She awoke with a start, her body convulsing for a split second as she came out of the nightmare she'd been caught up in. In the dream she had been trying to run from Salvia, her littermate and favored child of their mother. Salvia had been part of the reason why she had left altogether; Wretch had been training with Gideon daily to become stronger so that she would never come out of a fight so badly again. Her littermate had broken her leg and bitten her several times, which had made Wretch's entire puppyhood rather dismal. She'd been stuck inside without much contact with anyone else other than Saul. He had been her world. Still was, in fact.
She had to get used to the idea that Saul had other children...adoptive brothers and sisters who were younger than her. And that he now had a mate. She couldn't believe that so much had changed since they'd become separated. Wretch had refused the invitation to sleep in the village, wanting to take a day to really go around and choose her living quarters. So she had slept in the wagon, which they had parked outside of the horse barns, atop hay-stuffed pillows that made her eyes itch and nose twitch as they always had. It was something familiar, anyway. She was having a hard time accepting the changes that had come about since her departure, and it felt nice to have something that smelled like their homeland to sleep on.
A loud squeal broke the silence around her, and she heard her horse Tyr wake up and shuffle about in his stall in surprise. Wretch sat upright, blinking in the darkness for a few moments before shuffling toward the rear end of the wagon and using the ladder to exit it. She headed toward the sound in the darkness, sniffing at the breeze. She could smell blood...but there was something else, too. She found the source of the squeals before long; a fox had gotten its leg stuck in a patch of vines growing along the ground but had just tried to keep going. It appeared that it had broken something; its leg was stuck at a weird angle, the fire-colored creature struggling and giving loud, frightening squeals.
Wretch moved quickly and quietly. She wasn't that much larger than the shocked, pained creature but she used her hands as an advantage. She gripped the fox beneath its neck and underneath its stomach, turning it to the side and lowering it so that she could pull it backward and get the leg out of the cluster of vines. It did not like this and fought her every step of the way, reaching around to try and bite and claw at her with its good front foot. Quit that. Be sensible. She demanded, popping it over the head with one hand. It stopped in its movements then, simply staring at her with wide golden eyes that reflected the colors of the sunrise overhead. She picked the beast up, beginning to walk back to the safety of the barn, where she could deal with the beast in peace.
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