Tin trudged past the puddle where he had emptied the bucket in the morning. some of the mud had splashed onto the rotting wood planks of the pack house. Not that it would make much difference.

The recent rains meant the ceiling in his room was leaking again. He had no time to go up into the roof again and find the root of the problem but he needed to do it, before he forgot, because there were nobody left who was nimble enough to go into the roof. The pack house was falling apart, slowly but surely, after decades of neglect. It felt like an increasingly arcane game of pop-goes-the-weasel to fix all the leaks and little problems that it threw up. Last night there had been a full bucket. The amount was gradually getting larger.

It was a cold evening, and everyone else was either already asleep or huddled in the great room, staring at the fire whose afterglow he could see faintly through the leftmost window of the pack house. He still got dirty looks sometimes, simply by virtue of being related to Alpha Lorbaugh. He fully understood why they did so, and honestly he did sympathise with them quite a bit, but it did feel a bit denigrating given he had always been the runt of the pack. That relation had been something he had been able to draw a little bit of pride when he was still the omega and doing to chores. No more.

The path took him higher up the hill. From the vantage point up the creek up where the old sentry tower stood, this would have been beautiful, the trees, the hint of mist in the atmosphere, the winding creek, the rustic patina of the pack house. Too bad he was not in the mood today. He kept his head down and recited a silent prayer to Monagh, the moon goddess. He wanted to ask her about the mission Taucusi had given him. Why had she done so? What was her role in this? Did she give her blessing? Too many questions. That was okay. He was not in a hurry. He had faith they would be answered in good time.

As he walked higher the shadow of the car parked next to the pack house was revealed. Its companions, their former indentations still visible in the overgrown parking lot outside the pack house, had been reposessed on the day of the court ruling, but it still sat there on its haunches with its tires flat and moss accumulating in the windowsills, a taunting sign of glories well past. The doors were unlocked and in the past, before the mildew had set in, he had sat in it for hours on end, pretending to turn on the radio. Lorbaugh's legacy.

He passed the rusting white-painted hulk of the clinic. Taucusi was probably asleep now. He always slept early on days like these.

He left the pack behind, heading into the forest. The white moonlit trunks of the birch trees cast a ghostly pall on his path ahead. The beaten path climbed higher and higher, until it came to its end at a rocky outcrop.

The vast scale of the open-cast mine, a ghostly pale blue colour in the moonlight, stretched out beneath him. In the past the mine had run continously, but now they were slowly winding the hours down. The mine had maybe five years before the coal finally ran out. Everything seemed to be winding down. Maybe it was time to go.

Nobody had wanted the mine this close to the pack. But the Red Cliff pack had connections and they had a private army. They could crush them without even batting an eyelid, as they had the pack whose territory had previously occupied where the mine now was.

But he was not here to look at the mine. He still remembered the time he had come here to clear his head and found out that one of the neighbouring packs had an unsecured wifi network. Now this wasn't just his secret place, it was his only real link with the outside world.

The internet at the pack house, once one of the crowning achievements of Lorbaugh's reign, had not been switched on since the news of Lorbaugh's court ruling had come. The telecom company had come and taken away everything. Ironically, it was the neighbouring pack's family business, so this felt just in his eyes.

He opened the old laptop. It had belonged to one of the rostered doctors who had donated it. It rebooted randomly sometimes but the battery life was still solid and it had lasted him two good years, and he couldn't imagine it crapping out any time soon. It had better not. He had been working on the blog post all week in dribs and drabs between his duties, and he just needed to take a few minutes to look over it again before it was ready to send.

As the post uploaded he gingerly opened the box. It had been burning a hole inside his pocket all this time. Out sprang a tightly packed smorgasbord of newspaper clippings and scribbled folded up pages. He leafed through them in the light of the laptop. The notes were in Taucusi's clear, looping hand. At the bottom there was a wad of cash. New Carinthian Dollars, as the local currency was basically dead in the water after 1994. He was sure there would be some purpose to it, once he had sorted everything out. He decided to take a closer look once he got back to his room in the pack house.

He packed up his things and got ready to head back. If he was to leave tomorrow, he had a lot to do.