Something was coming, then it was there.
Recognition sprouted ears on his head and stood them at attention.
A latch clicked in the wolf’s mind and he tensed.
He was not alone.
A voice spoke inside him.
A voice familiar, yet different.
Valentina and Dancer sat besidethe cabin hearth toasting bread on long forks and drinking cheap wine from tin mugs.
Valentina pointed.
“That is too close. You are going to burn it.”
“Ah, my word, do forgive me if I’m not used to toasting my bread in this very modern, normal, and typical way you’ve chosen. Gosh, maybe if I had remembered to bring my own long bread fork, I’d be having more luck…you absolute wing nut.”
Valentina smirked.
“Glass houses, Ms. Dancer.”
Dancer raised her mug to her host and Valentina clinked her own against it.
“Is this a funeral, Val? I mean, is this funerary bread I’m toasting? Is that why we’re drinking wine? Wine seems like a church drink tome.”
Valentina watched the fire. She had told Dancer the story of Green and the fawn a year earlier, but the story did not answer this question.
“I suppose,” she said. “Perhaps it should be. He is more absent than if he were simply dead.”
“Hell’s bells, Val. If you’re gonna say stuff like that, you really need to let me switch to whiskey. I brought some.”
Valentina pointed at the fire and Dancer saw that her bread had charred black.
“Aw, crackers.”
She drew out the fork, examined the smoking wreckage, and tossed the slice into the embers.
“You know, if those solar panels of yours aren’t powerful enough to operate a toaster, we can run electric out here. I’m sure I’ve offered before.”
Valentina handed her a new slice of bread.
“I have all the electricity I need, thank you. Toast it slowly.”
Dancer grimaced through a sip of wine and skewered her new slice.
“I get that wine was all they had in Bible times or whatnot, but, not unlike toasters, the technology has improved in ways that might surprise you.”
She crossed her legs, propped her toasting fork on the toe of one boot, and positioned her bread too near the fire again.
“Green was nice, wasn’t he?” Dancer said. “The sort of nice that seems like it isn’t taking much effort to perform.”
“He was.”
“ ’Course, he was scared witless half the time I knew him.”
“He was that, too, yes.”
