Foundation Stones

A huff escaped Aurielle as she came to a stop by the wall and stepped from the traces of the drag hide. It was heaped with a mucky, prickly mixture of fired, boiled down and ground up snail shells, clay, straw, fur clumps from shedding seasons, and water. More water was sloshing in clay pots Ayodele and Paladin’s two companions had worked together to create and fire in the communal fire cave.

Aelloshir dropped his own traces, the hide he dragged piled with stones—primarily flat ones. Experimentation had come to show that the flat pieces of shale, slate, and river stones were the best for stacking, both dry and wit the mixture Aurielle had dragged behind her. They made for a sturdier wall, better able to bear the weight of even the larges wolves in the pack, and in places, like this one, Aurielle and her father, with Paladin’s help, had torn down the wall and steadily rebuilt the holes with the new model.

Her fur was patched with mud, mostly from Ayodele, who bounded from her back, leaving more hand-prints behind as she led the way to the gap in the wall, ringed tail waving high in the air. “Here, here, here!”

“I remember, Delle. We tore this down yesterday, remember?” Aurielle grinned patiently at the lemur as Aelloshir rolled his eyes and slunk forward in his usual gruff way, tail-tip twitching absently as he surveyed the land beyond the gap in the wall.

It was muddy, dirty, hard work, but ever since her first cycle had settled in to bother her for the season, Aurielle had relished the hard work. It distracted her from her hormones’ natural urgings. It also made her feel like she was at least accomplishing something.

Grasping a scapula bone in her jaws, she bent to scoop up a dollop of the mud, working her grip about on the bone to balance the weight of it in her jaws before moving to slap it down on top of the layer of stones Aelloshir and Ayodele had laid. The lemur happily worked to slather the mixture about as the big cat turned to gather more flat stones.

The young Archangel was glad the lemur had braided most of her mane back where it couldn’t be caught in the mud or under the stones as they were laid.