Willows

At her offer of help, he smiled, nodding. He slipped one paw out of his left bracer since he wasn’t really using that paw to cut anything. “This may be a little big on your leg, but if you slip your toes through the loops at the base of the claws you can flex your toes and wiggle them. Just do what I’ve been doing to cut the meat into thin strips about a bear-claw’s width thick and lay them in the rows.”

He demonstrated further with his one bracer with even strokes, laying out the strips in groups of five or six at a time so that he didn’t have to constantly walk back and forth every time he cut one strip.

He pondered thoughtfully, gazing around at the trees and grinning. Maybe there was a way he could skewer the venison on sticks and make a frame?

He padded to some of the low-hanging willow branches and gnawed through them, finding several thicker ones for the frame.

At her questions, he smiled softly. “It was terrifying as hell. Also felt like getting kicked by a bison in the shoulder. But that lion wasn’t going to run away, so… I knew it had to die, so that Valhalla would be safe. I had no idea if I’d live to tell the story, though. But that’s what courage is, or so I’m told. Being utterly terrified, but fighting on or pushing through anyway, because someone needs you more than you need to run away.”

He grinned. “It was even scarier when myself and one of our more experienced wolves had to fight off two lions north of Valhalla. Luckily it wasn’t both at once, more, we finished off the first only to get attacked by the second. Was pretty sure I was going to die that time, too.”

He paused to wrap willow fronds into a frame, testing his theory by spearing several strips of meat so they hung like fish fillets on a drying rack. Now he just needed a fire. Pity he hadn’t brought a coal-horn along when Aurielle had warned him to rest and be ready.

He got to work, and it took a good half hour before he finally managed a flame with a “Hah!” of triumph and not a little relief.

Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Hear" ---- Think