Each chance to be close might be the last. Her thoughts clipped through suffocating image-recall-smell of lost siblings. She had no room to be scared for herself with the youngest to watch after. Territory had been bounded on all sides by mowed-down open spaces that rebounded with raucous noise. The waters tasted of metal, and the woods were desolate even before the cold came. No future, none that she or the pack-mother could imagine; nonetheless, they strove toward it.
