hello, little birdie (AW)

A grey, grizzled, female wolf made his way ponderously over some of the rocks in the background, not making a lot of noise, and dipping in and out of sight around a fallen column. This was the only object that interrupted his otherwise sternly straight trajectory.

He was a sullen creature, a brushy grey shag of hair atop stilt-like legs, broad feet all but goosestepping over stones, eyes and nose tilted towards the ground. It wasn't the most unusual thing about him: tightly in his jaws was the crotch of a Y-shaped stick, the end of which he held half a foot off of the ground. There was no joy in how he carried this object. It might as well have been the casket of a beloved friend or a king's last message to his heir. The two branches should've stretched his mouth out to at least an imitation smile, but somehow they didn't. The corners of his mouth drooped despite their uplifting angle. So intense was his focus on the ground that, even when he passed near the two others he didn't seem to notice them right away.

He hit something invisible and stopped, as still as the grave, inhaling slowly through his nose, eyes unblinking at a fixed spot on the ground. He snapped out of it all at once and looked around, a bewildered expression in his hueless eyes, made all the more lost-looking by the massive stick he still held. At length, his eyes fell on the two conversing and his brow furrowed, his frown deepening before he placed the wooden object carefully on the stony floor, looking at it as though it had disappointed him. His gaze then went back to the two speakers, and then back to the stick, then back to them, then back to the stick. He tilted his head to the side, as though pondering some pressing and perplexing puzzle.

And then he just sat. "No, it is not right... but how?" he murmured aloud in a low growl.