The tufts upon the moon girl's ears twitched. He watched the lynx-like strands as her ears swiveled and head turned.

His name falls from her mouth in a breath. Easy, relaxed, and without scorn. He wondered then what was it that made the girl fond of him. Nutuyikruk herself had not been spared from his barbed tongue. Rather, she was perhaps one of the first to be draped across coals by his teeth.

The moon girl stood in the hole carved by her own efforts. Mud speckled her underside, gathering most on the curve of her belly and collecting between white toes. She tided herself and the space in a quick, easy motion. It did not take more for her than the first thought to tidy up, it was second nature. Or so what he assumed as he observed the girl.

The night's gloom did little to obscure the swell of her sides. Even if it did, the change in her scent was all he needed to know that she too was to be a mother. Some unidentifiable bittered his tongue. He simply swallowed it, as he did most other things.

Why do you do this on your own?

Aivar had filled her with pups, did he not care to make a safe place for them to be whelped? It was easy to "other" the stormcoat within his mind. Aivar did not make waves with his arrival to the Saastine. None that carried out in his favor, anyway.

Caan stepped forward to the edge of the inlet carved into the earth. Nutuyikruk made this scrape within a clearing. His gaze traveled upward, studying how the moon's glow fell through the boughs in shafts of silver light.

It was already May. Many cows in the herd had calved, though some still stood with swollen flanks. It could not be trusted that a heavy snowfall would return to supply the girl with all of the building material need for a snow shelter. What snow remain in the shadowed stretches of the woodland was packed with water. Damp and laden with crystals of ice. Moving the snow may very well turn whatever shelter the girl made into a bogged down mess.

You may not be able to make a true snow shelter.