Vash finds a stone

Frost lifted her snout and looked up at Vash. He walked with his head down, but his brow was low over his eyes and his lips moved as though he was speaking silent words to himself. He did not appear to be an elf intent on his path. He – merely an elf – certainly could not have been following a scent.

Frost whined deep in her throat. It was here that the girl had crossed the brook, and beyond this point, she thought, her scent would surely be on the path.

She bounded out of the ferns and put her nose to the ground, sucking in great snoutfuls of the air that hovered over the trampled leaves.

Vash himself had not come this way since the last rain, but there were a number of elves she knew. There had also been a man and one of the men’s reeking dogs. The dog had muddled the scents as dogs always did, and Frost snorted in disgust. But the girl had certainly come this way.

It was a path – any elf could see that, even the untrained girl. It was perhaps only a coincidence that Vash was walking where she had walked, but Vash was clever in ways that other elves were not, and Frost could not be certain he did not know.

She did not know what to do. She was no alpha to be making decisions. She lifted her head and said, “Let us return.”

“At a later time,” Vash replied absently.

Frost snorted and trotted ahead. If Vash meant to follow the path, she would at least find out what lay along it that could have attracted the attention of the girl.

She did not have to go far to find it. She nearly fell back onto her haunches in surprise when she ran into the cloud of scent. It was musty from being steeped in dew and dried in the sun several times over, but the girl had most definitely been here. She had certainly sat in the grass, and the ragged bark of the willow was clothed in the very odor of her skin.

Frost yelped and bounded back onto the path as Vash arrived, but he seemed to have noticed her interest in the tree. He had stopped walking and stood transfixed before it.

She licked his fingers and said, “Let us return.”

“At a later time.”

Frost had only been told to keep him away from the house of his mate. No one had told her anything about keeping him away from other places where his mate might have gone.

He walked slowly into the grass and weeds. Frost whined in frustration. She did not think any elf could detect a scent as old as several days, but he too seemed to know that the girl had touched the tree.

“Let us return,” she insisted.

This time he ignored her entirely. Frost pawed at the earth, which only stirred up older traces of the girl. She had come to the tree before – perhaps even before the last rain. Frost even found a mushroom that had grown over a leaf bearing her scent.

Vash fell to his knees and began digging through the leaves at the base of the tree, just as Frost herself was doing. She whined anxiously – surely, surely this elf could not detect odors this ancient. This was not an elf for such a simple wolf as she to manage.

Suddenly he gave a tremulous cry and clutched something to his chest.

Frost leapt into the grass behind him. “What did you find?” she asked.

He did not answer.

She was afraid to be so forward with such an elf, but she had to know what he had found. She gingerly stepped forward and sniffed and licked between his fingers.

He was holding a stone, and the stone had the scent and the taste of the girl’s skin and the girl’s sweat. His mate had held this stone, and somehow Vash had known it.

Frost backed uneasily away from him and stretched out in the grass at his side. Surely, she told herself, he had a wolf for an ancestor. Surely such a simple wolf as she could not be expected to outsmart such an elf.

Frost had never had a mate, but sometimes she tried to imagine how it must be. It seemed that such a simple wolf as she could not.