To those of you who commented, the reason Humphrey is not being as funny as usual is that he is going through post marital shock. Don't worry its temporary. Once he recovers from the shock of actually being married, he will become his normal self again. Thank you for expressing your concern.

The shard raft picked up speed. Humphrey could see light that was getting brighter and bigger.

"No, no," he said. "Don't go towards the light."

Kate laughed. "Yes, silly. That's exactly where we want to go."

"I know."

The shard picked up even more speed. The sound of water falling on rock came to their ears from far below.

"Ohhh…" he trailed off. The river ended where the cave ended. The rushing water ended in a waterfall that tumbled down a sheer cliff and landed on a pile of jagged rocks. There were several carcasses of dead desert animals dashed against the rocks. The carcasses were strangely bloodless. The torrent washed everything away from the bodies except the skeletons. Kate grimaced.

Both of them were looking around frantically.

"There!" Kate exclaimed. "Jump onto that ledge on my mark!"

The shard started to dip. "NOW!" They jumped. Kate landed squarely on her feet.

"I believe I can fly!" he yelled as he jumped. He more than made it. He overshot the landing and crashed face first into the cliff wall. "I'm OK," he said through a mouthful of dirt.

Kate laughed. "You should know by now that we can't fly. After all the times we've slid down hills on tree bark sleds and fallen off, you should know you can't fly," she said, rolling on the ground. "Let's get off of this ledge before one of us gets hurt."

Both wolves picked themselves up and walked along the ledge to the side of the rock face and slid down the incline. Once they were at the bottom of the hill, they looked around.

"Hey, doesn't this area look familiar?" Kate asked.

"I don't know what's familiar anymore," Humphrey said. "I'm too woozy from hitting my head. Can I have a cupcake?" he said, sliding to the ground and laying there with his tongue protruding slightly from his mouth.

"Humphrey! Are you OK?" Kate was frantic.

"Yesh. I'm Okayzzz."

"You don't sound like it."

"I knowsh. There's a stream over there. Let me go dunk my head in there."

Kate helped him up and over to the stream. Humphrey submerged his head completely underwater and gulped in a huge mouthful. He came back out the water and sprayed the water back out.

"Ugh. Forgot about the dead animals. They make this taste like something the crows would eat."

"Maybe you should go get some other water."

"I would, but there isn't any other."

Now that the crisis was passed, the two wolves walked along the bank of the stream until it ended in a small pond. The vegetation around it was lush and green. However, there were no fish in the pond. The crystal falls had sufficiently polluted the water enough that there were no animals. The plants thrived off of the natural fertilizer, but the chemicals were not good for aquatic life. The sky above the pond was clear enough for the wolves to be able to see the sky. They continued heading north.

Around evening, Kate and Humphrey came upon a clearing that looked extremely familiar.

"Hey! This is the clearing with the cave we found!" Kate exclaimed.

"Finally, any further and I would have flat feet." Humphrey walked over to the pool and drank deeply. "Ah. Fresh water. Good temperatures and trees. No more of that desert stuff."

They located the cave and went inside. Upon their previous visit, they had not explored it much. It turned out that the cave went fairly far back into the mountain, deep enough to provide shelter for a large pack. There was even a small pool in the middle of the cave. Kate tried the water and found that it was clean and had a quite nice tasted to it.

"This is perfect for starting a pack. Shelter, water, everything," Kate said.

"You forgot food," Humphrey said yawning. "Let's go get a nice big moose when we get up in the morning."

"Sounds good to me."

Kate laid her head on Humphrey's shoulder and drifted into deep slumber. Humphrey lay on the sandy floor and thought. So much had happened in the last week, the biggest being that he had gotten married. With thoughts swirling through his head, he found it hard to go to sleep.

"One. Two. Three," he said as he counted sheep. Finally he buried his nose in Kate's fur and fell asleep.

The next morning, both wolves awoke to find Paddy and Marcel prodding them.

"Well, it's good to see you two," Marcel said to them. "We were just passing through and saw some tracks. We landed outside the cave and saw you two sleeping so peacefully and decided to say hi."

"Are you staying here?" Paddy asked.

"Planning on it. This looked like a good place to start a pack," Kate answered.

"Oh, boy. Puppies. You should have fun with that," Marcel said, elbowing Humphrey in the side.

"Who said anything about puppies?" Humphrey growled playfully.

"Well obviously you will have puppies. You cannot have a pack without puppies."

"True. I don't know. We haven't really thought about it. What do you think Kate? Should we have puppies?"

Kate's eyes lit up. "Yes, yes, yes!"

"Well, that was enthusiastic. I guess we will be. Why don't you two stay here for a while? You can leave occasionally and go tell mom and dad news about us. That way we can still keep in touch," Humphrey said.

"Sounds good to me. I've been wanting to settle down for a while. There is a quite nice tree above this cave. I think we will settle down there," Marcel said.

"Yay. We will have people we know nearby," Kate hugged Marcel.

"If you will excuse us, we need food. It's been awhile since we have eaten."

"Certainly, certainly. Have fun, kids."

Kate and Humphrey walked slowly out of the cave towards the forest. They knew exactly where to find the moose were. They had already seen them.

Please R&R. BTW, it might be awhile before I update. My Christmas break starts soon, and I will be playing Halo: Reach. Also, to those of you who talked about it being boring because they were still traveling, don't rush me again. I was planning on them settling down in a few chapters, but I'm trying to make you happy. Don't expect me to rush my plans again. I'm felt like giving you this because it's Christmas. OK, I'm babbling. Merry Christmas!