Etraon had seen Sirena’s broad spectrum of emotions since the day he met her, but that day, as he set down his lunch on the table across from her, she was almost as white as the rice on her plate. She had been whimpering incomprehensibly to herself for a while now and Etraon felt awkward about interrupting her. This decision only made it harder for him to step in as the whimpering persisted. He glanced over at Catherine, who sat next to her, but she simply replied with a slight shrug and no real answer. Seeing as he would be getting nowhere with either of them, he picked up his plate and moved to sit with Lance, who was further along, two tables over.

“Etraon!” Lance greeted him cheerfully, shifting over so that his friend could take a seat.

Etraon grinned at him. Upon starting their new life at the barracks, Etraon had told Lance that since no one else would be referring to him as “Prince” or as “Your Highness,” neither should he. After all, he had reasoned, if those who didn’t know him all that well would be calling him “Etraon”, Lance, as his best friend, had more right than any of them to call him by name. Lance had been quite stubborn about it, Etraon remembered, saying that it just wasn’t done, but then, upon realizing that calling Etraon by his titles might just alienate him from the others, he had relented. Aurelius had remarked that it was much more comfortable this way; being able to address each other by name at all times instead of names one day and titles another was a treat that he never would have expected from barrack life.

“How’s life as a wolf? Grown a tail yet?” Etraon teased him.

Lance looked genuinely hurt by the joke. “Don’t poke fun, Etraon,” he replied sullenly, “I don’t ask you if you’ve sprouted feathers somewhere under your clothes or if your nose turns into a beak when you sleep.”

“You were thinking it,” Etraon retorted. “No one comes up with comebacks like that one unless they’ve been holding them for some time. Just admit it already.”

“B-be that as it may, I never said anything,” Lance stammered, slightly abashed at being caught.

“Where did you ever get the idea that my nose turns into a beak when I sleep?” Etraon demanded.

“You snore,” Aurelius put in, coming up behind them to sit across from Etraon at the table. “Lance and I would know. A beak,” he mused, scratching his head thoughtfully, “that’s rather creative for you, isn’t it, Lance?” He placed his hand in front of his face and flapped his fingers in a beak-like movement.

“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m creative,” Lance protested.

“A rare occurrence nevertheless,” Etraon brushed it aside. “Now, tell us about that field trip that General Theodore took you on.”

Lance grinned broadly at them both and set his elbows on the table, his fingers folded in a very businesslike manner. He was enjoying the Wolf band’s exclusive fieldtrip just a little too much, Etraon felt.

“You may want to take note, my friends, that there are many perks to having the top-ranking general in the barracks come from your band. First and foremost, of course, being that he can take you anywhere, anytime, and...” he paused for effect, holding out just long enough for Aurelius to roll his eyes, “it counts as part of your training.”

“Now, see here, Lance, Douglas is just as great,” Aurelius cut in.

“Ah, but he isn’t the top-ranking general, is he?” Lance chuckled triumphantly. Grinning broadly, he recounted the adventure that the Wolves had undertaken in a wheat field. Etraon and Aurelius could only gape at him as he told them of the huge field of gold and green that lay before them. In an act of sheer mischievousness, Lance told them, General Theodore had tossed the key to their wing of the barracks into the field, sending them in to search for it. They only had till sundown to find it or they would all be stuck in the middle of the field and Theodore wouldn’t bother to take them home until the key was found and returned.

“You’ve got to be joking!” Aurelius nearly yelled in disbelief, though thankfully, in the din of the cafeteria, no one heard him.

Lance shook his head. “He was entirely serious. And would you believe it, he just kicked off his boots, leaned back on the wagon and started sipping wine?”

“But, there wasn’t anything out there, right? Just the Wolf band?”

“That’s just it, Theodore never said a word,” Lance hissed into their ears. “Ophelia was so terrified about what was lurking just beyond our sight that she drove us all mad with her imagination.” Etraon glanced around and pointed briefly at a girl a couple seats down, looking to Lance for confirmation that they were thinking of the same person.

“A vivid imagination’s healthy for a group, or so I’m told,” Aurelius replied between rapid bites of food, finally feeling that Lance’s story had settled somewhat and that he could finally eat without missing details.

“Not hers,” Lance shook his head vehemently at the memory. “She got herself into such a panic, we were genuinely worried she’d hurt herself in an attempt to avoid all the beasts she had lurking behind every tree.”

He then launched into a lengthier summary of their day and Etraon was riveted to his every word. Aurelius stopped eating eventually, unable to concentrate on eating at the same time as he listened to Lance’s tale. Rustling around every corner was now a potential enemy, the thin cuts that many of them suffered from the sharp leaves that surrounded them were hidden traps of their unseen opponents, and the more they searched, he said, Ophelia’s imagined foes were soon their own. It was so bad, Lance explained, that when an animal finally appeared, one of the boys that had been known in the band for his emotionless demeanor actually screamed. The sound was so blood-curdling that Theodore actually dived in after them to make sure that they were alright. Then, since he was already in the field with them, Theodore took the opportunity to teach them tracking tactics. A crushed leaf underfoot here, a broken branch there, he had said, would indicate the time something had passed and the path that they had followed. He seemed to select a set of tracks in the dirt at random, Lance continued, his voice awed, and they followed it.

“What was it?” Etraon asked, sitting forward just a little more as he craned his neck to better hear the details.

“I bet it was a wild boar,” Aurelius put in, “that’s the only animal that would have an entire band still talking a few days after going on a trip like that.”

“Quite frankly, we were so happy that we had a chance to get out of the barracks for a day that we would’ve talked about it for days even if all we found was a rabbit,” Lance replied wryly, “but going on a trip with General Theodore doesn’t disappoint,” he finished with a tight grin.

“What did you find?” Etraon and Aurelius asked together, unable to stand the suspense for a moment longer.

“Foxes.”

“Foxes?” they gasped. “How many were there?”

“A vixen and three kits, it would seem. There were four sets of tracks, and the males aren’t known to keep the young ones about.”

“How did you know that they were foxes?” Etraon asked, already mentally preparing to store the information into the part of his mind that would hopefully serve to get him into Karina’s good graces whenever the band’s tracking lessons came around.

“You look for the toes; there should be four of them and each of those toes should have a claw mark in front of it.”

“And that’s all? That sounds like the paw marks of any dog if you ask me,” Aurelius interrupted.

“There’s a second mark within each of those toe prints caused by callouses, Tristan says,” Lance continued, nodding in acknowledgement, “and also, the heel pad of a red fox has the top half of a triangle for a callus within the skin. It’s quite noticeable. Almost like this.” Lance proceeded to move his potatoes into a small mound and laid two carrots perpendicular to each other in the middle of it, demonstrating what the heel pad’s print had looked like. “That’s about as close as I can get it.”

“Hey, Lance!” a voice called from behind them, followed by a shrill whistle in the direction of the door. “Tristan wants us in the common room!” Several others from surrounding tables, all from the Wolf band, had risen from their seats. Some were already taking their trays to be cleared as they made their way to the door where they were to line up single-file before returning to the Wolf wing.

“I’ll be right there, Lucius!” Lance called back. Turning back to Etraon and Aurelius, he bowed his head apologetically. “Sorry, you know how it is.”

“That we do.”

“Hey, before you go,” Etraon blurted, catching Lance by the arm, “just answer one thing for me. What happened to the key that General Theodore threw into the grass?”

Lance snorted, a mildly disgusted expression crossing his face. “He’s horrible. You wouldn’t believe it,” he said, glancing down at the two of them as he picked up his silverware. “The only thing he threw into the field was a rusted lock that he had brought with him.”

“So the key…?”

“He had it the whole time.”

-----

Author's Note:

xoxo,

Elfarine