Normally Kenelm would not wander so late at night; by the absolute blackness that lay beneath the cloud-covered skies, he figured it must still be a few hours yet before the first dim light of dawn streaked across the horizon line. By all rights, he ought to be asleep, especially now that he was nursing new injuries in the place of the burns he had sported when he first arrived in Relic Lore. The gash across his leg still ached with every few steps, and not for the first time since the battle at the fjord he cursed the ghostly apparition of a man who had made him fight so viciously over a carcass they could easily have shared.

Still, common sense had, for the moment, gone out the window. He needed somewhere safe to rest while he healed - somewhere less out in the open than his lovely Blackberry Fields, drier than the Secluded Spring, calmer than the Wild Cherry Orchard. Beyond that, it was hard for him to sleep with such heavy, cold darkness pressing in around him; it made the images he tried to forget so much more vivid. On a night like this, it was better if he simply continued walking until he found a more suitable den. Hopefully he would wind up wearing himself out in the process--

The stillness of the night was shattered by a sudden, panicked howling. Kenelm's blood froze in his veins; that was a child's cry!

The forest blurred around him as he raced towards the sound, heedless of the sting in his leg or the maze of trees he rocketed through. His mind was just as chaotic - what was a child doing out here so late at night? Where were her parents? Where was her pack? What in the world could have happened to inspire such panic in her voice?

He ducked seconds before the flock of sparrows swarmed overhead, skidding to a halt several yards from where they appeared to have taken off - there was the girl! Even in this darkness, he could just make out the pup's head and forelimbs as she scrabbled for purchase at the edge of... Spirit's breath, no! She was falling into a sink hole!

“Hang on!” he called, quickly closing the gap between himself and the girl. He braced his feet and snapped his head down, desperate to grab the pup before she could drop into the blackness below. His teeth met in her nape; the minute his grip was secure, he threw himself up and back, scrambling a good distance away from the edge of the swallet before releasing the girl again and plopping down between her and the death trap. His injured leg burned and shook with the sudden strain, but the rest of him trembled with the adrenalin of the moment.

“Are you alright?” he asked as soon as he had caught his breath again.

Kenelm winced as the girl rocketed against him, clearly far too relieved to have survived her terrifying brush with death to vocalize anything more coherent than a series of too-too whimpers and big, sloppy kisses. Despite her excitement, Kenelm couldn't be absolutely certain that she was uninjured until he had checked her over. As carefully as he could (and as thoroughly as he could manage while she continued raining her gratitude on him), the man sniffed and nudged at the girl, not wanting to risk missing even the tiniest cut. Pups, when loaded with even half as much adrenalin as this girl must be, could be extraordinarily bad at realizing they had been hurt until long after the excitement had worn away.

Fortunately, she seemed fine - there might be a few scuffs here and there from skidding down over the edge, and she might have twisted or strained something in her mad scramble to stay out of the sink hole, but as far as Kenelm could see and smell there was nothing seriously wrong with the pup... except, of course, for the glaring reality of where she was and under what circumstances. Where in the world was her family?!

He shook his head; now wasn't the time to ask her, not while she was still this caught up in the terror of what had just transpired. She needed to calm down before he could ask her anything about what she was doing out here. “Easy,” he soothed the girl. “Take some deep breaths." He waited until she seemed to settle down just a bit before adding, "My name is Kenelm; can you tell me yours?”

Ah, here came the adrenalin crash. Kenelm lowered himself to the ground, stretching his forelimbs out in time for the girl - Nineva, she called herself - to use one of them as her pillow. He had been wondering when the shock would wear off for her; in varied so much from pup to pup. Calanthe had always taken hours to crash after one of her escapades, while Mateu had usually crashed immediately after too much excitement. It seemed NIneva was more like Mateu in that respect - Kenelm shoved the painful thought aside before it could darken his mood too much.

“Nineva? That's a nice name.” And this time it was even a name that might have someday cropped up in Spirit's Gambol. How lucky for this little one that she was born far from the Gambol... though apparently not to a pack quite as concerned with the protection of its young as the Gambol had been.

He shoved that thought away as well, and smiled at her continued mumblings, not needing to hear her clearly to easily pick out the gist of what she was trying to convey with her chin resting on his leg. “I couldn't very well leave you like that, could I? I've come from lands to the east,” he added, pausing to stretch his neck and gave his head a quick shake. “I've been in Relic Lore for quite some time, now. I was born beyond these lands, though.”

He leaned down and nudged her gently. “What about you, Nineva? Where are you from, and why are you out all on your own?”

Kenelm tilted his head and waited patiently as Nineva seemed to wrestle with herself over whether or not to answer his question. Clearly, whatever the girl had run away from had been rather traumatic, although when it came to the mind of a child, sometimes what seemed traumatic instead wound up simply harsher than the child was used to. But... no. There was something disturbingly similar to fear in the way Nineva hesitated, as if either Kenelm or someone else would take her to task for telling the truth. The very notion of such a thing made the fur along Kenelm's spine stand on end.

When she finally spoke, it was to request - well, demand, truly - that he promise not to send her back home. Kenelm kept his expression neutral, but at the girl's words his tail fluffed up to twice its normal size. What in the world has this child run away from?! his mind screeched. He had heard of pups running away, even helped find Calanthe on the rare occasion she had wandered off, but never had he heard a child so vehemently insist that they not be made to go back home. Maybe their failure to come out and look for their lost pup was only the least of her family's crimes, after all, because this wasn't a tantrum. Nineva must have run from something truly awful.

“Nineva,” he told the girl, lowering his head so that his eyes were somewhat more level with Nineva's, “I will not force you to return to a place where you are not happy. I promise you, no matter what you've run away from, I won't make you go back.” He only hoped whatever she had run away from was something trivial and blown wildly out of proportion by her young mind. His tufted black ears flicked a bit, and it was his turn to hesitate before confiding in the girl, “You aren't the only one who left something bad behind her.”