"Nice to make your acquaintance Lindvald. My name is Yegu and I'm the vice chief of our little village."  

The grey wolf nodded as they passed the main gate, Yegu said smiling.

"Welcome to Firthdyr. Let's head to the mead hall."

The village was a small one. The village had roughly dozens of houses made of wood. The  houses were surrounding a large building in the middle while the whole village was surrounded by fences with different divisions. Those fences however were not for protecting the village, their purpose was to hold herds of animals. While walking through the small town, Lindvald noticed movements behind the window shutters. Ignoring it, the grey wolf followed Yegu to the big building at the center of the village, where there also seemed to be a lot of movement. As they arrived at the entrance, villagers were transporting firewood, tables and other tools. At the small fire on the far inner side of the hall, sat a elderly person with silver hair.

"Chief Yesugei, let me introduce Lindvald, he is a … spiritual wolf. The one that found and brought Ydis back to us. I invited him to spend the night with us."

"Greetings chief Yesugei."

Lindvald performed his greeting ritual by bowing before sitting down in front of the fireplace.

"It's a pleasure to meet you Lindvald. First and foremost, I would like to thank you deeply in the name of the whole village for rescuing one of our little boys. I hope you will enjoy your time here. There is only one thing that this old man is curious about what an other-worldly being is doing in this remote place of the country?"

"Well that is just a natural question to ask. There is no particular important reason for me being here. I'm nothing more than a simple traveler. I traversed the westward mountains but I didn't know that there was basically nothing on the summit other than rocks, especially nothing to eat. Plus I guess, I underestimated the winter season of this region. So the moment I stepped down the mountain and found this forest, I thought it would be wiser to stay here where there is shelter and food available until the spring time for me to continue my journey."

"Hm. Hm. Very wise indeed of you. Take a rest here for now. As we prepare a chamber and a feast for you and use this occasion for the village to get acquainted with each other. Please, excuse me for a moment."

Lindvald was about to protest about all the trouble the villagers were about to put themselves through but the chief was already talking to Yegu. It seemed as if they were discussing something important. So he sat at the fire silently, looking at the men arranging several tables and stools around other fireplaces which were being lit up by their young ones. As he couldn't do anything to help them, he took a look around to see a few bear heads decorated on one of the walls. Occasionally, he glanced at how far the preparation for the feast was and thus spotting a handful of villagers staring at him. However the moment the wolf shifted his head in their direction, they hid their curiosity by avoiding their gaze. Lindvald's attention was brought back to the chief as they sat back down as Yegu left the mead hall.

"Sorry for the short interruption. Where were we? Oh, so you plan to stay the winter in this area. Isn't it still hard though, considering that you didn't hunt for our deer."

Lindvald figured that either Yegu told chief Yesugei about the proposal or it was actually the chief's idea to begin with and hence it was their turn in trying to convince him. Lindvald gave the chief the same answer he gave his vice-chief, whereas the Yesugei continued to persuade them with everything he could think of. As the elder and wolf were exchanging their arguments to each other as more villagers entered the great hall with all kinds of prepared meals. Everyone knew to help each other out as they were very well familiar with sharing their foods and drinks. More and more people joined with their children at the feast, when suddenly one kid started to run towards the grey wolf with open arms. Still in the middle of his conversation with the chief, Lindvald was unaware of the incoming hug.

"Like I said to the vice-chief Yegu that I will thin…"

The wolf's tail puffed up as Ydis' hug startled him. Everyone went silent and froze as they witnessed the reckless approach of the child.

"Kind bear, you are back and look at that you are even going to eat with us!"

Composing himself as he heard a familiar child voice, Lindvald stared at chief Yesugei telling him that their little dispute was over for now. Feeling that Ydis was loosening his grip on his fur, Lindvald looked at him and bumped his nose against Ydis' and corrected him.

"Little one, I'm a wolf not a bear."

A loud clapping shifted everyone's focus to chief Yesugei, as he opened the feast.

"Good evening everyone. Let us all celebrate the welcoming of Lindvald the spiritual wolf in our village. This is a rare occasion so everyone enjoy the evening as I allow for once a free day tomorrow."

Everyone looked at each other in silent when suddenly the men stood up with a cup in hand and shouted,

"To the great Lindvald."

before downing their drinks in one go. The rest of the evening passed by rather uneventfully. The chief introduced the villagers who were courageous enough to approach the wolf. As the rest of the villagers enjoyed the meal and the men in particular celebrated by getting drunk. The party lasted way into midnight hours when the vice-chief Yegu guided Lindvald to one of their straw storage houses.

"I'm sorry that we couldn't find you a better place to stay, but this was the only place big enough to shelter you aside from our great hall."

"This is way better than sleeping under the sky while it is snowing. So don't worry too much about it."

Both said their farewells for the evening. Lindvald circled a couple of times around himself to find the perfect spot before curling into a ball and falling asleep.

The sun wasn't even out when the grey wolf was strolling around the village, he was looking at every distinguishing feature of the housing. He didn't really pay attention yesterday but now that everything calmed down he could look around. Lindvald discerned that the structure of their housing was new to him. The homes had a conical roof to them which also functioned as a chimney. Furthermore at first he thought there was something wrong with the villagers houses as they seemed to be almost completely buried under snow and only the tip of the roof could be seen. However, only inspecting the houses closely, one could see that the layer of snow hides the earth layer. The home's walls consisted of rocks which then were covered by soil, giving the walls of the house a surrounding protection layer, almost giving the impression that the home was half buried. Yet the ground floor was evenly flat, which Lindvald concluded that the villagers did indeed covered the walls of their homes with earth making them appear like little hills or mounds. However looking at them all from a little away made them give the landscape a wavy impression. The reason for their unusual form of building houses was still a mystery for the grey wolf considering they had plenty of wood in the forest. As he continued his walk around the simple village, while discovering various tools and several pelts drying outside. His attention changed when a rather familiar crashing sound ringed in his ears. Following the sounds behind one of the houses, two men were standing facing away from him. The leaner of the two was holding the simplest bow that Lindvald had seen so far. He was still amazed ever since the first time he saw it and as far as he could tell it seemed to be made out of natural curved long branches with a rawhide string. A barely hearing whistling sound became silent as another arrow was fired by the young man as this time it landed on the snow next to one of three wooden targets. The grey wolf nodded to himself as he remembered the chief's words from yesterday. He sneaked a little closer and observed as the young man kept firing and missing his arrows left and right as the other person tried his best in instructing and advising how to aim and shoot.

'Ah??... What is that gonna help? ... No, no, that is totally the wrong way to do it!'

The next arrow fell from the archers hands as it wasn't even locked in due to the youth being startled by a low growl coming behind him. Lindvald was so frustrated at the clearly poor performance of the young man that he ended up growling unconsciously.

"Spiritual wolf Lindvald? Good morning, what brings you here so early in the morning? Ah, let me introduce my son Temur."

"Good morning spiritual wolf Lindvald."

Vice-chief Yegu was so focused on teaching his son that even he couldn't sense the grey wolf closing in on them. Lindvald exhaled due to his frustration that he wasn't paying attention to the introduction. He approached Temur from the side and lifted his right paw and punched the ground twice.

"Put your feet on the spot that I just marked."

The grey wolf's frightening stare made Temur hesitate before a light tap on his back encouraged him to do as he was told.

"Face your body my way and only turn your head towards the target. Hold your bow in front of you on shoulder level, draw the arrow. Hm, I would say aim a head length higher than the target and fire on my command."

As Temur was following each step of Lindvald's instructions, he suddenly felt that someone was correcting the position of his arms.

"Fire!"

Lindvald's head followed the flying arrow, his ears twitched once as he heard the familiar crashing sound of the arrow hitting the lower left side of the wooden dummy.

"Dad, did you see that? I hit it this time! Thank you so much Lindvald."

"Remembered it well."

The grey wolf walked in the direction of the forest when behind him a voice stopped him.

"Spiritual wolf Lindvald, are you already leaving?"

"Not yet. I will just stretch my legs and have some quiet thinking time. Don't worry I won't go far. If you need me just shout loudly, I will hear it and come back."

Lindvald replied before disappearing under the shadow of the trees. The layer of snow inside the forest wasn't as thick as on the open field. The grey wolf searched for a big pine tree that was half covered from potential wind or snowfall but one that was still close enough to see the village between the trees.