She had thought her heart was breaking. It had felt like a tide was washing in against her heart, pounding against the mahogany doors that guarded her life force. Caithe kept waiting for them to cave against the force of the water, water that was filling her lungs and making her choke, but no matter how the pain beat against her… she did not break. It was strange not to be utterly destroyed. Somehow she was still standing when the hurricane turned away, left wounded and battered but nothing more. Still, instead of receiving the final destruction she had expected, the sable woman was left instead with the most distressing agony in her breast. Now that her flight was at an end, Caithe felt it well up as fresh as the moment it had happened. The pain rose with the crescendo of her canine sorrow, but did not ebb when her tragic, beautiful cry broke, trembled and faded away. The summer night, blue and clear, had taken up her song as a sacrifice but repaired none of her hurts in exchange.

Caithe slid to her belly, too miserable to sit upon her haunches any longer. Her forelegs turned up the sand, and she lay her head down over their half buried wrists. She had no intention of moving, her mind becoming an empty buzzing place, sorrow tingling in her teeth and lungs sore. A single tear, as foreign to this wild place as the stars that watched overhead, slid away from the black lining over her eyes before dissolving into the white of her cheek. This sort of loneliness had never been her burden. So much was lost on this, so much more than a lover’s whispers. Oh, and the shame, shame for what she had lost in order to gain what she had lost anyway. The road home was forever marked in her mind, but there would be no going back. Pride and regret would keep her away. Those who had cared from the start deserved better than someone who stopped caring about them the moment someone who didn’t have to love her, but did came along… Well, it had seemed like love to Caithe.

Nights like this one were meant to be passed in the thrall of a lover, moments flowing by so quickly, some of them resounding forever from the very second they occur. The song forever altered in a second, never to be played the same again. A look, a touch, never to be repeated, no matter how many times the universe provides a little déjà vu. Fittingly, two lovers came upon Caithe in the darkness. They were strong where she was weak, full of joy in the place where she now knew only sorrow. She would not begrudge them this, because even in this dark moment she was still the creature she had always been. No, she was not destroyed.

The sound of their approach had roused her, and Caithe’s ears swiveled toward the sound of the male and female who approached. She sat up apprehensively, making a tight little statue of herself, tail wrapped against her paws. She had called to Isola, to Kane, though she had not known it when she cried out her pain to the heavens. Their names were hers to keep in the way that names are, addresses at which memories live. She gave hers in return to the woman who spoke so strangely, and to her silent mate because Caithe was friendly creature when times were kinder, and because they had come and she was grateful (though the feeling was not one she was aware of).
“I’m Caithe. I…”
She balked at the idea of explaining why she had given her sorrow-song to the night. Her blue eyes, shot through with flakes of gold flickered between the two wolves and their smiles were kind. So she dropped her gaze from the glow of love that lived unseen between them, and confessed herself.
“I have lost someone I loved… They have gone from me and now I am completely alone.”
There was no one to know her name here, no one but Kane and Isola who loved through this summer of her downfall.