Zalen had decided to roam this day. After the rains of yesterday and being cooped up in his den the young wolf felt the need to stretch his tired muscles and renew his moldy bones. To do this he had shifted from his usual quadruped form to the two legged Optime, one he rarely used when patrolling. But today he felt like taking his time and had walked two-legged past the outskirts of his territory. He was careful to edge Lucia’s boundaries, he did not want to disturb her this day, he had other things in mind.
It had been two months’ time now since he had seen the ebon wolfess named Soran, who had kindled his interest in the written word. Two months now he had struggled on his own to comprehend the hume writing and reading and he believed that he now had a solid grasp on them. He knew the children’s stories by heart now, cover to cover he had read the books she had given him and he had recently acquired another book in his journey to Halifax. It was a book of poetry, a beautiful hume prose that he could barely understand but delighted in. He wished to share it with Soran if he could find her, and therefore he was headed to where he had last encountered her scent; the Dampwoods.
He had guessed that she had left living there some time ago, for her scent trail had grown cold, so he knew there was little hope in finding her. But perhaps if he investigated a little further he might find a clue as to where she had gone off to. Zalen was thinking these things when he finally caught wind of her, and to his surprise the smell was fresh, almost as if she were standing mere yards away from him! He paused and took a good look around; the afternoon was warm and golden in the sunlight, the dappled forest floor smelt musty from the perciptation of the day before, high above a hawk circled. As his eyesight moved up to look at the bird of prey more closely, he heard a ringing of metal against metal to his right. He turned and sitting in a branch was the female he was searching for, what luck! He trotted quickly to the base of the tree, Ho there, Soran!
.zalen-widow b {font-weight:bold; color:#7b6653; letter-spacing:1px; text-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.2em #3e250f; }
.zalen-widow p {text-indent:0px; padding:5px 16px; margin:0px;}
.zalen-widow {margin:0 auto; width:440px; background-color:#110f0f; background-image:url(http://i51.tinypic.com/66epvr.png); background-position:top center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:1px solid #0b052c; padding: 240px 0px 7px 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size:12px; color:#4f3f31; text-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.2em #; letter-spacing:.6px; word-spacing:.9x; line-height:13.3px; text-align:justify;}
.zalen-widow p b:before { content: open-quote; }
.zalen-widow p b:after {content: close-quote; }
</style>
[/html]