Croft blinked. “You want to see the fence?”

The eastern pasture was a postcard of rural peace—clover up to the knees, a creek chuckling over stones, and a split-rail fence where honeysuckle grew wild. Barnaby’s herd milled about nervously, tails twitching, refusing to graze within twenty yards of that border.

That night, Elara didn’t write a prescription. She designed a behavior modification plan. First, she moved the herd to the western barn—out of sight, out of mind. Then, she and Croft strung bright, fluttering flagging tape along the eastern fence line, the kind used to startle deer. Finally, she borrowed a recording from the state university: the deep, territorial growl of a dominant male wolverine, digitized and amplified.

He climbed the rock pile an hour later.

But she added a private note in the margins, the kind she never showed clients: Barnaby taught me again that healing an animal’s body often starts by believing its fear. The wolverine never returned. But if it does, the goats will not freeze. They will fight. And that is the difference between medicine and salvation.