I should note, that though I refer to Finn in writing as “she”, she firmly believes she’s male due to some mental trauma that occurred sometime between 2009 and present day.
Finn spared a brief, grateful half-bow before tearing into the meat. The taste brought a grin to her mangled maw, and she gulped down a few hunks rapidly, yet neatly. The food filled her belly, and from there warmth began to radiate outwards, through her chest and haunches to her legs and toes. Finn wriggled the latter experimentally. The ones she had lost were bare of fur, so she always had to be careful lest the stumps catch frostbite. She felt the cold too on the scars across her back and sides, but at least the tissue was thicker there and the stinging pain less immediate.
“Thank you,” Finn said once she had finished, licking the last flecks of blood from her lips and gristle from between her teeth. “I am Finn, son of Cuhlain Fidh.” She rose, wobbling, to her feet and sketched out another bow, Naniko’s words rustling about her brain as she did so. A guide and sustenance would be nice, but the winter was far from over and Finn knew that as soon as she left she’d be back to square one. And that time, if she didn’t run across the kindness of strangers again, she might not be so lucky.
Now, Finn was an easygoing wolf, but she wasn’t the kind to go gently into that goodnight, and thus, though fear still crackled along her nerves at the sight of Naniko, singing the song of flight, her brain had different plans. “I don’t suppose… I could stay here? Only for the winter, I mean, and then I’d be gone.” She shuffled her paws in the snow, vaguely embarrassed at how hopeless her lot in life had become. “My thin sides may suggest I am no hunter, but I work well enough with small game, when there is some.”
“I know some amount of medicine too, and I have a memory second to none.” She continued, perking up slightly. Perhaps she should have been more humble, but it was true. Finn could take one glance at a forest and tell you what type of trees filled it and a (usually quite accurate) estimate of how many there were. “I also know many stories, and I’m sure they would be a welcome thing to listen to on a cold night.” Finished singing her praises, Finn fell silent, awaiting Naniko’s judgement. She knew she had no right asking for a place to stay, another mouth in the midst of a harsh winter was not something oft smiled upon, but she had to take a chance.
If not, if Naniko dismissed her and sent her packing, it would be hard but nothing new. Finn was used to being chased off, though she would be hasty to assert that none of the scars she gained were from fleeing a battle. The wind moaned between the trees and Finn shuddered. Lately, it felt like all she knew was cold, it had filled her bones and chilled her blood and blew through her until the point that it seemed she was just another snowdrift, albeit one that could walk and talk. She had no memory of the warmth of sunlight, or fresh grass, or a blue sky. It was all just grey, grey grey, and the she-wolf was sick and tired of it.