Lone Wolf

Faolan, yours doesn't."
    "I'm just like you, Thunderheart."
    "No, you're different. I sense you are not going to sleep as deeply as I do."
    "I'll try. I promise!"
    "You can try all you want. But that doesn't matter. You will most likely grow bored here." She glanced around at the tunnel.
    "Oh, no! No, I won't! I love to watch you sleep."
    Thunderheart lifted a paw to silence him.
    "Don't interrupt. You're big now. You will get hungry. All I am saying is that if you grow hungry and bored, you have my permission to go out. Snow rabbits are plentiful here. They don't sleep. I am sure of that."
    Faolan was suddenly alarmed. "Are you saying I am like a snow rabbit? Are you telling me to go play with a snow rabbit?" His voice seethed with indignation.
    "Faolan!" Thunderheart roared, and the lava rock walls of the tunnel shivered. "Don't act stupid. I'm telling you to go out and kill the rabbit, eat it. Not play with it!"
    "Oh!" said Faolan meekly.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    ***
    THE WINTER DEN

    IT WAS NOT LONG AFTER THE wolf and the grizzly moved into the winter den that Thunderheart began the cold sleep. In the beginning, it was just short snoozes and she often told Faolan to go out and scour the slope for rabbits and marmots. She wanted to get him used to going out alone. He would always bring some meat back for Thunderheart in his gut. He had learned through some primal instinct that the large chunks of meat that lodged in his first stomach could be regurgitated in steaming piles on the floor of the den for Thunderheart. The first time he did this, she roused herself from the thick blanket of sleep in which she was folded, but it became more and more difficult to wake her after the first heavy snowfall. Thunderheart slept so deeply that, just as she had explained to Faolan, her immense  heart began to beat slower and more quietly. It was as if a deep hush had fallen upon her and she sank deeper and deeper into an insensate sleep.
    Faolan did not like the quiet. It unsettled him. The sound of that great heart was his first memory. So it was not simply boredom that drove him from the den, but the silence. Despite Thunderheart's immense size, she seemed in her stillness a shadow of her summer self. Faolan could not understand how she slept so much. And, as the rhythms of Thunderheart's body slowed, it seemed that those of Faolan's accelerated.
    ***
    The deeper the snow outside, the better for Faolan. He loved bounding through the drifts and making huge powdery explosions. Down on the flats of the meadow, the wind had pounded the snow into a great hard surface, and he enjoyed skidding and coasting games. He had become expert at tracking the big snow hares and found their meat delectable.
    He loved everything about winter -- the strange green sky as twilight descended, then the deep purple dark of the night and the glittering jewel star that hung in the north and never moved, but guided him back to  the den. The ice-spangled bracken poking through the drifts were as luminous as the constellations that floated in the dome of the night. One night soon after the first snowfall, he had spied in the distance a spectacular sight. It was the waterfall they had passed on their way to the winter den. But now the cascades were frozen in the air, suspended like silver flames caught in a wintry eternity.
    ***
    Each day was shorter as the earth tipped farther away from the sun. But the nights were longer. Once he thought he heard something new in the night -- a long melodious howl that inscribed itself in the blackness like an unfurling banner of song. It stirred him profoundly. It was new to him, yet oddly familiar. He felt compelled to howl in return. It was amazing to him that he understood perfectly the message embedded in the howl: I am here, here with my mate. Our sister and brothers have returned. In one more moon, when the mating times come, we shall move.
    Faolan understood the message, but there were strange pieces of it that made no sense. What was a sister? A brother?
    Each night for the next cycle of the moon, he went out to hear the wolves. He understood more and more,  but despite his growing curiosity, he did not dare travel closer. For there was a warning woven into the message: This is our territory. Do not trespass. The warning was as clear as any scent mark. By the end of the moon's cycle, the howling had finished. The wolves had left as they promised.
    For the first time, Faolan felt a bit lonely. He returned to the den