Apollo stopped to look at the white picket fence, noticing just how vibrant the starch color was against the backdrop of green vegetation. He cocked his head to the side, wondering who had been the one to put this fence here and why. It surely blocked people from getting in and out, but the Twilight Vale wolves were always coming and going from the mansion. Maybe it protected them from the bad animals in the wild. Like the bears or moose. He wasn’t sure. But in a way he admired its starch white boldness. He wanted to be like the fence – defiant and stable. And in a way he was - Purpose unknown, but acknowledged all the same.



He wanted to find Savina, who had offered to teach him so more Italian. Naniko had started telling Sirius and Apollo all about new languages when they had been a bit younger, but Apollo only ever really caught on with Italian. He liked the way it sounded to him. French he just found irritating. It bothered him that Sirius knew how to say phrases in French, while Apollo didn’t. Either way, it didn’t motivate him to learn it. He would stick to Italian. It fell from his tongue much easier anyways.



"Savina!" He called out in a voice that clearly belonged to a youth. It was high and soft, suitable for the body that produced it. One day it would grow lower and powerful, but that would not be for months. "Prossimo incontrarlo dal recinto!"

Apollo turned away from the fence to stare up at the large mansion. He couldn’t be sure if that’s where Savina was, but he watched it all the same. It loomed so large and grand out here in the middle of the lush wilderness. He really admired the building, and Twilight Vale in general. He couldn’t see why Sirius would want to leave. Even if he didn’t like being trapped in the room. Twilight Vale was their home. At least, that was how Apollo felt.



He sat down on his bottom, his short puppy legs falling to his sides. He couldn’t wait until he was older and could shift like all of the adults. Four legs got boring after a while. As the grass blew in the wind, Apollo looked up to discover Savina coming down towards him. The white picket fence loomed behind him. "Ciao Savina. Sì, sono buono." He knew very basic Italian (possibly more than Sirius, he wasn’t sure), but he could figure out the gist of what others were saying. The other day when he had discovered Sirius with Savina, he hadn’t understood exactly what Savina had said to him. Either way, he had a general sense of what she meant. Hopefully after a few lessons he would really be able to catch on.



"Well, I dunno. I mean, I can say some things, but not everything. Naniko only taught us easy things ‘cause she was also doing other languages too, like French. But I don’t really like French that much. She taught us the alphabet and how to say all the letters. And then she taught us words like ‘hello’." He wasn’t explaining the extent to what she had taught them very well, but he was only a child. After they got into the lesson, Savina would probably figure out what needed work, and what didn’t.

He wondered why he felt so much resentment towards his father. He knew that Pilot was the leader of another pack and he had accepted the fact that his was Apollo’s true father, but still the white pup felt distant. Pilot had come to visit Sirius and Apollo several times after he had discovered they were living in Twilight Vale. He would talk with his father about whatever he decided to bring up, but he still felt a distance between them. He didn’t feel any real bond with him, besides the fact that Pilot’s blood ran through his veins.



He had had several replacement parents – Deuce, Lucifer, Naniko, Conri – but he still felt as if he was alone. He saw them all as familiar faces, pack members, friends, perhaps, but not a true family. He had this idea in his head that he was a loner. Sirius didn’t count. Now that the youth had gotten a bit older, he no longer followed Sirius around cowering behind his legs. He was the bigger of the two, but had always been more reserved. Now that he had made up his mind that he was a loner, he had decided that he would need to take responsibility for himself. Even if he was still only a small child.



He wandered over to the illustrations and looked down into the dirt. She had sketched out several drawings – some which he identified instantly in his head. "Un orso," he spoke as his mismatched eyes started with the bear. She had done a rather good job drawing that one. He moved his gaze to a new drawing. "Un uccello." He didn’t know the word for raven, and he wouldn’t have known that that was what it was either way. He was satisfied that he had gotten that correct and moved on to the next one. "Un albero." He didn’t know what the word for river was, though. Instead he told her, "Acqua."



The next illustrations were a bit more challenging. The words were more complicated and the depictions weren’t as simple to identify. Next was a drawing of the coast. He sat and looked at it for a while, an eyebrow rising in concentration. He finally decided on a phrase, "Il puntello," to describe it. "La nostra casa," he said with a grin. "Colline," he said for the mountain, but pronounced the word wrong. He knew that it was a picture of a mountain, but wasn’t sure how to say it.



He reclined to his haunches and stared at the last one with his mismatched gaze. It looked like waves – rippled lines to demonstrate the wind. He wondered out loud, "Acqua o aria?" Then he decided that it was wind and not waves. "Aria," he said affirmatively.

"Fiume," he nodded. It only took a few pronunciations and the youngster had it down. For some reason this language came quite natural to him. It was a welcomed relief, considering Sirius always seemed to be the one who was good at everything. Italian was something Apollo would hold onto, and hopefully become better than Sirius at.



The coast was pretty self explanatory and he nodded at her instructions. He mumbled the word under his breath, reassuring his memory as he gaze went to the next illustration. It was the mansion. He had told her casa, though she revealed it was castello for mansion. "Montagna for mountain," he said out loud, confirming what Savina told him. It was interesting to discover the appropriate words and names for these things that he saw in his everyday life. "Vento," he said, for the drawing of the wind. That made sense. It was like a vent – they had those in the house and they let air into the different rooms. He didn’t know it, but he had come to realize there were several cognates of English words in Italian.



"Thanks, Savina. I’m not sure if I’m a good drawer, but here ‘goes." Since Apollo was still a pup and not able to shift into an Optime form, he drug his paw in the dirt to sketch out images. They were rougher than Savina’s… and his youthful lack of skill was definitely evident. He drew only a few pictures. A coyote, a squirrel, a rather bad representation of a sunset, a book, and a moose. He grinned up at Savina, enjoying this scholarly game of Pictionary.

He was surprised to find that the word for coyote was the same in Italian. He said coyote in his head anyways, as if trying to confirm that it was the correct pronunciation. He looked to the next picture – a squirrel – and grinned when Savina told him the word in Italian for this creature. "Scoiattolo means squirrel," he said aloud, then saying it once again in his head, mouthing the syllables as he did.



He moved with Savina as they looked to his next drawing. It was kind of horrible, but Apollo was thrilled that she had deciphered the concept he was trying to portray. The word for sunset was tramonto. Apollo repeated it aloud twice, before letting his eyes travel to the next illustration. "Libro is for book. Kinda like library," which supposedly they had in Shadowed Sun. His dad had mentioned it once on one of his trips to visit Apollo. Apparently it was an underground den hidden beneath the roots of a tree where they stored all of their books and reference guides.



Apollo laughed when they came to the last picture. He had only seen a moose in real life once, when he had been a little bit smaller too. It was a huge creature with a large rack of antlers on top of its head. It was probably the biggest living thing that Apollo had ever seen before. He marveled at its size before it offered a strange noise (sort of a bellow) and took of stampeding through the trees. The antlers on top of his illustrated moose’s head were uncharacteristically large and the picture made him giggle. "Alce," he said, trying to pronounce it just as Savina had. "Alce is for moose."



"Alright," Apollo replied as he watched Savina draw new images into the dirt. He grinned to himself, trying to figure out what the actions were while she finished drawing them. "‘Hokay, well, let’s see." He twisted his nose and studied the dirt, deciding on the word for the first one. "Quello è qualcuno che funziona," he replied in an Italian phrase. He smiled to himself, proud for having figured it out. "E quello è qualcuno nuoto nell'acqua." He hadn’t been swimming before, but he had seen others do it. "E saltare. E, uh, qualcuno che sia… l'OH, so, arrampicandomi!" He knew what the next drawing was illustrating, but wasn’t sure how to say it. "They’re howling, but I don’t know how in Italian. How do you say it? And then the last one the two of them are playing. Gioco."

"Ululare," Apollo repeated, listening to Savina’s phrase. "Oh I see," he responded with a grin, glad that he was catching on and that he would now know how to say these words he hadn’t known before. He hoped that after more lessons with both Savina and Naniko, Apollo would be fluent in the language to an extent where he could elaborate on his words. Right now he new very basic sentences, but he hoped eventually he would be able to speak much more of the language.



"Alright, let’s see here." He had to think for a moment about what he did and didn’t know how to say. He tried to think of a basic conversation one may have, so he could try to identify words he didn’t know. He began drawing in the dirt, but only drew a few things. He would need to let what he had learned already sink in before they could continue much more of their lessons. He drew a solitary wolf and then a pack of wolves off to the side. He wanted to know what the Italians would call someone alone – an outlaw of sorts. Then the pup drew a very crude illustration of a mattress like the one he slept on in the manor. Lastly he drew a fish and smiled up at Savina to signal that he was finished.



He wondered if Sirius was continuing his lessons with Naniko. His brother had been learning both Italian and French, but Apollo never really took a likening toward French. It was too confusing for him and he didn’t like the way that the words sound. He knew that Sirius was proud for being able to speak more than Apollo, but he was happy himself that he knew more in Italian that his brother probably did.

"Yes, I was thinking of a loner," Apollo told Savina, proud of himself for having drawn something that she was able to decipher. He repeated the words she told him – "Un solitario. Un solitario. Materasso. Materasso. Pesce." His favorite was the word for fish. He liked the way it rolled on his tongue, forcing him to speak with an Italian accent. This language was delicious in his mouth.



"Thanks, Savina! This was fun. We should definitely start conversations in our next lesson. I really want to get good at Italian." So I can be better then Sirius is, he thought. He smiled up at her, grateful that she had offered him some help. "I’m gonna go play now." He informed her, giving her one last toothy grin, before turning and deciding to bound off down away from the manor’s white picket fence.