I wanted to put this under a comic, but the scenes didn't make it an appropriate commentary. So I'll put it here!

When I was young, and Zink was but a vague idea with named characters, I would lay awake at night and think about Mark. He was a tough cookie to crumble; the girl's animal halves were fairly self-evident, but Mark used to have this layer of pathos and cheap writing cliches. (I may not be the best writer, but I have improved since I was twelve.)

But then, something sublime: one night, as I alternated between staring at the ceiling and the Big Dipper, wolves started howling. Howling, yipping and barking, perhaps to celebrate a meal of rabbit or mule. It was very loud, but suddenly that meant something more than lost sleep. Suddenly, it meant that obviously Mark was a wolf too, and how could I have missed that? It was permanent from that moment.

Of course, later I found out that I was an idiot and those were coyotes, not wolves, but like I said, it was permanent. Lucky for me, a nearby zoo has a whole bunch of timber wolves, including a couple fiesty females for movement sketches. Woo!