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The sable hybrid herself had caught the trespasser. It was lucky for Eris the woman was elderly and frail, more confused than aggressive. The sable coyote had convinced her along further into Salsola's lands, all the way to the Millstone Village, and upon finding a suitable basement, had tossed her there rather unceremoniously. The door locked behind her, Eris had no fears of the old woman escaping -- she was not quite so old as Eris's own mother, but there were years yet on the old coyote, and she had trespassed. By rights, she belonged to Salsola now.
Whether she lived or died depended entirely on just how useful she was. Salsola could not sustain a useless elderly slave; the coyote would have to prove her skills in some area that the pack would benefit from. The emptiness of their slave caste had driven the sable Auxiliary to capture the woman rather than kill her outright. Such a weak slave, while perhaps not physically optimal, would find escape difficult. It would be rougher, however, convincing the old coyote that she belonged in the slave's castes. Perhaps if they were not too rough on her, the trespasser would see it as a mutually beneficial arrangement. Some packs, after all, would cast out the elderly as completely useless.
The appearance of one trespasser had set the leader on edge, however, and she quickly returned to the river border, tracking the coyote's scent over it and into the marshy wastes. The earth was vaguely damp with the brief sunshowers that had occurred later in the afternoon, and the scent wasn't sticking as well as it might have on a dry earth. Before long, however, the sable hybrid had caught a new scent, carried toward her on a soft, barely-there breeze. Narrowing her chartreuse eyes, the sable wolf stepped forward, driftwood staff in her hands, and prepared to face whoever would approach their borders. Perhaps a companion of the newest slave-addition to the pack, perhaps another stupid and confused traveler, stranger to the coyote slave.
The hybrid stepped forward, an unfriendly glower plastered to her sable features. A faintly reddish canine moved a good fifty yards away, though her direction was toward Eris and toward Salsola.
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