Luna woke up slowly, sore from sleeping in the chair. The fireside was still warm through the fire had burned down. Outside the flickering circle of light cast by the fire it was dark. She added more logs from an old pile beside the mantle, yelping as she disturbed a spider the size of her palm. Even after it had run up the wall and into the rafters she looked around anxiously. There was a candle on the mantle wreathed in cobwebs. She took it down carefully, wary of more spiders.
Armed with her candle she began to explore. It was a surprisingly well stocked house. Trunks of old clothes were tucked away, tools and cookware. It was as if the inhabitants had taken the bare minimum expecting to come back and then never had.
Luna found some rags that were a little cleaner than she was. Using one and some of the clean snow outside she scrubbed out the ancient kettle and hung it over the fire stuffed full of yet more snow. It took awhile but eventually the kettle whistled cheerily and Luna used most of the hot water to wash herself and attempt to wash her dresses, guilty pulling on an old nightgown and knitted wrapper from one of the trunks. They were too big and yellowed with age but she was warm and her dresses were hung by the fire to dry.
She ate some of the food she had with her, the bread nearly too tough after 3 days. Luna fell back asleep in the armchair with an unbitten apple still in her hand.
Over the winter she scrubbed and tidied the old stone house. The wolves brought her food. Not just game but cheese, flour, and vegetables they must have stolen from other humans. Mist brought her a live but very unhappy chicken who after a week in a comfortable box and a steady diet of the insects Luna had been struggling to drive out of the house started laying again. In a wistful moment she named the plump hen Auntie, wishing she could ask the old woman her advice now.
Even with the wolves help Luna was unprepared to take care of herself in the middle of winter in an abandoned cottage. She struggled to learn to cook, eating half raw or burned food because that was all she had. The pack huddled with her on the coldest nights because without them she would have frozen.
The cottage needed upkeep she didn't fully understand, often patching cracks in the whitewashing with wet ash and flour to keep the drafts out. She gave up on the clothes she'd brought with her, using the sturdiest things she found packed away instead, wrapping her feet and hands in rags to try and keep them warm as she worked. Here the pack helped too, stealing her boots when they realized she needed them and helping her dig in the snow to save her chapped and painful fingers. But there was so much that sometimes Prince or Knight would drag her bodily from her blankets in the mornings or she wouldn't have stirred on her own.
One night not long after her birthday she sat staring into the fire exhausted by the many tasks she had only the barest knowledge of but suddenly needed to know to keep herself alive, when there was a scratch at the door. Prince stood there with a small, battered painting in his mouth. He padded to the fireplace and stood on his hind legs to set the painting on the mantel awkwardly.
Luna straightened it, staring at the figures. She knew one and could guess at the other two. Her father stood at her mother's right shoulder. The two were holding hands even though they were looking out at the viewer. A lean dark haired man rested his hand on her mother's other shoulder. He smiled at the viewer with the same blue eyes and Luna looked at Prince hesitantly.
The wolf was looking at the painting.
"Is that… you? Are you my uncle? Is this where my mother grew up?"
There were a million more questions she wanted to ask but Prince sighed, his head hanging down between his paws. Luna just put her arms around him and pressed her face into his ruff.