The sun rose slow and pale, like even it needed an extra hour under the blanket. The storm was gone. The smoke, the ice, the howls in the night — all blown clean away. In their place: the kind of stillness that carried meaning instead of fear.
It was the kind of morning Libby cherished.
A morning for rebuilding. For breathing. For looking out at the world and deciding — again — to make it better.
Sara Halliday zipped her coat to the chin and stood at the end of Main Street, snow crunching under her Keen boots. From a distance, she could see them — Thane, Rime, and Holt — starting early, as always. Three wolves, three different energies: Thane’s calm command, Rime’s quiet alertness, and Holt’s good-natured thunder.
She inhaled deep and headed toward them.
“Alright,” Thane said, tapping the clipboard with a knuckle. “Sara, you’re with us today. If you want to really understand how we work, today’s the day. We fix, we shovel, we talk, we listen. That’s the Libby way.”
Sara grinned, blowing out breath in the cold. “After the past couple of days? Conversation and shovels don’t sound so bad.”
“Sara strong? We see. Pry bar will tell.” Holt said, shoulders already piled with lumber. His smile was faint but real.
Sara walked alongside them as they trudged to the old collapsed carport outside the library, a mound of roof and timber under a thick crust of snow. Rime was the first to step forward. Without speaking, he reached for the timber edge and tested it with his claw.
Sara watched him closely. “He’s checking for strain, isn’t he?”
Thane nodded. “Rime knows what he’s doing. Bad timber can snap wrong and hurt somebody.”
“I can relate,” she said lightly.
Holt snorted. “Timber not so bad. Longer to forgive than wolves, though.”
Rime lifted a panel carefully, stripping snow loose and revealing the broken spine of the roof underneath. Sara noted the fluidity, the muscle under the fur, movements so practiced it almost looked choreographed.
“You all seem… in your element,” she said after a while.
“Storms don’t clean up after themselves. That’s our job.” Thane said. “It’s just the rhythm of things.”
Gabriel and Mark weren’t far — they were out behind the radio tower, a feral wolf named Ash and a bigger one called Fenn packing the last of the old solar batteries onto a sled. Gabriel stood poised on a frozen ledge of the generator shed, tapping metal with a wrench while Mark checked a continuity meter.
“You ever think,” Gabriel said, “that all this used to be complicated?”
Mark didn’t look up. “It’s still complicated. We just don’t write manuals for it anymore.”
“Hmm. Fair. But now I don’t have to ask anyone for permission to rewire things. ‘Unity in lawlessness,’ if you squint hard enough.”
“You do not obey old law,” Ash said proudly, claws tapping on the wood. “But you obey signal. Signal is strongest law.”
Fenn grunted approval. “Signal is pack howl. Long howl. No borders.”
Gabriel looked at Mark in mock seriousness. “We need to make that the new KLMR motto.”
Mark rolled his eyes but couldn’t help smiling. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Spell that?”
“Look it up in the dictionary you burned to stay warm last winter.”
Fenn’s ears perked. “What mean incorrigi-bull?”
“It means Gabriel,” Mark said.
Ash let out a chuckle, jaw hanging, tongue peeking out.
“You say new words. Is good,” Fenn added. “Words make brains big.”
“Oh.” Mark nodded thoughtfully. “Well your brain must be huge by now, Holt.”
“Not Holt,” Fenn corrected. “Fenn.” And then, to Mark: “You small brain, yes.”
Mark gave Gabriel an I-told-you-so look. Gabriel was eating it up.
Back at the carport, Sara knelt beside Rime and watched him gently lift a bent metal pole. She noticed something different in the way he worked: his hands were shaped to destroy, to hunt — but his movements were meant for rebuilding.
“You’re… gentler than I thought you’d be,” she said carefully.
Rime glanced up.
“Strong does not mean break things,” he said.
Thane smiled at that. “Strong means knowing when not to.”
Sara nodded slowly. “That’s not what I learned in school.”
“Then school wrong,” Holt said.
“Just about everything?” she laughed.
“Mostly.”
They worked in silence a while. Then Sara broke it:
“Thane… can I ask something?”
“Ask.”
“You all talk about instinct,” she said. “What does that mean for you? Is instinct a voice? A feeling? A law? All of the above?”
Thane rested an arm on the lumber pile. “Instinct is everything you know without thinking. When the world ends, instinct’s what’s left.”
“Is it always right?”
“No. But it’s always honest.”
Sara nodded, eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“Humans feel instinct, too,” she said. “We just bury it under language and expectation.”
“Dig it out,” Holt said. “Good muscle to build.”
Rime gave a soft grunt of agreement. “Too many bones left in ground,” he murmured. “Not enough dug up.”
Sara didn’t fully understand. But eventually — she would.
Brent didn’t show up until noon.
He walked with an air of silent apology, not hunched but softened. He found Thane first, clearing slush around the Justice Center with Rime.
“I don’t want to sit around,” Brent said. “Let me help. I’m… better when I help.”
Thane studied him for a breath. Brent’s hands were bare, his coat half-zipped — this was not bravado, just exhaustion trying to move forward.
Thane looked to Rime. The quiet wolf nodded, once.
“Start on the east awning,” Thane said. “It lost half its supports in the storm. Fix that, you fix leaks. Fix leaks, you fix morale.”
Brent gave a short nod and headed off toward the tools.
Rime watched him go. Then he met Thane’s gaze.
“Trust not fast. You tie it. Knot by knot,” he said.
Thane nodded. “It takes time to build.”
Back at the library site, Sara was finishing up her notes on the carport rebuild — she’d drawn a precise sketch of the new timber layout, labeling each joint. Holt stared at the diagram like it was a wild animal.
“How many words it need,” he asked, “to say ‘beam go here’?”
“As many as it takes not to crush somebody,” she quipped.
Holt grunted. “Fair.”
Rime leaned in close, pointing at the little diagram.
“That is north?” he asked.
“Correct,” Sara said.
“That why beam angry,” Rime muttered.
“Why?”
“Wind. Finds weakness first. Wind: smart hunter.”
Sara smirked at that. “You’re not wrong.”
Holt stood up, rolling his shoulders. “Walk first. Then build.”
“We just spent the morning hauling lumber,” Thane reminded him.
“Hah,” Holt said. “That was breakfast.”
After lunch, the four came together in the big square — Thane, Sara, Rime, and Holt — to reset for the next task. The wind had settled, and the snow had gone from sharp ice to soft, packable fluff. It felt like the world had decided this was a good day to laugh a little.
Sara had been quiet through lunch. Not tired — just watching.
After a moment, she finally said the thing on her mind.
“Can I ask another question?”
“You can ask all you want,” Thane said.
“Do you ever regret what you’ve become?”
The wolves paused.
Instinct doesn’t get emotional often. But you could feel all three pause — Rime blinked slow, Holt’s tail stopped, Thane breathed strong and steady.
“Regret,” Thane said at last, “is about paths not walked.”
He looked out toward the mountains — cold, alive, unmoving.
“Instinct says… this is where we were meant to walk.”
Sara nodded slowly, processing.
“And what about humanity?”
Thane glanced sideways. “We didn’t lose ours. We just stopped needing it for permission.”
And then it was time for something different.
Holt hefted a plank over his shoulder and called out to Gabriel and Mark, who were digging out the town stage in the square so Gabriel could broadcast live that night.
Holt stomped over toward Gabriel and Mark, who were wrestling a frozen coil of stage cable out of a snowbank.
“You need lift?” Holt offered.
“We always need lift,” Mark said, “just not lift-and-crush.”
Gabriel grinned. “Last time Holt handled speakers, the speakers lost.”
Holt blinked slowly. “Speakers weak. Not my fault.”
Ash padded in behind Holt, curious nose twitching. “This for loud box?” he asked, poking the cable gently with a claw.
“Yeah,” Gabriel said, “this one makes music and announcements.”
Fenn arrived with a snow-dusted amp head in his jaws, dropped it proudly by Mark’s paw.
“Found box,” Fenn said. “Not humming. Is safe.”
“Don’t chew that,” Mark said.
“Not food,” Fenn replied seriously. “Tastes like nothing.”
Gabriel laughed. “That’s because it’s full of wires and copper.”
“Copper good?” Holt asked.
“For music, yeah,” Gabriel said. “Not for chewing.”
Holt shrugged. “Wolves not chew music.”
“You should do announcements sometime,” Mark joked. “Holt gives the weather.”
Holt considered, ears twitching. “Snow. Cold. End report.”
Sara snorted into her scarf as she passed, trying not to laugh.
Evening settled in with a pink burn along the mountains. One by one, lanterns lit up under the falling dark, and the sound of shovels gave way to feet on wood. Work paused, and in its place came the quiet, satisfied murmur of a community that had built something real together.
Brent walked back through the square, wiping dust off his coat. Sara sat beside Thane, watching the wolf at rest. Holt was having a quiet arm-wrestle with Ash, doing his best to make it last longer than one second. Rime, as usual, sat perched, watching the world with the patience of old earth.
“Today felt good,” Sara said.
“Good days aren’t rare,” Thane replied. “Just easy to miss.”
“You don’t miss them.”
“No,” he said. “Because wolves live in them.”
Sara let that sit in her chest a while.
“You all rebuilt more than a carport today,” she said.
Thane nodded. “Fixing things fixes people. Same rules.”
Marta stepped out of the town hall with a thermos in hand and gave a quick whistle — just enough to get the attention of everyone in the square.
“No alerts. No surprises,” she called. “Feels like a first in months.”
Hank appeared behind her, rubbing his shoulder. “If anyone needs dinner, we’ve still got chili going in the hall. Bring a bowl. Or a bucket. Holt, I know you heard that.”
Holt’s ears perked up instantly. “Bucket good,” he said.
Gabriel laughed. “That’s our signal then.”
Sara let her gaze sweep over the scene — laughter, steam in the air, wolves lounging near lanterns.
“I thought I understood what community was,” she said. “I was wrong.”
Thane nodded. “Good people. Strong hearts. That’s all it needs.”