"Rain Wolf, so's she can fight anything that's tryna threaten us, then me, then her?"

"Whatever floats your boat."

Then they'll line up, after a quick confirmation from Malen.

"Doggy first."

They'll all line up in order, though the wolf pulls her teeth back from her lips at being called a doggy.

Up the chute they go.

They awake under a thick canopy, even more dense than in the Spooky Woods. Patches of perfect, noon blue peer through the leaves, but otherwise it's dark enough that it could be night.

Malen's a bit spooked by this, climbing to her feet and looking around for anything weird.

"Hoooommmmeeee!" Silver declares, stretching and still in his furs. He glances over at Malen. "Hey, it's cool, Rain would've caught anything dangerous and scared it off, she's big even for a wolf."

"I guess. What's you guys' deal?"

"Well, we're the shifter garden, you know that. Rain can be a human shape if she wants, but she doesn't. I like having thumbs so I'm only sometimes a wolf, but i can also be a girl shape. You can tell what pack someone is by their name - everyone does a word and then their thing. So I'm Silver Wolf, she's Rain Wolf. Hawks have names with hawk, dolphins with dolphin... The fish-deer haven't made up a word yet last I heard, but they're pretty new for a pack."

"You'll stay in the human village while you're picking. All the packs will want to court you, and then you pick, and then there's a ceremony and you die and come back as part of your pack. Can't tell you how, everyone does it different and it's a secret from outsiders."

"Okay. To the village, then."

'Village' is an unfamiliar word, as were a few others, so she asks Silver about some of the new words in this Garden as they walk.

And then a deer foal scampers out from the trees, stopping in front of the children and looking at them thoughtfully.

Silver is full and and such doing the wolfy equivalent of lounging nonthreateningly, so he just grins, waves, and says a short, "Hi!"

The deer proceeds to turn into a boy. "Hi?"

"I'm Silver Wolf! She hasn't picked yet, she's from another Garden, so I was taking her to the human village. What's your name?"

"Someone started calling me Deu-dea-Deucalion. But that's hard to say so they call me Dewie."

"That's neat! What tribe are you from? Are you a fish-deer - do they have a name yet - or is there a new tribe?"

"Deer-deer."

"Cool!"

"Going somewhere?"

"I was gonna take her to the human village, but didn't have a lot of other plans."

"...You wanna play?"

"We can! What about you, Malen?"

She hesitates. "I dunno... I need to work on getting back to my friends..."

"People work better when they're happy."