It had only been one full day since Wolf had told Nova that if she walked out the front door she could not come back. The moment she’d shut the door behind her an unbearable silence had fallen upon the house. Even with all of the activity in last minute winter preparations and the arrival of the two drifters things had seemed to slow down, lose their color and simply well, become trivial to Wolf. It was not like him to have let two complete strangers, let alone ones on the run from the Lions, into his home without speaking to them first. Still he hadn’t been in the best of moods to deal with such a thing. He’d stayed mostly in his room or out chopping wood that they hadn’t really needed. There was something so satisfying about swinging an ax.
He finally drug himself to the kitchen on Tuesday morning to try and clear his head by doing something other than laying in bed or doing physical labor. He felt more alone than he ever had in his life and he wished that he could talk to Libby but it seemed like she was always gone when he was around and vice versa. He sat at the kitchen table with his boots up on the chair next to him, something the both Libby and Nova despised, reading the most recent book he’d retreated into; Watership Down.
He was so sick of eating apples but they were the most durable fruit and the easiest to grow in the area. He supposed that he should be thankful that they had any fruit at all. He took a bite of one that he grabbed from the bowl in the center of the table. At the same time he swore he heard the creak on the sixth step and a mumble of voices. He stood from the chair, held his open book to his leg and meandered over to the threshold of the kitchen entry that faced the living room. So here were the drifters, the strangers that he’d let into the house without even so much as glancing at them. He supposed now was as good a time as any to play leader.
“Good morning.” Normally Wolf was friendly and welcoming to those who needed the help of the Wolves but it was hard for him to even think of a smile since Nova had gone.