Author's Website: http://www.finnatics.com/otsoko.htm

Disclaimer: Alliance owns all.

Author's Notes: Serious thanks to Aukestrel for beta-ing this even though she has so much on her plate at the moment that it makes my head spin.

Story Notes: 1. This is a sequel of sorts to 'Dief explains everything to a wolf-cub' All you really need to know is that Dief thinks that 'ray' is the Yank word for 'partner'.
2. Warning: some language madness contained herein. I've opted for a morphologically transparent version of the Inuktitut.
3. I have written a parody of a linguistics article, 'A short grammatical sketch of Wolf-Speak', mainly as an excuse to actually use my linguistics degree. It can be found at:
http://www.finnatics.com/wolfspeak.htm

My human is sad, youngcub.

He returned to our lair wet. He did not take me for the walk I know he needed. Nor did he feed me. I was at first outraged that he was not showing the proper deference, and then I noticed that he was walking with his eyes down-cast. I recognized this human thing: it is the one-puts-one's-tail-between-the-legs walk.

My human rarely does this walk. Then I noticed the bruise near his muzzle.

He kept touching it, and as he did a look of sadness would come over his eyes. Youngcub, you must learn to watch the humans' eyes. Their scents are often off, but their eyes are a dead giveaway.

I chided him gently to speak to me of what had happened. I knew that it was bad when he spoke to me not in the language of his own pack, that of the wolf-lands, but in the language of the treeless-land, where all have sleds and humans eat the fish without cooking it. When my human speaks in that pack's language it is because he cannot face the truth, so he hides behind another pack's words.

My human looked straight at me and spoke. "Tiglukplauranga."

I cocked my head, puzzled. So, he had been hit-with-a-paw. My human was struck often, and of course that led to pain, but not usually to sadness. Then the answer came to me like a snow hare jumping from its burrow into my mouth. It had to be a rank-challenge from another pack member.

And only one such challenge could sadden him.

'Ray-it? Your partner?' I asked him, and he closed his eyes and wagged his head up and down, which is a human way of saying you that you have correctly ascertained the meaning.

I considered this. His ray had struck my human with his paw. This was a clear attempt by the ray to establish dominance over my human. There was nothing bad in that, in and of itself. Such distinctions were important to the smooth running of the pack. Except that it would mean that they could never be mates. You cannot be the mate of pack member of different rank. Everyone in the pack would be confused. How could there be a mate-couple where you would defer to one and yet have to make the other defer to you? It would be madness! To be mates, you had to share rank.

Hence, I think, the sadness. My human was sad because were he to start deferring to his ray, they would cease to be true rays to each other, they would no longer be the ones-who-pull-the-sled-alongside-the-other. Any hope of mating would disappear. I sighed. My human had a choice to make. Abandon this ray and the ray's pack and return to his own pack, or demonstrate to his ray that they were of equal rank. As much as I wanted to return to the wolf-lands, I was more concerned that my human should have a mate.

It is very difficult to find a mate for my human. I think it is the way he smells. I am used to it, but I understand why other humans sniff around him with their eyes and then back off.

What makes it worse is that my human never sniffs back with his eyes. Except with his ray. And his ray does not back off. This makes him a good potential mate. Maybe the only potential mate.

These human courtship rituals were wearing, however. It is the downside of their having no sense of smell. Then a thought struck me. Perhaps all his ray was trying to do was establish that they were of the same rank within the pack. Perhaps his ray was confused because my human came from another pack. He offered rank-challenge as a way to clarify the situation.

I waited until my human opened his eyes and looked at me before I responded, keeping the answer simple. "Ray-it tiglukpleruk." 'You must hit-him-with-your-paw your one-who-pulls-the-sled-alongside-you.'

He wagged his head slowly from side to side, which is a human way of refusing. How to make my human understand that he must strike him back? I snarled at him. He jerked his head up. 'Tiglukpleruk!' I repeated.

"I can't." His eyes were leaking water, which is a sign of great human sadness.

I gave him my ordering snarl, and followed it with an 'I outrank you' bark, just so there would be no misunderstanding.

He stared at me. I can always out-stare him. It is a rank thing. You will learn, youngcub. Finally his shoulders fell in submission. He did the up and down wag, indicating compliance.

And like a good pack member, I accepted his submission with good grace, going over to him and licking the salty water of sadness from his down-turned face, and he ran his paws through my fur. We understood each other.

I tried to tell him that once he had reestablished their equal standing within the pack, they could be mates, but my human had ceased to listen. He was on his feet, on his way to the bone-shape-into-which-one-snarls. I watched his mouth carefully. He used the stink-lands word for the one-who-pulls-the-sled-alongside-you: He was speaking to his ray.

He would hit his ray with his paw, and then they would both understand that they were equal-ranked, and maybe finally they would mate. I uttered a slight snarl of a prayer to the one-who-makes-all-things that finally they would stop sniffing each other with their eyes, and finally put their muzzles together in that disgusting display that precedes human mating.

What's that, youngcub? The muzzle thing? Have you never noticed this? I laugh at you, youngcub, only because it took me so long to figure it out. Having no sense of smell, human mating rituals proceed very differently than normal ones. As far as I can ascertain, the human mating ritual consists of four steps: the sniffing of each other with their eyes, followed by the paws on the shoulders, then the muzzles together, and finally the mounting.

Humans do their mounting outside of the smell of others (no, youngcub, I have no idea why. Perhaps it is because when wolves mount the smell of the mate so overwhelms that the other scents cease to intrude. But humans sniff with their eyes, so perhaps they cannot stop looking around and sniffing others with their eyes while they mate. This would destroy the pair-bond. So they mate where they cannot see other humans, and thus protect the pair-bond.)

In any case, it took me a long time to figure out the mating ritual of the humans, because I never saw the actual mating -- even that of my own human. Both the one-who-plays-on-ice and the evil-one-who-shoots-wolves-with-the-gun mated with my human out of my scent-range.

But I finally figured it out. The sniffing with the eyes takes careful observation, but look carefully, youngcub. The key is the eyes meeting: It is like both sniffing the other at once. The paws on the shoulder or on the back comes next. This is more confusing. This can happen without the eye-sniffing, and then it usually does not lead to mating. This is typical of humans -- they use the same gestures for several meanings. No wonder my human is confused. I think he did not notice his ray sniffing him with his eyes before he put his paws on his shoulder and back, so he did not understand it as a mating gesture, and so did not return it.

Humans.

But my human accepts his ray's paw. Now I must get him to do the muzzle touching. What, youngcub? I confess I am not sure why they touch muzzles. But I see it in the park often when I take my human for his exercise. I thought, at first, that it had something to do with tasting each other spittle, which is unbelievably . . . perverted. Nose in the butt is much more straightforward and honest and natural. But I digress. If humans were just like wolves, the world would be a boring place. I just wish they weren't so ... confused. I think the muzzle-touching is sharing air. Humans like to share things; they share food and water and sleeping-paces. I hope it is only sharing air.

My human returned from yelping at his ray over the bone-shape-into-which-one-snarls. He did not look happy. He returned to our lair and sat upon his sleeping-place. He did not look at me, so I put myself between his legs and forced my nose into his face.

He spoke to me in his own pack's words. "It is agreed. I will hit him back. Tonight, when it is dark."

I breathed a sigh of relief. I licked his face to show him he had done the right thing. He was still sad. He did not understand. Yes, I know humans are not terrifically smart, but mine usually understands what I tell him. He lay down on his sleeping-place and turned his back to me, to wait for the appointed time of hitting with the paw, to answer his ray's rank-challenge. I knew he was almost asleep.

I used my secret. I have learned that if I whisper something very gently into his ear as he lies down, he will take it to heart and not argue. (I tried this once to get him to hunt for me the round sweet food, but he ignored it. I think it is because it is a stink-lands food, and my human does not know how to hunt it, because the secret talking did work with his stink-lands ray. Now my human's ray often hunts the round sweet food for me). I leaned over his head and whispered, "After the rank-challenge is settled, find the moment to put your muzzle on his, oh my human. Share your air with him. Share your air." I whispered this to him slowly, softly, over and over, as he fell asleep.

I would wake him with a warning bark when the sun went to its lair. I was resigned to leading my human by the scruff of the neck through this whole mating ritual. I just hoped I wouldn't have to show him how to mount or be mounted.

Even after living with humans all this time, I still have some small shred of dignity.