Minutes to midnight

It was late into the evening when Strai finally slowed. Feeling weary and foot sore as he found a crevice to tuck into. The spot gave him the vantage point to discreetly look about him for a tail. But there was no sign of his cousin, or their mark. He stood at alert long after the last rays of sunlight had faded. Shivering at the wind that picked through the numerous cracks of his hiding spot, he hunkered down and tried to get a few hours of rest.

The moment his eyes drifted close, his vision filled with fire. The smoke was so familiar he could still taste it. Everything was burning, but that was the way his parents liked it. The vikings that had whelped him had not been the gentle sort. But they had taught him how to survive. When revenge had crept up on them and slit their throats, he had survived. He could still remember the way the life had left their eyes. Leaving him there alone, on foreign soil. He and his cousin had been the only wolves to survive the carnage. Now, now it was only Strai.

After a few hours of restless dozing, he got back to his paws heading upwards, into the mountain. The inhospitable, towering monument to the gods. There, perhaps he would find some peace. Instead, he found the scent markers of a new pack. It lacked the strength of repetition. Of markers that had been laid, and laid again over the years. New to this territory, then. Perhaps they wouldn't have the home advantage. He soaked his paws and body in weed from a river bank as his parents had taught him. Covering his scent before he slipped across the borders between two rocks. Silent, and with any luck near invisible in the night.

First, he snagged a coat recently made and drying on a rock. Pulling the dark fur over his damp and shivering body. Moving further in, he followed the scent of food. In and out, in and out. That was his goal. He found the body of a mountain goat, still cooling. It's hunter nowhere in sight. Working fast with his knife, he began to stripe the easiest bits to take away.

"Speech"