at is,” she said, leaning in, “would you care nearly so much if the man responsible for all of this suffering was not your father?”
	Finnegan’s face went blank at that, like he couldn’t make sense of her words.
	I could.
	“You know something,” I stated.
	“I have one piece of information you didn’t, Ambrose,” the mountain lioness said, unfolding the paper carefully.  It looked fragile on the edges and folded sections, like it could fall apart.  “Your bounty papers.”
	“Let me see,” Finn demanded.
	Odina offered them to him, freely.  He reached for the three folded documents and took them carefully, slowly opening them up.  She continued speaking.
	“There was a name that kept coming up when you were explaining the issue with the manifests to us,” she continued, “I recognized it.  It’s the man who actually took the bounty out on you.  Your father’s name is nowhere in those records.”
	“He could be using a middle-man,” Finnegan insisted, reading quickly.
	“He could,” she shrugged, “but then it seems odd that he’d use his Fleetmaster for that, doesn’t it?”
	Finnegan’s shoulders fell, his eyes stopping at one point on the first paper.
	“The man named ‘Gezan’,” she said, “seems to be the one who signed off on the manifests, again and again.  There are letters between him and your father, in which your father asks, repeatedly, about discrepancies in the manifests.  That name also appears on your bounty, as both the commissioning and receiving agent for your return.  First in Treneval, in Amuresca.  And now-“
	“Arbordale,” he finished, his voice gone distant.  Then he clenched his teeth.  “He had this bounty out on me in Amuresca?”
	“Look at the history,” she gestured.  “How long have you been looking into this fleet?”
	“Years,” he rumbled.
	“And you’ve only been here what?  Half a year now?  How do you think the bounty made it here so fast and got picked up by a company like the Jackwalds?”
	“He was already here,” he said, realization dawning.  
	“This ‘Gezan’ has been trying to bring you in for quite some time,” she said knowingly.  “Although he’s getting desperate.  They added the ‘dead’ part to the ‘dead or alive’ only recently.  Probably when they found out you were booking passage here.  This information you have, they don’t want it found out by the authorities here.  Which leads me to believe you’re right about your assertions.”
	Finnegan stared down at the papers in his hands.  I chanced a glimpse at them.  It would take me ages to translate the Amurescan, but there was a very striking illustration of him ink-block printed on the first page.  It was uncanny.
	“So I’m right,” Finn said, letting the papers fall to his lap.  “What makes you think my father isn’t involved?  It’s his fleet.  This Fleetmaster Gezan just runs it for him.  Just because he took out the bounty-“
	“Those letters between the two of them were in your possession, I’m certain you’ve read them,” she said pointedly.  “Did you never wonder why your father seemed so confused about the manifests?  I’m hardly a scholar, but that stood out to me right away.”
	“I assumed he was using code,” Finnegan explained, as if it were obvious.  “Trying to. . . to point out the discrepancies between the two manifests, to scold Gezan for being too obvious about it.”
	“In private letters?”  She lifted an eyebrow.  “How did you even get those?”
	Finn paused for a moment before admitting, “I blackmailed someone in his manor.  A housekeeper with a weakness for younger men.  My sire’s fastidious, he pens everything several times until he has a final draft with no errors.  She stole some of the original letters he’d received and some of his rough drafts from the rubbish bin and gave them to me.”
	“What reason would he have to use ‘code’ with someone in on this whole scheme?”  She shook her head.  “You’re a clever man, but you’ve let your passions rule you in this.  I think you were looking for something to use against this man and willfully blind to all else.”
	Finnegan was silent for a long time following that.  I could see him coming to grips with everything she’d said in real-time, and I felt for him.  But what she was saying. . . sounded right.  I didn’t understand the situation as well as either of them, but I’d seen firsthand how much animosity Finn held for his father.  It was an obsession for him, a compulsion to punish this distant figure who’d spurned he and his mother from on high and failed to fulfill any sort of parental role, up to and including alleviating their suffering when it would have been little inconvenience for him to do so.  
	I would likely never meet, let alone come to know, Finnegan’s father.  He was in essence a non-person, no more tangible in our lives than a traumatic memory.  But you only had to know Finnegan to see the damage he’d done.
	“You don’t know any of this for certain,” Finn ground out, looking back to Odina.  “Not for sure.  It’s his company.  His fleet.  All of this is ultimately his responsibility.”
	“You’re not wrong,” she agreed.  “And unearthing these illegal acts will still damage the man, whether he was involved or not.  But I want it made clear, I do not care what happens to this foreign man across the world.  If that’s what you ultimately want out of all this, you may not get what you’re after.  Is it still important to you, this quest of yours, knowing that?”
	Finn swallowed, looking back down at the papers.  His hands had begun to shake.
	I reached for him, setting a paw on his shoulder.  “This is a lot at once, Odina,” I said quietly.  “What’s your point?”
	“Sawyer died for this job,” she said, lifting her chin.  “That cannot be for nothing.  So I am going to finish it.  I am going to Arbordale, and I am not leaving until I have taken three things.  Citizenship, coin. . . and this Gezan’s head.”
	Both of us lifted our muzzles at that, looking at her.
	“I do not care, at this point, how I get them,” she said, between fangs.  “My family is owed them.  Are you with me, Ambrose?  If what we find is not what you were looking for. . . will you still help me?”
	I felt his shoulder lean against mine, his smaller frame resting against my body for support.  He was still shaken by the information she’d laid out for him- a bit late, by my estimation.  She’d clearly known all of this since we’d talked in Tawnahowac.  Had the woman not just lost a child, I would be pointing out how hypocritical it was that she acted so untrustworthy of Finn when she’d been keeping secrets from us.  And planning, up until this point, to turn him in to the very man she seemed certain was a slaver.  The man she was now condemning for hiring other mercenaries to do exactly what she was doing. 
	But then, Odina had never claimed to have the moral high ground.  Not once in the time we’d known her had she acted righteous, or explained away her self-serving motivations.  This woman lived for her family and had little sympathy for others.  She clearly respected my father and even seemed to respect me, sometimes.  But I didn’t think for a moment she’d put either of us over the interests of her or her children.
	And now one of them was dead, and the situation had changed for her.  That was all there was to it.
	This was who she was, and she made no qualms about it.
	I didn’t hate her.  I couldn’t.  But I knew very acutely that I never wanted to be her.  I couldn’t even blame her- she was a survivor.  She had prioritized the few people left alive in her life that mattered to her and at some point she’d written off the rest of the world.  I hoped I’d never know the kind of loss that brought about such self-imposed isolation.
	I looked down towards Finn.  In a moment of utter relief, I realized that for once, everyone around us was in on our secret.  I didn’t have to hide it any more.  The release of tension in my chest at that realization was so profound. . . it’s hard to explain.
	I nuzzled my nose down into the fur between his ears.  “Finn,” I murmured.  “What are you thinking?”
	He tipped his head back for a moment, closing his eyes.
	“Yeah,” he said, at long last.  “We’re going to Arbordale.  We’ve got work to do.”

	We weren’t actually able to leave the Basin for several weeks.  As determined as Finnegan and Odina had become, we were all badly hurt.  Finn’s injury actually seemed the worst of all of us, regardless how much he played it down.  And oh did he.
	In our first week of recovery I had to bodily force him back into bed on more than one occasion.  Odina and I were in a lot of pain, but we were both able to leave the cave, the lioness with a crutch, but still.  I wanted to go with her at least once to pray over Sawyer’s grave.  Finnegan insisted on coming the first time, but after the exertion caused him to nearly pass out, we made him go back inside.
	I talked with Odina about her son, about how we could best honor his memory.  She confessed he’d preferred his Otherwolf name, so that was how I would refer to him going forward.  I wanted to know how I should address him when I prayed.
	There was a mass grave for the Jackwalds, which Kissima and Uki had also done rites for.  A crudely-carved wolf’s head, made from a hewn portion of a stump, marked their grave site.  The crudeness of the marker was no disrespect from the two bears, it was just that Uki wasn’t much of an artist.  They’d still left burning incense and apparently Uki had worked on the marker for days.  The wolf spirit was the best way she could think to honor them.
	In the end, according to Uki, she’d found eight bodies.  Or rather, eight men, total.  Some of them had still been alive when she’d found them.
	I was hesitant to ask if they’d died of their injuries after the fact, or if Uki had killed them.  But I suspected I knew the answer.  She wasn’t forthcoming either, she seemed to realize how much it bothered me to think I may have killed someone.  Even though the end result had been the same.
	I hadn’t had the will, after all.  Even my father, pacifist though he was, hadn’t hesitated.  I’d done a lot of things I hadn’t thought I was capable of in that fight, but I’d left the hardest part, the part that would have haunted me the most, to Uki.
	Kissima insisted she was glad I’d left one of the Jackwalds in particular alive.  The second man I’d attacked, the one whose arm I’d bitten, had definitely pulled through.
	For. . . a time.
	The women were once again being patchy on the details, but they had said they’d questioned him for a time.  At the very least, they were fairly certain they knew how many men had come for us, now.  Fifteen, including a coyote, a tribal guide who hadn’t taken part in the fighting, and two foxes.  I could take a guess who the two foxes were.  The rest had been dogs, Carvecian men from the company.  Apparently the Jackwalds were fairly purist about who could officially join their ranks.
	We’d never found the foxes or the guide, and four of the men had also escaped.  Their leader had been the massive man with the wrinkled face, their ‘Captain’.  The surviving man had called him a ‘Mastiff’.  A type of Otherwolf, apparently one of renowned stock according to Finnegan, because their current King was of the same bloodline.
	All I know is, he’d been a very tough man.  In addition to having his ear near blown off, taking an axe between the shoulders and the final spear that had killed him, he’d also apparently been caught in one of Kissima’s traps days earlier and I’d still seen him running in the fight.  The canine must have been a monster.
	It was the first time in my life I’d faced down someone nearly as large as I was, and I’d assumed after I’d laid into him for a while that he was down.  That mistake, if not for my father, might have cost me my life.
	The whole experience had been profoundly humbling.  I’d never thought I’d be much of a warrior, but still.  Even in the moments when I’d let fear and rage take over, I’d made mistakes, I’d underestimated my opponents, and I’d left fights unfinished.  I wasn’t going to be any good at this after all, just because of my blood.  It wasn’t like I could just surrender to instinct and become fearsome.
	I was big.  That was about it.  But there were other big, strong people out there who did have a lifetime of experience in fighting and would best me if given the chance.
	Honestly, I didn’t feel bad about it, really.  Perhaps a bit ashamed that I’d left the responsibility of finishing men off to Uki and my father.  But being a warrior wasn’t something I’d ever wanted, and I didn’t feel any lesser because I wasn’t good at it.
	I wanted to be. . . honestly. . . like my father, in a lot of ways.  I wanted to be a provider, a man who could be relied upon for labor, maybe.  A father, someday.  I wanted people to know they could depend on me, sure.  But not as a killer.
	At least after all of this, I would have some experience.  I could be a protector, not quite a warrior but someone who knew enough about it to step up if it were ever needed again.
	My father had assured me, when we’d talked about it over the graves of the dead Jackwald men, that he’d also never fought before.  He wasn’t hiding some war in his past he didn’t want me to know of.  He just knew how to throw a spear and he’d been defending his child.  He assured me that some day when I became a father, I’d understand how unquestionable that impulse was.
	I liked at least that we were talking again, about anything other than Finn.
	In the end, Uki had killed the surviving man.  I don’t know how, or when, but there were eight bodies in that grave and seven who’d escaped the Basin, so I knew he was in there.  And considering he’d been a prisoner he must have been killed in cold blood.
	In many ways I didn’t know how to feel about my relatives.  Uki and Kissima were complicated people.  I’d gotten to know Uki the best of the two, and she could be so warm, so open-hearted and compassionate.  She was one of the most blunt, honest people I’d ever met, I never felt there was something on her mind she wouldn’t say.  But at the same time, she and Kissima were both fiercely territorial of this place and aggressively hateful of the Otherwolves as a whole.  They had made an exception for Finnegan, as far as I could tell, simply because he looked more like a wolf.  I’m sure some part of it had to do with how much he meant to me, but to this day, they refused to call him anything but a ‘wolf’.  It’s as though they couldn’t process that a dog could have value, so they were in denial that that half of him mattered.
	Finnegan would always be a wolf to them, like the wolf tribes they’d once been allied with.  And that’s how they stomached knowing him and accepting him.
	My father seemed to be easing off of his gut reaction to my choice in a partner, but I could tell it still didn’t sit right with him, and it probably never entirely would.  My adoptive family had traditions that would forever color how they felt about Finnegan, and my blood family denied a portion of his existence.  
	Maybe by having both of them in my lives, I could sew the pieces of a real, whole family together despite the gaps left by each side.  It was hardly perfect, but it was what I had to work with and it was still more than some people had.  I’d have to make peace with it.
	Or things could change.  That was always a possibility.  
	One thing was for certain- I was more determined than ever now that we would not surrender Finn to this man in Arbordale.  Odina seemed to be of the same mind, finally.  But she was dead set on getting her coin out of him, one way or the other.  The prospect of taking on a wealthy, likely very well-protected stranger in a foreign city frightened me less than it probably should have.  I was just glad I wouldn’t have to fight Odina over Finn any more.
	Finn had actually begun what he’d called ‘the work’ before we even left the Basin.  Over the next few weeks while he rested and recovered, he’d gotten back to doing what I’d first found him doing so long ago, in the Wayward Inn.
	He’d been writing.
	It would have taken me a long time to decipher all the papers he was working on, but when I asked him about what he was doing, he was happy to explain it to me.  Apparently he was in fact still working on his memoirs, recounting the last few months, but he’d also been practicing something he called ‘forgery’, which as far as I could tell, entailed copying existing documents.
	“For various reasons,” he said as he scrawled, “I’ve had cause to forge documents over the years, of course, but. . . never quite so pressing as this. . . .”
	I leaned over his shoulder, curiously.  “What’s the one you’re working on now?”  I asked.
	He glanced back at me for a moment, before gingerly handing me one of the documents before him.  A yellowed, thick card, about the size of my palm and densely-packed with script and an embossed seal.
	“That’s Sawyer’s citizenship card,” he said.
	My eyes widened.  “You can make these?!”
	He sighed, leaning back and rubbing an ink-stained paw over his bound ribs.  “No,” he admitted.  “Not at the moment, anyway.  I’ve been trying my hand at copying the text over the last few days and I think I could make something that looked moderately authentic if given a bit more time to study it, but that’s not the issue.  You see the seal?”
	“It’s over nearly the entire card,” I nodded.
	“It’s pressed in,” he explained.  “Run your thumb over it, feel the ridges?  They have a stamping device for this somewhere, probably in a government office.  That part would be nearly impossible to replicate without the device.  Which is the point, unfortunately.”
	“So. . . how do we ‘forge’ that?”  I asked.
	“We don’t,” he said, rubbing one of his own shoulders.  “We need the device.”
	“How do we get the device?”  I pressed.
	He gave me a crooked smirk, staring back at me.  “Well they’re not just going to give it to us, Tulimak.”
	I smiled back slowly, then reached down and moved his hand, and replaced it with my own.  He groaned headily as I began to work at the knot in his shoulder.  “It’s amazing that you know how to do this and you’re a skilled gunman,” I said.  “That’s two trades.”
	“Oh, I’m hardly any good at this,” he chuckled.  “Trust me.  I’ve known master forgers.  Strictly amateur, strictly born of necessity.  I just have good hands, in general.”
	“How did you learn to write?”  I asked.  I wanted to know more about him.  I wanted to know everything about him that he was willing to tell me.  The one upside of the both of us being injured for several weeks was that we’d had a lot of time to talk.
	“Ahh,” he paused, stiffening slightly beneath my hands.  “Well, I mean, my mother and Mikhail both knew a little.  Courtesans have to be a bit more educated than streetwalkers.  Certainly literate.  My mother taught me how to read and write at various Pedigree Estates.  As to the penmanship. . . well, there was a time, remember I said, when I wanted to find a decent trade.  I thought maybe I’d apprentice with a Solicitor, someone who works on wills, documents, you know.  But it’s a profession for ‘decent people’, so the bar for entry is, like most everything else in Amuresca, based a lot on breeding.  I couldn’t get my sire to vouch for me obviously, so no one would take me on.”
	“So how did you learn to write so well, then?”  I queried.
	“There,” he cleared his throat, “was this Dutchess. . . .”
	I sighed.  “Finn, you don’t need to be so uncomfortable.  I don’t care who you slept with before me.”
	“You would if you knew how many,” he muttered.
	I leaned my muzzle over his shoulder and brushed it against his.  “No, I wouldn’t,” I assured him.
	He relaxed a little more into my paws and let out a long breath.  “Everyone I knew growing up was a whore,” he said, finally just putting it out there.  He rarely used that word, and it was only thanks to him that I’d fully come to understand what it meant over the last few months.  “I never became one in name, but I learned early in life, whether through killing people, fucking them or fooling them, the only commodity people like me have is the body we came into the world with.  And the only value we can extract from it is by being clever, and oftentimes convincing someone we’re worth more than we actually are.  Groom yourself up pretty, put on decent-looking clothes, convince the world you have worth beyond your actual measure.  When you strip it all away, I’m a piece of shite, just like they think I am.”
	“Finn, no-“
	“I’m the forgery, Tuli,” he said, pulling something gingerly out of his pocket and holding it up in the firelight.  It was the watch he always had tucked into his pocket.  I’d seen him take it out before, I knew it was an heirloom of some sort, but not much beyond hat.  “My sire gave me this,” he explained.
	“I’m surprised you’ve kept it,” I said.
	“It’s worthless,” he said, handing it up to me.  “Counterfeit.  Silver-plated scrap metal.”
	I took it, looking it over.
	“It doesn’t tell the right time, it probably never has and it can’t even be fixed, the innards are rubbish,” he muttered.  “He gave it to my mother when he parted ways with her, and the one time he deigned to meet with me, after my mother died, I tried to throw it back in his face.  That’s when he told me it was a fake.  And even then, he only met with me because he knew I’d been seen around his Estate and he was afraid I was going to ruin him, somehow.  He found me at an Estate, a few days after a duel, showed up with his fucking guards and paid the family there to look the other way while they drug me off in a carriage and dumped me along the highway in the countryside so he could ‘talk’ to me.”
	“I’m sorry, Finn,” I said softly.
	“He threatened me, bellowed at me for a little while,” he snuffed.  “Called me a number of choice words and warned me that if I kept making appearances in his ‘circles’ he’d have his men bury me in the countryside somewhere next time.  And he threw this damn thing right back at me.  Told me to sell it to bury my ‘syphilitic mother’.”
	“You didn’t, though,” I said.
	“I tried,” he gave a humorless laugh.  “It’s a fake.  Like I said.  A ‘counterfeit’.  There’s a new word for you.  It means it looks finer than it is, but inside it’s just cheap and worthless.”  He slumped a bit.  “Like me.”
	I wrapped my arms around him from behind, being careful of his wound.  I honestly couldn’t think of what I could say that could make all of that. . . better.  So I just held him.
	He leaned back against me, his breath leaving him long and slow.
	“I don’t believe in God, Tulimak,” he admitted quietly, at length.  “I mean, I believe people like my sire are someone’s chosen people.  After all the harm he’s caused, after all the hurt he’s put out in the world, he isn’t going to suffer a wink for it.  He’s going to die rich and well-fed, in his opulent manor, surrounded by people waiting on him hand and foot.  He’s not even going to go down for,” he threw his quill down to the rocky floor, disgustedly, “all of this.  There can’t be any all-knowing, all-seeing, benevolent God looking down on us, when our world is like this.  I’ve seen too much of it to think that anymore.”
	“We don’t believe the spirits are all benevolent,” I said.  “They are just like us.  They can be selfish, warlike, greedy, angry. . . they can even change.  Sometimes we are at odds with them, sometimes they aid us.  The only balance is one we can find, in our own lives.”
	“That sounds more realistic, at least,” he muttered.  “I don’t know if I can buy into it, though.  Gotta be honest.” 
	“You don’t have to believe as I do,” I said, nuzzling his cheek ruff.  
	“I only believe in what I can prove, any more,” he said, looking out across the small cave at the scattered documents before us. 
	I looked down at Sawyer’s citizenship card, which I’d lain back next to the forgery he’d been working on.  I was vaguely able to make out his Otherwolf name.  It stung.
	“I hope we can do this, Finn,” I whispered.  “So much depends on it.”
	“Yeah, well,” he cracked his neck and picked his quill back up.  “They’ve called me a low-life scoundrel and a charlatan my whole life.  It’s been made abundantly clear to me that that’s all I’m allowed to be.  So I might as well embrace it.  They’re going to rue the day they boxed me into this role, let me tell you.”

	In three weeks’ time, we weren’t honestly ready for travel, but we couldn’t put it off any longer.  Several of the Jackwalds had escaped and could be going for back-up.  Uki and Kissima had packed most of what was precious to them and promised to winter with my father back in the Tawnahowac tribe, both because it was likely the Jackwalds might return here and even they couldn’t honestly argue they could defend their land alone against an armed militia, and because the Jackwalds might also visit the Tawnahowac, and we had no warriors.  My father had a plan in place to re-locate the tribe to the Basin, if absolutely necessary, since it was more defensible.  But the land here was rougher, harder to survive on, with no access to the river.  It seemed unlikely it would be re-taken by Otherwolf civilization any time soon, and the Jackwalds would likely just scour the place looking for us and leave.
	One thing was for certain, by the time I made it home. . . if I made it home. . . things would be very different.  Uki and Kissima were, of course, unwilling to surrender their land forever, but they also wanted to protect my otterfa’s tribe.  It was possible if we failed in Arbordale, the Tawnahowac would simply live in the Basin from this point forward.  It was an isolated, difficult area, but at least they’d mostly be left alone.
	It wasn’t ideal.   And with the country going the way it was, it was temporary at best.  
	If Finn’s plan for the citizenship papers was going to work, we had to be back before the thaw.  Which means, whether we were fully healed or not, we had to leave.
	The worst of what the winters in this region had to offer had set in.  We’d be traveling through dense snow and biting cold.  Thankfully, there were no mountains between us and our goal, and plenty of roads once we got a little farther south.  Eventually there was a major river we could take that never froze, even in the winter.  Odina had wisely suggested that now that the hunting party was no longer on our tail, we stick as close to Otherwolf civilization as possible.  She and I looked the part of bounty hunters and she had papers to prove it.  Even the Jackwalds couldn’t openly fight us on public streets over a legal bounty, and if we were smart about where we camped and roomed, they wouldn’t catch us alone.
	She knew a horse town we could stop at a few days’ south of here where we could pick up mounts, too.  I’d ridden a few times before, but would probably stay on foot to ease the burden on the animals.  But she and Finn were still badly hurt, much worse than I was.
	The trip would take over a month, possibly two if we hit particularly bad weather.  Honestly, the travel didn’t worry me.  I was built for the cold and endured walking all day well enough, if my travels with Finn so far were any indication.  Finnegan was the only one who really wasn’t accustomed to this kind of life, but he was determined to be stalwart about it.  He mostly seemed relieved that this time, he wouldn’t be going it alone.
	I caught as many fish as I could with the help of my father over the next week and dried them, rather than freezing them.  They’d be lighter that way.  Uki and Kissima also packed us as many rations as we could carry and gave us our pick of the clothing and weapons they’d scavenged from the dead Jackwalds.  It was rather grisly, but the ‘Mastiff’ was a decent enough fit for me, and both Finn and Odina insisted that having Otherwolf clothing of some kind would mean I’d stand out less in their cities.
	I decided immediately I didn’t like britches.  Kissima had helped re-fit some of the clothing so that it was right for my frame, but everything still felt too constricting.  And the ‘suspenders’ I had to wear to keep my lower garments up felt especially odd.  I liked the duster, though.  It wasn’t much different than a cloak or a parka.
	Finn took one of the best rifles, the one the sniper on the hill had been using.  Odina was silent on the matter, it was after all the firearm that had killed her son, but I’m certain she saw the utility in taking it.  
	In the end, after a lot of uncertainty, I took a rifle and a pistol as well.  Despite Finn and Kissima showing me how to load and how to fire it several times over the weeks we were resting, I didn’t feel natural with it.  But it would be foolish to deny it could come in handy.
	The rest of the weapons and rations would go with my father and my blood relatives to the Tawnahowac.  I wished I had a chance to visit with my siblings again. . . but there simply wasn’t time.
	In the hours before we were set to part ways, Uki and Kissima held a ritual for the dead, which my father assisted in.  We didn’t have a shaman, but my father, as a chieftain, knew many of the rites.  I knew some, myself.  I’d learned many when my mother and the others had died in the illness that had afflicted our tribe.
	We chanted and sung in the early dawn, burning a pillar of spruce and herbs and calling to the spirits of the departed.  We prayed for forgiveness, and urged them on their way.  But a part of me knew Sawyer’s spirit would not rest until his family was reunited and prospering.
	He’d always been restless.  He might never depart from this place.  It was both comforting and sad to think he’d be here, standing at the mouth of the caves, defending the New Moon Basin for all time.  I had watched someone become a part of the story of this place.
	If I lived long enough to do so, I’d pass his story on.
	Without earnestly believing that the young mountain lion’s spirit had some continuation after his tragically cut-short life, I’m not sure how I could have come to grips with what had happened here.  I didn’t understand how Finnegan could grapple with his losses, without faith of some kind.  But he clearly had his own ways of dealing with death, and maybe over time, I’d come to understand them.
	We were gathering our travel bags on the lone pony we’d been able to find that the Jackwalds had left behind, when my father came to speak to me, one last time.
	“You haven’t been dream-walking,” is what he said first, as he approached me.
	“Not since the battle,” I admitted.  “I think the Ursark has told me all it is able.”
	“Have you made any headway on the vision?”  He asked.
	I scrunched my brow.  “Some,” I said.  “The Ursark that visits me is my mother and father, their spirits joined.  Of that I am. . . fairly certain.”
	My father nodded.  “I would agree.”
	“The bearchild is me,” I continued.  “They made me from their blood, a-and from the earth in this place.  This Basin, these people I never really knew, they are what brought me into the world.  I only started having the dreams, the visions, when I drew near here.  When I became a man, when I first smoked with you, I saw nothing.  I was not visited by any spirits.”
	“That’s not unusual when you’re young,” he insisted.
	“I know, you told me as much then,” I nodded.  “But I think the reason it’s happening now is because I had to find and understand this other part of myself, first.  Not just necessarily because I was on different land.  I’ve come to know myself better, here.  But that isn’t because this place is. . . better. . . for me.  You and otterma did everything possible for me, growing up.  You treated me like one of your own.  You were as important to me as the parents that made me.  The Tawnahowac tribe is my tribe.”
	He smiled a bit at that.
	“I was just missing a few pieces,” I said, looking around at the snow-capped trees that ringed this beautiful place.
	“Tulimak?”  My father asked, gently.  “You haven’t been having your stomach-aches either, lately.  I can always tell when you do.”
	“Oh,” I took a moment to think on that.  “No.  I suppose I haven’t.”  It hadn’t even occurred to me, honestly.  Over the last month or so, I’d certainly had plenty of reasons for them.  But they’d just sort of. . . stopped?  That was odd.
	“Your confidence has grown,” my father said solidly, reaching a hand out to place on my arm.  “You are making decisions. . . honestly. . . with such clarity of purpose and faith in your instincts, you are hardly recognizable as the awkward young man you were a season ago.  You have even begun to go expressly against my wishes,” he said the last part with a whiskery glower, but it was half-hearted at best.  “You are molding yourself into the person you wish to become, now.  You don’t need me as much anymore. Which is. . . never easy to accept, as a father.”
	I looked down on him, hope blossoming in my chest.  “Otterfa. . . .”
	“Towards the end of your vision, the bearchild begins to re-shape itself,” he said, emphatically.  “Truth be told, I suspected this was the meaning from the beginning, what the Ursark wanted for you to understand, when you first told me-“
	“Dad,” I huffed out, irritated.
	“It is a hard thing to accept, as I said!”  He insisted.  “Even moreso to think it is what the spirits themselves want for you.  But. . . I must admit. . . even when we disagree, you seem to be growing into a stronger, healthier,” his tone grew softer, “courageous man.”
	Now was not the time to cry.  Now was expressly not the time to cry.  Not right after he’d called me strong and courageous.  I swallowed it back, as hard as I could.
	Finnegan chose that moment, perhaps intentionally, to approach us from where he was helping ready the powder for travel.  He’d probably only seen the conversation from a distance and worried for me, since I might have looked emotional.
	My father turned to regard him, then back to me.  “If he is somehow a part of that,” he let out a staggered breath, “so be it.  I will learn to make peace with it.  Somehow.”
	“I love you, otterfa,” I said in Nontawlik.
	“I will always love you, son,” he said in return, embracing me tightly.  When he pulled back, he looked me straight in the eyes, and I found I had no desire whatsoever to avert my own.  “Save our land,” he asked.  Asked.  Not demanded.  “Please.”