Lead me home stars

Kione preferred to stay near his family the majority of the time.  There was something deep in his soul that dreaded coming home someday to find his new family as dead as the last.  The painted dog had learned what it was to be alone with no one to go home to and he never wanted to be that again.  There was nothing wrong with roaming alone so long as he knew there was family to go back to when exploration was done.

Still, there were times it was good to have a working knowledge of farther reaches of the landscape.  It had been some time since Kione had made his way to auster and while he had traveled through much of boreas he had certainly missed areas and some he’d gone through had been a straight path versus exploration.

Kione had crossed over the landbridge to boreas with plans to get a feel for the areas closer to the crossover to where his family resided.  More wolves seemed to be on boreas than auster.  Was it just due to the amount of land or was something about the northern area more favored for one reason or another?

Kione’s mind had roamed over such things as he made his way north.  The change from the hot summer weather of auster to the wintery cool of boreas was a strange change of pace.  Even as he wandered the prairie the painted dog found himself in, Kione could feel the blades of grass crackling under him.  It wasn’t so much ice layering the ground here as a frozen frost that was easy to miss seeing if one didn’t observe closely.  It wasn’t as hard in the light of day when the frozen layer glittered under the sun’s rays but at night, you mostly knew by the feel and simple knowledge it was there.

He'd roamed for a time now and the wild dog decided it was time to return home.  He’d recently failed at a fun chase of a doe he’d spotted.  Looking about the dog realized he’d lost track of where he was.  One spot in the landscape was remarkably like other spots in the late of the night when he didn’t know the area well.

Kione glanced up to the night sky and smiled as he saw the most reliable sources there were, well, so long as like tonight there were no clouds to hide the star's secrets.  The brightest one had been on his left side all the way up here.  Kione turned himself around until the star was to his right.  Kione took a moment to search his memory before he started off.  The wild dog started jogging in the direction he’d come from.  Occasionally he made a point of looking up to the sky, at times having to adjust the direction he faced when running.  On Kione’s way here he hadn’t moved in a straight path so things would naturally look different as he intended to do just that now.  The star was the only one that got to tell him where to go.

All Kione needed to do was find the end of the prairie and he was confident in finding his way home from there.  He was moving along well when the scent of a cat hit him.  Kione would have to change course to go fight whichever large cat it was and no matter how much he wanted to the wild dog decided he needed to prioritize getting home the most.  His gaze watched the landscape for a minute, teasing himself with the idea of finding home later and going cat-killing now but eventually he pushed forward.  There were plenty of things he could go killing for fun in auster.  Maybe if Kione got real lucky he'd run into a lion on the way home.  Kione would never miss out on lion killing.  That cat had not been a lion, it was one scent Kione would never forget.

Pressing on Kione continued moving, ready to get back home.  It was warmer in auster and while some labeled it as too hot to enjoy, Kione’s short coat preferred extreme heat over extreme cold.  With a bit of relief, Kione spotted the boundary to the prairie and picked up his pace.  It would still take a bit of time to make his way all the way back to Fenmyre but he was confident in the path to take from here.  Hmm.  Kione turned his gaze back once more thinking again of the cat.  

Shaking his head Kione picked up a run, rushing back home.  There was family there, whether or not anyone truly waited for him didn’t matter.  It was other canines that acknowledged him as a member of the pack and that made it a wonderful thing.  The night was uneventful the rest of the way.


"Kione"