Artist note: Top left panel: Breeze, Songsent, and young Blacksnake. The rest should be familiar. ;-) It should probably go without saying that in doing this project, I was indebted to plenty of references -- I looked at lots of bears, lots of wolves (primarily from Monty Sloan's site), lots of deer/elk (plus eagles and cougars), and lots of landscape photography for inspiration on the backgrounds! Final note: now that you have presumably finished reading, there is a bit of poignancy to be pointed out here. As the jump in dates suggests, Newt slept in wrapstuff for centuries, before being awakened recently. While he slept, Chieftess Easysinger died; she was killed by a mother spirit-bear, who was defending her cubs. :( That history may not be very "real" to Newt or the elf-cubs in this scene, though; it all happened a very long time ago, from their viewpoint.