The wolf-stone is older than the mill and ruder than a sermon.

Hunters carved on one face. Wolves on the other. In the middle, horn-beasts—deer, plenty of them—stand among little scratched trees. Where the wolves are many, the trees have understory. Where the wolves are gone, the carved deer multiply and the little trees vanish into a blank.

You can feel the slope of it without a grown-up name. Too many eaters of plants. Too few eaters of them. Seedlings lose. The forest’s next century gets eaten this afternoon.

Mira traces a wolf with one finger. “People were scared of them.”

“People were also using them without knowing,” you say. “A hunter on four legs that kept the salad from eating the future.”

Wind comes up the ridge, leaf-mould and cold water riding it. Elder Briar—the old elf who remembers when this ridge was a deer path—once said the elves did not worship wolves. They noticed them. Noticing is a kind of respect that does not need a shrine.

The mill still has a tax term. The hollow still has rules. Someone has to put this awkward truth on a table between both peoples.