Chapter Text
"The Prisoner has escaped!"
The hush over the wide, empty plains was broken by a wild scream.
"The Prisoner has escaped!"
It was not a scream of fright nor urgency, nor was it a warning for everyone to run, hide their children, lock their doors, and board their windows. The scream was a jubilant one, ringing out to announce a world removed of fetters and wardens and prisons of labyrinthine black machines. It was a scream of freedom.
"The Prisoner is free! I'm free, I'm free!"
Upon his departure from the radio tower in Serenity, Sam burst into the world eager to exist.
He sped through wide, flat green fields and down gentle hills on light soles, obsidian and blackstone left crumbling miles on miles behind him and the wind calling to every corner of his flesh. Strong gasps filled his lungs, sweet and short and starkly unlike the long deep sucking inhales he'd taken past the grainy filters of a gas mask. It was as though his lungs had been been dry, raw, and full of ash before, but now the air was hydrating, a gentle salve applied to the aching burns left by Pandora's Vault.
Sam cleared a brook in one jump, crashing onto the mud bank on the other side and the earth clung to him, covered his mangled form of yellow skin and scars and bruises. He skipped stones across the stream, let fish and tadpoles nip his fingertips, and listened as birds sung hymns of rapture. Finally, he laid very still on a grass bed to entice ants and beetles to venture across the planes of his body and dragonflies and bees and wasps and every other flying insect to land on him. From there, quiet and content, he watched the world go by.
To end his first day of unfettered existence, he slept under the starlight and was lulled to sleep by a soft lullaby of crickets chirping, frogs croaking, owls asking, and the beating wings of lightning bugs gliding in listless ballets.
In the morning, he rose to the golden, caressing sunlight kissing his eyelids and cheeks. Sam stood tall and wide for there were no low ceilings or close walls to stop him.
Across the plains stood herds of horses that he admired from afar. A Creeper prowled among the equines, emerald and hot-headed and walking proud as any apex predator certain of its supremacy. It chased away other weaker, lesser-than Creepers and startled the horses on purpose, playing at a game to which only it understood the rules.
When the adolescent mob spotted Sam, it hissed and took full charge. Was it willing to sacrifice its life, its youth, he wondered? Was it ready to burst into fire and spores just for the slim chance it might kill him?
Unwavering, the Creeper came upon him, smoking and smoldering. Sam fled and hid behind a tree, counting the fifty-three seconds it took for it to lose interest in him before it shuffled off to continue pestering the horses.
"Young and stupid," Sam pitied, viewing himself as ancient and lucid as he wandered to nowhere and nobody and uttered on about how such a decision was only rational. After all, this was freedom. This was everything he had wanted.
Sam looked around himself and tried not to feel so naked in his skin.
Pandora had put him in a limbo where he hadn't existed for three years, and now that he was out, he wasn't sure what to do with himself. He wandered a while more, watched another day go by, played with the insects and the frogs and the grass in aching, lonely silence before going back to the brook to scrub the mud from his hands.
There must be more to freedom than this, surely?
He was woken from sleep under the stars by a dream of himself rising from the corpse of his disgraced machine, his Pandora, and shedding her like old, dead skin. She was his world for so painfully long, a length of time which had come to define his very existence, and thinking of her again made him feel sick with guilt.
He yearned for people, longed to talk to them like he used to before he carried Warden’s Will and Warden’s Mercy and cast himself in Netherite and rules.
His occupation as a guard dog left its marks on him, his name, his faction, on everything which had once belonged to Sam but now existed under the shadow of The Big, Bad Warden. Regardless, Sam trotted after the flocks with certainty, believing enough time had passed to name himself innocent, as if he had never once with his gleaming white canines chomped down and come away swallowing mouthfuls of cotton and blood; Sam went the mainland like a bad dog expecting a meal and a shepherd's forgiveness upon his return.
He would receive neither.
He snuck under the penumbras, back to the familiar, disastrous civilizations he had ruined himself for, paying mind to keep off the Prime Path as he believed strongly that it was no longer his right to tread it. The planks were Dream's humble beginning and Tommy's road to finish, and The Warden was yet learning how to let go of cold stones which did not benefit him to carry; Sam let his thoughts of Tommy and Dream go and continued to walk the grass.
When he heard people coming, he kept low and quiet and watched their figures soar overhead with Riptide tridents. Once they were gone, Sam ran to a fairy's house, placing rosehips he’d picked onto her front porch and froglights were left for the pale half-frog dawning a fanciful, sentient green hat. A diamond-skinned man received beeswax polish on his doorstep, and Neatherwart sprung up in his husband’s flowerpots as a warm reminder of his homelands. Fish and catnip were left for the upright feline that ran the Animal Sanctuary. For the cold, artificial northern desert, sea salt to keep ice off the roads.
Sam went about his days like this, leaving gifts to the ones he had cherished on doorsteps and windowsills, keeping unseen, for he was afraid of what people might think if they saw him, worn and thin and tattered yet gifting all he could scavenge. For now, he was content leaving offerings as a phantom of the night before returning to his lonesome freedom come daylight.
It was through eavesdropping that he stayed up to date on news and tales and politics. When he heard the announcement for a server-wide meeting amongst the faction, kingdom, and country representatives, Sam let curiosity sway him, and so he went to watch. Only a meager handful had gathered before Eret’s throne room. They ate, drank, danced, gossiped, and were merry despite how often they stabbed, killed, and murdered one another. Feuds were often overlooked and hand-waved in the name of thoughtless partying.
The jukebox music cut when Eret approached the dais where her throne perched. She rang a grand, golden bell. Once all was silent, he spoke. “I have gathered you all here today to discuss our plans for The Prison.”
Wine glasses smashed against the floor as protests, excuses, and finger-pointing erupted. People began to argue. Someone leaped out a window.
“Hey, hey! I’m not accusing anyone of anything! Nobody’s being arrested tonight! Everybody calm down, calm down!”
The crowd settled.
“I’ve called you here to ask what we should do with it. Personally, I say The Prison should remain destroyed. The crater can be an unfortunate reminder of what’s happened there, a monument of our past, and history that will hopefully never be repeated again. Are we all agreed?”
Sam pressed against the glass of the castle window he’d climbed to and peered down at the gathering before the throne, though The Warden staring back at him kept getting in his way. "Move," he hissed, "it's about Pandora. Let me see!" He found a part of the window unoccupied and picked apart the crowd.
Sapnap, representing Kinoko, yawned loudly by the punch bowl. Hannah, representing the Hollow of the Fae, nodded her head, as did Hbomb, Eryn, and some others in white capes dawning Eret's emblem. Ranboo, representing Snowchester in the place of Tubbo, shuffled awkwardly on his feet. Michael McChill was there to represent Serenity, despite it only harboring himself and his robot, Alisa. Ponk, representing… Ponk… was also there, beaming with enthusiasm.
A representative for Las Nevadas was noticeably absent, which was strange considering Quackity’s affiliation with parties and politicking.
As for the rest of the group, they were strangers, creators of countries Sam had never heard of before and of which he didn’t care to know.
None of the crowd spoke against Eret’s suggestion.
“Good. We’re all decided, then. Pandora’s Vault will be left to crumble, never to be rebuilt again. As for the Prison’s first and only warden, Sam has been declared legally dead. It’s unknown how he lost his first two lives, but he likely lost his third when the prison was demolished. If anyone sees a ghost of him, I want it brought to me.”
What could Eret possibly want with him or his ghost, Sam wondered?
“Some would call what happened to Sam justice. He was more than just a misguided soul. He kidnapped and maimed and murdered. With that, I only have one thing to say on the matter.” Eret gave a pregnant pause. “Good riddance.”
No one spoke against it. At first, Sam smiled. Offered a laugh. They were joking—surely joking.
The partying went on, casual, undisturbed.
His smile fell.
Sam climbed down from the window, gritted through the smoke spilling between his teeth, and headed away from the mainland.
Eret was joking. Nobody spoke up against her because they knew she was joking, too!
Either that or Eret didn’t get the true weight of what she was saying! She was the misguided one! Eret got it wrong! Eret was cruel, locking people away to starve 'till the end of the world! Eret was cruel! After everything Sam endured--three years stuck in isolation--did that not make up for anything? Good riddance? Was this really how they chose to greet his demise!
Who knows what they’d do to you if you actually went out to meet them again and call them friends? They’d treat you like some villain, a tyrant, a Dream!
He crashed through the woods, directionless, until he stumbled into blindingly white ice plains. The tundra was the opposite of the cell that had torn him to shreds yet equally cruel. His teeth chattered, his flesh raw from the cold. Drifting snowflakes turned to daggers as he followed whatever trail his feet had stumbled into.
The second you’re out of prison, you run back to them! You leave them gifts! Like they need you! Like they care!
You don’t need them. They never came for you, so why are you there for them?
He was sure he had marched to his doom when a figure appeared, an ugly creature, yellowed with age and marred by untold battles. It was perhaps the biggest Creeper he’d ever laid eye upon.
He flung forward with a maddened howl.
The Creeper dodged him and struck. Hard black talons slammed into his belly, sending him down into the snow where he lay dazed for a heartbeat—two heartbeats—three.
A mob had knocked him down? A mob, spawned from darkness and nothingness? Something so un-noteworthy, so pathetic?
The realization only bruised his ego more.
Hard talons hooked him, raking him back onto his feet before he had the chance to recover himself. He collapsed against an ice spike, bent and quivering. The Creeper’s face held no pity, like redstone machines and cybernetic wardens, it was set to a mean blankness.
Sam pushed off the ice spike. He advanced on marked feet, soles shredded by sharp obsidian. He threw a fist through the air. It collided with nothing. He threw another fist, another. He threw punch after punch, but the Creeper stepped and sidestepped, his swings always missing the mark. He was going to go on like this forever, losing and failing.
Something poisonous flooded his bloodstream, a potent sort that had his head fuzzing out and his limbs failing. He hadn’t swallowed any alcohol, not in very many years, but the understanding that his fate was bound to an endless cycle of destruction had him moving like a drunkard. He stopped throwing his fists straight. He stopped advancing in a line and instead ran in stumbling zig-zags. The rest of the world faded out until it was just him, the Creeper, and burning self-hatred in his veins numbing out the cold.
The Creeper smashed a foot right into his chest. Sam hit the snow and lay limp like a carcass. The mob was no longer ugly to him; it was greater than he was in every aspect. Why could he not carry such strength, such solitude? He worshiped approval like a tick worshiped bare skin and clung.
"Why do I still care?" he asked. The Creeper hooked him up onto his feet, tossing him again. Sam slammed back against the ice spike. “And what will it take? What does forgiveness take?! How does a sinner drag redemption down by its horns and make it theirs? How!”
The mob rattled, digging its talons into the earth.
Sam ran at it again, swinging and missing. "Who do I pray to? What deal must I make?" A hard foot of gristle pinned him. Weight crashed down into his ribs and he dug his claws into hard talons, scratching uselessly.
The Creeper ground him harder into the frost and Sam screamed as his ribs bowed dangerously far, wriggling like a worm under the pressure.
“They have to forgive me after breaking me like this! There has to be a reason for these long years of suffering! Pandora's death should have been enough to satiate them, but they continue to scrutinize me! Please, tell me they know I still have a shred of light left! Give me the answer to salvation, or is it a query to go unanswered? Do the Gods and the people relish in my torture like sick dogs!”
The weight lifted.
"If that is the case," Sam sucked air back into his lungs, now coming out hard with exhaustion and laughter, "then I've found my own conclusion. An atheist does not need to fear Gods and judgment. I am not a sinner if I do not believe! I do not need their insipid forgiveness! We are all profane animals abandoned by our creators! No better than Creepers wandering the tundra alone!"
He rolled onto his side, fighting to get up again, but the Creeper took him by the back of the shirt, dragging him off like freshly caught prey.
He scrambled to escape, refusing to submit and die in such a manner, fighting like a beast for its worthless, inhuman life, godless and blameless of it's own cruelty for it was only born that way.
More laughter squeezed out from between his busted ribs. "You can't! You can't do anything which hasn't already been done before!" This monster could not harm him any more than he had already been harmed. He could not be bled dry any more than he already had been bled throughout his days of confinement. No wound would hurt as terribly as the ones he had inflicted upon himself while protecting and serving the people who now wished him gone.
Sam was dragged across a slush pool, where the Creeper dropped his vile form. He stared into the dark reflection the water offered. There The Warden was again. His hair fell limp and choppy around his pointed ears. He’d sawed through the locks with an old knife back in Serenity. His open eye socket wept odd secretions of muddied pus and thin blood.
He turned from the mirror surface of the pool to look upon the mob of gold. "If they find my corpse mauled on the ice, will they at least feel guilty? It doesn't matter, does it? I no longer care what they think, and I know you don't give two damns who or what I am or what damage I've caused."
The Creeper released a puff of frost, blowing snowflakes away from its face.
"I'm tired of hearing the echoes of prison alarms. I'm tired of gifting my servitude. I'm tired of failing." Sam raised his chin from his chest, "If I am not a Warden of God, keeping evil at bay, and if I am hated by people I intended to save, then I am a faithless animal."
The mob snarled deep and chest-rattling. Its dark eyes pierced him to his wretched soul.
Whatever it found at the core of him had recognition seeping over the place of hatred, for it's anger quelled.
The mob backed off and turned away, leaving deep imprints behind, and as quickly as it had emerged from the white flurry, it began to disappear into it.
Sam could have accepted death, because to be left alone again was a far, far worse end. "Wait!"
Sam stood from the slush.
Took a step toward.
When the Creeper made no move to stop him or attack him, he stepped closer, and closer, and closer.
Before he knew it, he was following the mob like its lost pup or kit or whatever their children were called. Given he had nothing left to return to and no one who wanted him, Sam felt similar to an orphaned child, scared, lost, alone, and looking for a source of strength to latch onto.
His guardian of choice: the giant, mangled Creeper, standing unabashed, in all of its old and golden glory.
They wandered the expanse of tundra, passing polar bears and snow rabbits. The Creeper stopped after an hour of marching, circling a break in glassy blue ice. Black waters foamed and lapped at the edges of the fissure as if trying to get free and drag them under.
The Creeper used its talons to scrape at the sides. Chunk by chunk the fissure grew until it was big enough to hold a wooden boat. The mob sat beside the freshly scraped ice, peering down. Sam, despite how freezing he was, crouched there across from it. He must have already lost his nose, ears, and all ten of his fingers to the frost because he couldn’t feel them anymore. Sam was certain the cold would pick him apart until there weren’t any nerves left.
His eyelids drooped and he started to nod off. Maybe this time, the Creeper was actually trying to kill him, and it would dump his body into the ice hole the second he passed out in the snow.
Sam was about to give in when something splashed beneath the sea foam. Water hissed into his face, and he yelped, scrambling away.
The Creeper jerked toward the source of the geyser. It launched with talons and teeth, hooking something out of the water and throwing it with insane strength onto the ice.
The slippery thing flopped onto the snow clicking and screaming.
With shocking speed, The Creeper crashed its weight down on its head and Sam heard a solid CRACK.
He blinked ice from his lashes in awe. The Creeper had snagged a dolphin as it was breaching for air, and now the mob bent down and tore a chunk of meat from the carcass’s side. It ripped out another mouthful and swallowed it with a wet gulp.
On the third bite, the Creeper slipped back a pace from the dolphin, inclining its head toward him.
Was it a trick? Sam swallowed the saliva that gathered in his mouth. He’d never thought about eating a dolphin before, but he suddenly recognized how hungry he was. He could eat anything—anything.
He inched over to the mob, eyeing it. It made no move to stop him or attack him, so he grabbed a steel knife he’d taken from Michael Mcchill’s base and used it to cut a slab out of the meat. It was cold and chewy and bloody, but he was too hungry to mind.
When they’d both eaten their fill, the Creeper turned away from the carcass and started walking elsewhere.
Sam leaped to his feet, wiping dolphin blood from his face. The mob led him off the ice, away from the spraying ocean and back onto half-solid snow.
They stopped to drink from a pile of slush. The ice water hit his belly like a kick in the guts, making him shiver harder. A gristle foot batted him away from the pool. “What, what? I’m thirsty!”
He went to drink more but a familiar HSSST made him jump away, anticipating the blow of triggered gunpowder. Instead, a breath of hot steam blew into his face. It melted the ice clinging to his lashes and Sam blinked droplets away.
The Creeper shook in place before him, aglow in the stomach. It took in another mouthful of water, hissing through the tube of its throat. Then, it lurched forward, expelling steam and water from its gullet. Sam stared down at the misting water, expecting to see chunks of dolphin swimming in bile, but it was crystal clear. The heat melted the snow into a generous, warm puddle.
The Creeper snorted a puff of steam and inclined its head toward the hot pool, then toward him again.
“Uh. I'm good. Thanks.” Thirsty or not, there was no way was he going to drink anything a Creeper had spat out...
He sat back and watched the mob drink from the steaming pool, wondering why Creepers were even capable of boiling water. What evolutionary purpose did it serve? Was it to stay warm, or to burn out parasites? Beyond water, maybe it was used on food, to cook and cure meat inside of their own bodies. The organs Creepers used to explode, utilized like a furnace... Sam would be lying if he said that didn’t fascinate him. Nightmares of bloody, gunpowder destruction had plagued him since he was a boy old enough to dream up such nightmares. Now, he mused if these organs—the saltpeter-laced guts he’d feared within himself for so long—were for more than just detonation.
Sam sat by the hot water pool, bringing his fingers close enough to feel its heat. It brought the smallest bit of feeling back to his frozen nerves.
The Creeper rose and dug once more into the snow. This time, it tunneled, scraping out a den with its talons.
He called out over the wind, “Can you teach me?”
The mob paused in its digging.
“Can you? You’re living proof that not all Creepers end in explosions.” Sam dropped onto his elbows, pressing his crown to the snow. He bowed with all the respect he could muster to this proud mob. “So please, teach me. Teach me how to exist again, outside of obsidian walls. Please.”
The Creeper offered only a puff of steam. It continued to dig.
Sam raised himself, face going hot. How much of an idiot was he, asking a mob to teach him how to live? They couldn’t be anything more than creatures raised from lightless swathes, carrying fire in their chests. Self-destruction was part of the design, and the point was to die and take as many down with them as they could.
And yet…
And yet this Creeper hasn’t destroyed itself. Or me.
Sam pushed through his shame, swearing to learn as much as possible from the yellowed Creeper. He would learn how to exist for himself and succeed.
When the Creeper finished digging, it nudged into the den it had carved out of the snow. Sam followed, squishing in beside it. The space was just barely big enough for them both to nestle in.
He laid beside the Creeper and shuffled back until their spines touched. The mob was like a campfire, golden and inviting after freezing for so long.
Sam fell asleep, buried under winter.
When he awoke, he was still warm, but now he was all alone. He scrambled out of the den in search of his companion. He glimpsed metallic gold amidst the ice and sighed in relief. The mob dug by the roots of a spindly, ice-bitten tree to uncover its dropped branches. With gentle teeth, it bent down and unearthed a red bulb before swallowing it whole.
Sam sat down beside the Creeper. He plucked a fallen rosehip from the earth and took a bite, basking in the sweetness. Hannah had told him all about them once, though now he didn’t remember much other than they were nutritious and sweet.
When they finished their breakfast of rose fruits, the Creeper marched on into the tundra.
Sam walked in the snow trench it left behind, so its footprints became his footprints.
The nights and days passed both hurried and unhurried, peaceful, listless meandering mixed with the anxieties of survival, of teaching, of sparring, of denning and dreamless sleep.
On a moonless night, Sam once again fought the Creeper. What followed was a barrage of fists and claws. The Creeper’s talons slammed into his bones like spear tips, a sliver too blunt to pierce skin, though they left welts and bruises behind.
After weeks of getting his ass handed to him, he was finally tuning back into the rhythms of battle, knuckles at last hitting their marks.
The Creeper was fast, but he was smaller, which was a rarity for him when it came to sparring partners. He fell into a pattern of weave, strike, weave. At last, he managed to deliver a hard blow into plated breastbone, but there wasn't so much as a blink from his opponent.
Sam paused in his footwork and shook his hand out. “Oh my god, you’re, like, made of metal!”
The Creeper snorted steam.
“Oh, c’mon! I did get you good that time! If you had human bones, you’d be a goner for sure!” Sam buffeted the air with fast strikes. The adrenaline was still pumping. Unlike previous nights, he had energy to spare. “I think we should hunt for real today—we should—we should kill something that can actually fight back! I could eat a whole polar bear!” He gasped. “Yesss! Let’s go! Let’s go hunt and fight some polar bears right now—!”
A stiff leg stopped him before he could run off.
“Oh, c’mon! Please, Oldie, pleeeease let’s go hunt some bears!” Sam indulged in the ways of boyishness. After everything, he felt he earned a little immaturity; he certainly didn't feel as wise or sure of himself these days to consider himself as mature as Oldie. The Creeper had shown him so many things in such a short amount of time that it only cemented how little he knew.
The Creeper butted him back toward the den it had already dug out for the night, ignoring his proposal.
“But you could teach me Creeper hunting tricks and Creeper killing techniques and—and that’d be so cool and—!”
A taloned foot shoved him hard enough to send him tumbling.
“Alright, alright!” Sam threw up his arms in defeat. “I’m going!”
They entered under the snow and the Creeper pulled him into its warm chest.
“I did get a pretty good hit in! I mean, I’m getting better, right? Like, way better?” He blushed and pinned his ears back. He felt stupid, asking for praise from a Creeper. “That’s—that’s good, right?”
The Creeper yawned.
“Okay. G’night then.”
Sam curled up into a ball against the mob. He whispered to the painful silence, in the same way Ponk used to whenever she stayed at his place for sleepovers, “G’night, Sammy.” Then he stared into the dark until sleep found him.
When he arose the next morning, he was shivering.
Sam tried to scoot back to find the warmth of Oldie, but it wasn’t there. The den was empty, and he was alone.
Sam clambered outside, searching for golden scales like usual, but he didn’t find any.
“Oldie. Oldie?”
He raced off into the tundra in search of it. The cold was harsh today. Wind buffeted snowflakes into his face.
“Oldie!”
They’d been together for weeks. Oldie had never traveled so far without him before. Something bad must have happened.
Even as his limbs began to burn, he didn’t stop. He trudged on until the day turned back to night. The temperature plunged, and he was so ice-bitten that he couldn’t feel his limbs anymore.
Sam swayed on his feet, dark spots clouding his vision until he collapsed into a bundle of frosted thorns and rosehips.
When she had first seen him, she thought he was a human. He stood like one and attacked like one, yet when she batted him down, she smelled gunpowder in his wounds. It was lucky he had bled. Otherwise, she would have never realized he was Creeperborne like she was. She looked upon the shivering thing and decided to teach him what it meant to be born of fire and gunpowder.
He was stupid to the ways of survival, but she was patient. She would tutor him in the Creeper ways and then leave him be to survive on his own. Solitude was the lifestyle of all Creepers, but they stayed loyal to each other, united in fire and soil.
She had shown him how to den, how to melt snow into water with one’s gut-fire, how to forage, how to fight, and how to scrape out ice holes to fish for dolphins.
When she knew he was ready to face the tundra by himself, she’d taken her leave. She spent several hours wandering through the snowfall, digging through the ice for sprigs to chew on. When night came, she dug a den and settled down to sleep away the worst hours of the cold.
It was strange without the presence of the half-Creeper. However, she would grow used to being alone again, as she was sure the half-blood would grow used to it.
A layer of snow covered the entrance to her den when she awoke, telling of a hard snowfall in the night. She dug out and marched to the icy seas. Today, she would try for a dolphin.
On the way, she caught a waft of rosehips. Among the sweet scent was the tang of blood. Not the blood of prey, but the life essence of another Creeper. She smelled the gunpowder and smoke, yet something more beneath it. Something human.
Surely, it couldn’t be him. He had been ready; she’d made certain of it!
Yet when she followed the scent trail, there he was, collapsed like a broken bird in the brambles, covered in ice and a blanket of snow. She came near, scenting the fires of life still smoldering in his gut. It was a miracle that he wasn’t dead.
She dug him out of the thorns and snow and took his scruff into her mouth. He smelled of illness and rot. The ice had clawed back the scabs of his missing eye, blood weeping from his face.
Why had he not dug a den? She had taught him how. Surely, he was not so dumb as to wander the tundra at night for no good reason!
Had he gone looking for her?
Once again, she was confused by him. Poor, stupid creature! They were solitary mobs. They took pride in it, or at least they were supposed to. The young Creeperborne didn’t seem to know, constantly crying out for her when he lost her and following her around, snuggling up with her in the den.
The Creeperborne was not fit for a mob lifestyle on the ice. He wouldn’t survive without her to heat his water, warm his den, and find him meals. If she could not teach him the solitary ways of their blood, then a pack would best suit him.
She pulled the half-Creeper out of the tundra and toward the spruce woods.
The snow thinned until grass crunched under her talons.
She heard the creatures she was seeking before she saw them, howling pretty songs to the sky, and deposited him onto a bed of bracken. There, she waited for the beasts to come down and investigate his odd scent. When she was certain they were near enough to find him, she hurried back to her piece of the tundra.
There was rumor of an old wolf on the mountainside who sang tales of men and dawned a yellow rope around her neck.
Perhaps this old wolf would be kind enough to take him under her wing.