Self-Made Declaration

Her younger sister might have been more comfortable on the flatlands, her birth having taken place down by a lagoon surrounded by meadows and plains, but Morganna Archer’s earlier broods had been born on the top of a sheer edged monadnock that rose out of the tundra like a jagged tooth. She was confident in the steps that had bought her up the narrow maw, and now she was trying to find her way back down. Matilda Archer wasn’t much of a daytime wolf, the way the sun bounced off the snow burning her eyes as she squinted against it, a self depreciating smirk painted on her face when she realised she had already deliberately passed several caves where she could have passed the afternoon sleeping, then used the stars to guide her back to the south, but something told her to keep moving.

The path veered to the right ahead and she continued her descent, not stopping to think for one moment that there might be wolves coming the other way. Maybe a goat or a bighorn sheep but certainly not a wolf... She rounded the corner, looking out at the view over her shoulder, bumping chests with someone hairy, and curled her toes into the narrow snow lined track, not daring to step back without knowing where she was going for certain. That was a sharp turn at her back after all. If the other wolf slipped she was poised to reach out and grab at whatever she could hold to prevent their fall. Stranger or not, you had to look out for each other at such perilous heights.

"speech".