It came to Balto with such sudden shock that he found himself gasping for breath and having to stand back to take it all it. Not that standing back any helped for him to take the breathtaking view into himself.

He was here. He was home.

For the last several days Balto had been on an endless trip through waste lands of the north. He hadn't seen a single sign that another animal inhabited the land, tracks, scat, or the animals themselves. He walked for hours, days at a time, scavenging field mice to eat. He was pushing himself to the limit of what he could do, and to see just how far he could go. But he had found it, and just like Nava had said, he knew that he was home.

The valley stretched nearly a miles wide at the mouth, and over two miles wide at the two peaks that stated the end of the valley. In the middle a small creek flowed through thick brush and bramble before leaving the valley to flow like an old man to the sea six miles away. On either wall of the valley lay thousands of boulders all stacked atop one another all the way to the tops of the mountain's on either side.

Balto wondered if those were the places where he played with his brother's and sister's as a child. Had he laid down in the shade of the little shrub trees? Drank from those waters? Or was this just another wishful hope that he had found his home? No! This had to be his home, it was just too familiar to be another valley.

He wanted to move down into the valley, but when his brain tried to send the message to his feet, they wouldn't move. He looked at them to see what the matter was. But they just sat there in the dead flowers. He finally felt himself pushed forward and bolted down the hill into the belly of the valley into his home.

He ran down the hill with dead flowers and across the grassy field towards the low bushy fagots standing next to the small creek. Balto found a small place where a trail vanished into the darkness of the underbrush never stopping to second think what might have made the large hole; he raced through the opening, and before he knew it he sloshed into muddy water.

He leaned his head down and took one long gulping drink from a spot of clear water that he hadn't muddied up. It was clean and reviving, he didn't need the drink, but it tasted so good. He came up with water dripping off his chops, he was home, now all he had to do was find where home used to be.

He made his way out of the thicket and up the other side of the valley until he was on a higher slop and could see the entire valley from a sitting position. The valley moved up for nearly ten miles before veering to the left where it ran headfirst into a glacier wall the size of a mountain. The thicket of brush made it way along the creek for mile after mile, sometimes vanishing to just the small creek, and sometimes becoming so wide with brush that it looked to be a forest. On either side of the creek, as it made it's meandering way rocks mounds, varying from ten feet, to fifty feet in height, rose up into the sky, making a perfect spot for wolves to gather, or possibly build a den.

Balto just wanted to take it all in, to feel his native earth, but something seemed wrong. The air was dead, no bugs flew, no birds sang, and no wind blew. The valley was void of life that moved and sang and breathed with the love of simply being. "What is this?" Balto said to himself. The void valley scared, and exhilarated him all at the same time.

Balto's eye caught a nearby mound of rock and dirt with a small bunch of sticks around a large grey rock. The mound was just a half mile upstream and just on the other side of the creek, and it looked to be the perfect spot for a den. At least that's where he would build a den if this was his land. It was down wind, with a central location to everything up the valley, meaning that any animal going up the valley would be bottlenecked in. If there were any animals in this valley?

Balto hadn't seen a single sign the entire trip north of the town, besides the starving wolves who told him there was nothing up here.

It only took Balto a few minutes to make the half mile jaunt to the rock mound; and just like he thought, by the rock, under the scraggly brush trees, there was a hole leading down into the ground. But it only took Balto a moment to realize that the den was void of life. Roots hung down in the entrance, clogged with dirt from countless years of growing. Balto sniffed into the mouth of the den and all he could smell was the damp smell of wet dirt. But was this his home? At one time maybe?

He pushed down into the den, but came head on with a large rock that had fallen down some years past. Balto backed out of the hole, despondent that this might have been his birthplace, but he was unable to enter it and see if anything seemed familiar.

He hadn't been looking into the darkened hole, trying to remember, more than a few seconds when.

"Hey you."

Balto zipped around. Up the hill from him standing proudly against the sky a singly male wolf looked with deathly cold eyes down on him. "Who are you?" the wolf paused for a moment. "What are you doing here?"

"My name is -"

"Your name means nothing to me." the wolf retorted without hesitation. "What are you doing here?"

Balto was just about to answer when another wolf appeared twenty feet off to the wolfs left. Balto eyed that wolf, catching him before he could answer the first wolfs question.

"I said, what are you doing here." the first wolf growled brining Balto's attention back to him.

"I am looking, for something, or someone." Balto answered.

"Who are you looking for? What are you looking for?" the wolf commanded again.

"I am looking for my home." Balto said proudly.

The wolf's eyes squinted in wonder. "You must really be lost."

Balto didn't know if he was supposed to take it serious, or humorous. He waited for a moment, letting the breeze brush the grass and the awkward silence reign. Then the wolf began again.

"From where have you come?"

"I have come many days and nights. I have traveled long distance with little food, and without the protection of my  pack." Balto threw out abruptly. The wolf might have asked more questions if he had used the word family, and might have attacked if he knew Balto was a wolf dog with a home in a town.

"Why would you think that your home would be here?"

"I dreamed of it and was told where I would find my home by an elder wolf I met. He told me to come north, past the last sight of wolf, and into the rough of a barren wilderness." The story sounded far fetched to Balto; and he was the one saying it.

"You say that you left your family?"

"My pack is my family, yes."

Balto noticed something different about the wolf. He was no longer offensive and snarling down Balto's throat; he was calm, cool, almost sympathizing.

"Did you leave your mate by herself?"

Balto thought about Jenna. "Yes, I did. But I do not fear that she will come to any harm in my territory."

"But what if another male comes to claim what you have left unguarded? Then you will have lost everything."

Balto was just about to rebuttal when the wolf descended down the hill and stopped ten feet away from Balto. The other wolf that Balto had seen on the hill followed alike, joining by the first wolf's side. It didn't take Balto more than a second to realize that the second wolf was the first wolf's mate. She had beautiful grey fur speckled with guard hair of a darker grey. This flowed around her body, seeming to come from her shoulders and drape her like a cape. Her face was thin and motherly, petite, and all knowing.

The first wolf was different. He was smaller with a thin face, like a dog. His muscles rippled just underneath his dark grey fur, hiding an explosive power that at any moment could come to life. But there was something else to him, something that seemed familiar. It was his body shape. Balto knew that if he had met this wolf on the streets of Nome he would have mistaken him for a large dog.

"My name is Elek, and this is my mate Avelin. What is your name?"

"My name is Balto." His name had no effect on them.

"What is your father's name?" Elek asked.

"I'm afraid that I do not know my fathers name; I never knew him before I got separated from my mother, Aniu during a snowstorm." Balto noticed that Elek's facial expressions changed slightly at the mention of his mother's name. "Do you know of Aniu?"

"No." Elek said changing back to the offensive side. "It is just a name."

Avelin looked at her mate with a peculiar glace. Balto noted it.

"Listen Balto." Elek started. "I'm sure you have a beautiful mate somewhere, and a family who is worried to death about you. There is nothing here for you. Now why don't you go home before something might happen to them?"

"But I've come so far." Balto pleaded. But Elek was right. The seasons were already changing, flowerers were dying, and every night the wind blew a little bit harsher and a little bit colder. Winter would be upon the land soon; and if he couldn't get back to Jenna by the first snowfall; he wouldn't until spring.

But Elek had to know something about Balto's past, he asked for his father's name, then there was the reaction he had to his mother's name. "Isn't there something that you can tell me?"

"Sorry. I don't know anything about you, or Aniu, or anything about this valley." Elek finished with a growl. "I was captured long ago, far from here, by humans and forced to fight for their entertainment before escaping from the human village to the south. I fell into a pack just north of the village, where I met my mate Avelin. We both ran north to this valley, and that's all I know."

Balto stepped back to show that he wasn't trying to push any further. Balto knew deep down that Elek was lying right to his face; there were too many holes in his story for it to be true. For one, Elek had no scars like most dogs that were in fighting rings, and his mate Avelin mirrored what Balto must have looked like, complete shock and horror.

"Now go home." Elek said sternly. "There's nothing here for you." Elek then turned and began to walk away. Avelin watched her mate walk away in a huff. She looked at Balto, who stared abruptly, then ran after her mate.

Balto really didn't know how to feel. When he tried to find that emotion that he should have been feeling there was only a blank spot, and a feeling of emptiness. He watched Elek and Avelin wander out of sight, it was time to go home, and he knew it with sadness.

Balto lowered his head, his eyes, and his hopes. He turned himself around, and then began forcing his legs to move forward, back to home without a shred of an idea as to who his parents were and what were the happenings that last time he saw his mother.

"What are you doing Elek?" Avelin asked.

Elek turned his head away and began to walk in a slightly different direction.

"Elek, pay attention to me." she demanded.

One again Elek changed his course, purposely ignoring her, hoping that she would loose interest, but it wasn't working.

"Elek!"

"What!" He said turning to face her. "What do you want?"

"I want to know why."

"Why what!" Elek yelled, turned and began walking away again.

Avelin bounded twice and caught up to her mate. "Why you are letting him go."

"Because as far as I am concerned, he was dead long ago. You remember what happened when I let the past get in my way? Friends got hurt, it was my fault."

"Yes, I do. And yes it was your fault." Elek glanced irately at Avelin. "But now he has come far, leaving everything behind, to find out what happened. He's done what you did; he's given up everything to find you. And now, when he's on your doorstep, you're going to turn your back on him because you were unable to find him in the past?"

Elek looked at her, still flush with anger. "yes." he turned and walked away, leaving Avelin standing with her mouth agape.