"Stick your nose in the air, and smell your way home," was what Saluki remembered her mother advising when she was just a tiny puppy. "When you feel it, you'll know which way to turn."
But Saluki didn't want to go home. She just wanted her mother.

Saluki's eyes fluttered open, and for one glorious moment she thought she caught a whiff of her mother's thick pelt, in her familiar hollow of pine needles, snuggling with Loki -- but then she remembered.

She jumped to her paws, and winced as her cut limb touched the ground. Her legs were coated in ashes and she sneezed ferociously. She was standing in a large grove of birch trees, and she could spot patches of pale blue sky through the white branches. It all seemed too placid and serene to be the day after the ruthless fire.
It had all happened so fast. But I could have run faster. Saluki's heart was suddenly gripped with a cold fist. Was it my fault?

"Mama?" a whimper came from within a wild blueberry bush, and Loki's bright blue eyes peered out, then seemed to darken as she too remembered the day before. "Mama..." her voice trailed off.

Saluki braced her paws against the ground as if she was afraid the wind would push her over. Her chest felt unusually hot.
"Where's Mama?" Loki whispered from the bush.
"She's gone, Loki! And there's nothing we can do, and it's all my fault!" Saluki's rage and pain poured out of her in a flash of red. Heat pooled behind her eyes, and Saluki scrunched them shut, squeezing away that loss, and guilt. When she opened them she saw black spots swimming in the air.

Loki gave a prolonged howl of anguish and buried her snout into the fallen leaves. "She's not! I'm going home to find her!"

"We can't," said Saluki, "and it's all my fault," she added silently to herself, bending down to lick her throbbing paw gingerly. They had collapsed in a heap the night before in a small clump of shrubs, having crossed the small river successfully. The fire had been quenched during the night, but it was a long journey back to their den, which Saluki knew would be empty and cold without her mother. Half the time they had been following her, anyway. They were lost.
If she had just warned her, maybe they would be in a new den, in a new place, settling in ...
How would they survive? She and Loki were both only a few Moons, too young even to have ventured far from their familiar clearing. Saluki couldn't hunt, she couldn't even catch the wind. Loki would starve, she herself would starve...they would die without their mother.
A lapping sound came from behind Saluki, and she turned to see Loki drinking rapidly from a puddle that had formed in the roots of a tree. Saluki walked to her sister and stuck her dry tongue in the cool water. It felt refreshing, and she drank for what seemed like an hour. Then she dipped her injured paw in the puddle, licked the soot from her body, and sighed, clean at last.

Loki coughed from a few feet away, where she was now sprawled out on the leaves.
"Are you done?"
Saluki nodded sheepishly.
Loki stood up suddenly, ashes falling from her slate grey back, and shook her head. "Then I'm going back for her. You can come, too, if you want." She promptly turned on her heels and trotted off in a direction that Saluki was sure was the wrong one.

"Loki, come back! There's no way you can...uh..." Saluki got up as well and watched the determined, retreating back of her sister disappear into the green woods. Maybe her own senses had been muddled by the smoke. Maybe Loki was going the right way. Maybe Mama was alive, somewhere out there, she could have extricated herself, with her usual grace... Saluki imagined her mother snarling at the flames, leaping over them, searching for her daughters. She sighed tentatively, a little hope fluttering in her chest, and ran to catch up.