On the Prowl

Atreus followed his grandfather eagerly, and at his prompting he half-closed his eyes and raised his nose, turning his head so that he faced into the wind, breathing deeply. As always, for a moment there were too many scents, a bewildering array of them, until he slowly worked through them. "There's so much." He was quiet a moment as he sniffed at the wind. Familiar scents of pack wolves going in and out of the woods, both old scents and new, he identified and set aside. The scent of strangers coming to and leaving the market as well. He could smell prey animals, too, mostly small animals, and old deer scent, even one he recognized vaguely as elk, but only one scent was overwhelmingly hot, something new. He frowned, eyes opening, and he sniffed again. "I smell... something strange. I don't know if I've smelled it before. It's... a little familiar but I can't place it." He breathed deeply, drawing the scent into his nostrils. It was the smell of a wild boar, an older piglet not quite old enough to be away from his sounder but lost - Atreus couldn't know that it had been separated when the sounder had run away during another wolf's hunt.