observe her and her Clan for now, and eventually, your answers will come to you soon enough.”

The quarter-wolf huffed impatiently at the response. “I have been waiting, Aniu! I can’t be bothered by these visions that aren’t leading me anywhere! I have a Clan to lead!”

“I know, but this is a lesson that you must learn, Aleu,” the Great Spirit spoke calmly. “Patience is a virtue – when one is not patient, frustrations can flare, causing alterations to one’s destined fate. Remember that, my child.” Aniu’s form began to disperse into mist, fading into the morning light as she moved towards it. “Remember it well . . .”

“Please, Aniu! Don’t leave!” Aleu nearly barked out, but it came out normally once the white wolf has already disappeared. Aleu’s dark brown ears fell to her neck in defeat. “I guess I’ll never figure it out as soon as I wanted to . . .” She let out a soft groan of disappointment as her body slumped back to the ground, allowing the rising sun to reflect off of her eyes.

“Aleu?”

The masculine voice made Aleu’s head lift and a relaxed smile fill her suddenly flushed face. “Oh . . . Good morning, Scarlet.”

“Well, you seem well rested and up early,” Scarlet walked up to her, nearly close enough to let his nose graze against her cheek. His eyes grew wide when something caught his attention. “Aleu, have . . . have you been crying?”

The dark streaks on her light-marked face were wet to the touch, but Aleu didn’t realize that the stains were there, obviously visible to him. She lightly sighed and sniffled, nodding her head. “It was my vision last night,” Aleu explained. “I didn’t realize that I had been crying until I woke up just a few moments ago.”

“And you don’t know why?”

“No. I don’t understand what’s going on with me,” Aleu shook her head in confusion. In comfort, she leaned against Scarlet’s neck, enjoying his scent and warm fur by her face. “Aniu said that the answers would come soon, but . . .”

“Then you should do what she says,” Scarlet advised. “Aniu knows what’s best for you, and if she says to wait, then you just wait. Things will start to make sense soon.”

“You really think so?” Aleu’s ears pricked up, feeling a glimmer of hope in Scarlet’s words.

The reddish wolf smiled, lowering his eyelids as their gazes met. “I promise, Aniu knows what’s best for you. There must be something about these visions that will click in your head eventually. So don’t worry so much, Aleu. Okay?”

The Alpha Female paused for a moment, enjoying the gentle touch of Scarlet by her side. It nearly tickled her with ecstasy, but Aleu suppressed the chance of nearly screaming out that she loved him. Her mind, however, was on the visions and all of the new questions that now formed after the end of the last dream.

Maybe he’s right . . . I’ve got other things to worry about when it comes to the Kawa Clan, but . . . I just can’t get my mind off of it . . . Keliah just keeps coming back into my head lately . . . and I don’t know why . . .

“Oh, I can’t help but to worry . . . everything just doesn’t make any sense,” Aleu complained. She let out a loud sigh, suddenly pulling her head away from him and started to lay down on the ground. “Sorry, Scarlet, but I’m just really frustrated right now. I’m not sure what to think.”

“Well, why don’t you tell me about it?” The red-brown wolf laid beside Aleu’s slender yet scruffy form, hoping that he could be of some help. “Maybe if we talk about it, things won’t seem as confusing as you make it to be.”

Slowly, a smile returned to Aleu’s face. “All right. I’ll tell you what I seen so far.”

As the sky began to brighten from the sunny orange and yellow of the dawn to the morning azure, Aleu told the private details of her dream-visions to the one she trusted most. From her first introduction to the lithe brown she-wolf, the blind Alpha’s quest to find his successor, and all the way up to the moment when a daughter mourned over her newly-found father’s passing, the quarter-wolf didn’t hold back on anything. Scarlet just listened, occasionally making some quiet noises at things that intrigued him until her story was over.

“And that’s when I awoke this morning,” she concluded her multi-part tale about twenty minutes later. 

It took a minute of silence before Scarlet finally responded. “It seems to me that Aniu wants you to see this time in Keliah’s life for a specific reason . . . but that hasn’t been revealed to you yet.”

“That’s what I was thinking too,” Aleu agreed, suddenly remembering her conversation she had with Aniu only moments before. “Aniu told me I had to learn patience . . . but it’s so hard to be patient when it feels like I’m getting nowhere . . .” She sighed deeply, returning to that familiar, whiny tone as her head and ears fell down.

“Don’t give up, Aleu,” Scarlet’s head fell to hers, using his muzzle like a lever to lift hers back up. “If Keliah’s quest is over now that she knows she is the next Alpha, then the end of your dreams from Aniu shouldn’t be too far away.”

The quarter-wolf turned to him with a sense of surprise. “You really think so?”

He nodded, smiling lightly. “When my father began having his visions on ‘the one who is wolf and does not know,’ he was unsure of what they were hinting towards. He told me that at first they were vague and basic, showing a raven and the caribou crossing the Great Water, never to return. Aniu’s voice echoed constantly through his dreams, saying over and over something about that wolf . . . ‘the one who is wolf and does not know’ . . .”

“Me . . .” Aleu murmured under her breath, entranced by Scarlet’s recollection.

“Eventually, that would be right,” Scarlet turned to her large golden eyes, watching them gleam. “He did not know what a single wolf had to do with these visions of caribou herds and the raven. However, he did know that the raven was a sign of Aniu’s presence – all wolves learn that at one point in their lives - and that the caribou were a source of life for all of our people. Without the caribou, we’d be–”

“The Clan would be lost,” Aleu completed, knowing this full well due to her own vision from the night before she accepted her duty. 

“Again, that’s right. About a couple of days before you and Balto arrived in Kawa territory, Father’s dreams became more vivid yet still unclear. He told me, ‘I have asked for my successor, and that one is coming as we speak . . . Aniu has prophesized it to me, my Son.’”

“So that’s why he said that he sent for us,” Aleu slowly took in a gasp. “Papa and I didn’t understand what Nava meant by that, but now it all makes sense. Aniu was guiding us to the Kawa Clan . . . to ensure that we completed what Aniu promised him.”

“Exactly. Aniu was waiting for the moment to be right before Nava received what he wanted – his heir.”

Heir . . . Heir . . .? Just that word continued to playback through Aleu’s head like a record.The Alpha . . . Keliah’s father said that too . . . about his heir . . .She shut her eyes tightly, playing those scenes side-by-side of her last dream and her own moments with Nava before they left the once-territory of the Kawa. I wonder . . . could that be the connection between me and my visions of Keliah? The fact that we are both heirs to a Clan? 

“Aleu?” Scarlet’s voice called out into her ear. “Hello? Earth to Aleu!” He waved a white paw over her closed eyes. “Wake up . . . hey!”

Letting out a loud gasp, Aleu’s eyes quickly opened, turning to Scarlet’s as she panted to catch her breath. 

“Ah, um . . . A . . . A-A-Aleu . . . w-w-what’s wrong with your . . . e-e-eyes?” the reddish-brown wolf asked, completely stunned by what he was seeing.

Her eyes were a bright golden sheen, just as they had been a month ago when she first caught a glimpse of the caribou crossing the Great Water. She couldn’t explain what she was actually seeing; it was flashing past her eyes so quickly that it seemed to blur together, but it ended within a few seconds after Scarlet panicked, leaving Aleu to shake the feeling off.

“What . . . What just happened to you? Are you all right?” Scarlet whined with a worry once her eyes returned to their usual blue and gold.

“I think I may have had another vision or something,” Aleu told him to the point. “I’m not sure.”

“About Keliah?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. The pictures were moving too fast for me to notice the specifics. It was like a flash . . . but this isn’t the first time I’ve had these types of visions.”

“Really?” Scarlet was intrigued by Aleu’s ability, his eyes wide in awe by the mystical power of those he knew. “How was it in the previous times?”

“Well, the first time was when a bear attacked me and my Papa,” she explained. “I don’t know what exactly was going on, but I just looked at the bear’s golden eyes . . . and I could somehow see what the bear was thinking. It pointed out a nearby ledge under a cliff, saying that I had to take a leap of faith to get to the place I was looking for. Thankfully, the bear’s advice was right, and Papa and I landed safely.”

“Amazing,” Scarlet murmured. “It must not have been an ordinary bear to have not killed you both.”

“I couldn’t catch its scent after I came to moments after jumping,” Aleu continued. “I had never seen a real grizzly up close before, but Papa was surprised by my recollection of what happened. But that wasn’t the last time I could see things like this.” She paused, still noticing that she had Scarlet’s attention. “When Nava was talking to both of us after he emerged from that tree near the sea, I had another one of these . . . I guess you could call them ‘flashed-visions’. I could see the caribou that he was talking about, leaping from one ice floe to another and just heading to a bright light. I

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