On her last day, Brunan got to visit everyone.
She had seen and done more than almost any hound ever got to. Years ago, her bones already a bit stiff from too many winters, she'd led her pack west over the Misty Mountains to a distant wood, along with her human, Heriwulf, and a handful of other two-legs. It was a hard journey, but she was the pack's leader, and the pack needed leading, as packs always do. She was the smartest of them; she'd even learned a few tricks from the Brown Wizard himself. A few years later, when she went back across the Misty Mountains to return home, she was no longer the leader; she had ceded that responsibility to a younger, newer-tamed hound, and her greatest responsibility was laying by fires. She still had Heriwulf to look after, though, and now he had a two-legs family, including two pups who were old enough to pull her tail but not yet old enough to know when not to pull her tail. But she bore up to the burden of tending pups as she had several times before, even the clumsy two-legs pups, and of long travel as they all went back to their old home in the east.
The smells were different but the fires were just as warm. The pack kept busy as it always does, and she watched as the days and months went by, until it was time. She told Heriwulf, in the clumsy language that the two-legs use. Then she pulled herself up, which was hard since her legs didn't do what she wanted them to, and she visited all the other hounds in the pack and shared her wisdom with them, especially Cwoen who led them in her stead. The two-legs all got visits too, and she deigned to be petted by them. Even let the pups play with her for a few minutes.
Heriwulf had prepared one of the smelly things that he sometimes did. Together, they strolled, slowly for the weather was cold and her bones were stiff, through the settlement, pausing for a moment at the house that used to belong to Hildegund, where she bowed her head. Then out of the palisade and into the woods.
Her two-legs took a long time, and cried a lot where no one else from the clan could see him. Not that they didn't know. They too had cried when she visited, and were crying still, she could smell it. Or she thought she could. Smells weren't as sharp as they'd used to be.
Finally he dabbed her with a bit of the stinky salve. Something with a smell that reminded her of Radagast, of the lessons that the wizard had given to the two-legs, but also of the wild places, of the wolves running free, that she could now remember better than she had in years. She could hear them, now, baying; they smelled it too. Slowly, she lumbered out into the woods towards them. She turned to look back to her faithful two-legs once more. Then she continued on to meet the wolves and howl with them one last time.
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(in loving memory)
