The rain was turning the earth to mud beneath the grass, his paws were already dark with the earth he’d dug over Bramble’s cold body but now the mud was turning him grey from the legs up. Tybalt shook the water out of his ears irritably, and gazed through the sheeting rain at the lake in the distance, the unfamiliar terrain making him feel as if he were adrift and lost. This was not as good a place as from where they’d come. His mind made that up immediately, even if it were not true. The home they had carved out of the unclaimed wilderness would be forever immortalized in his mind as a sort of heaven. Maybe it was a heaven now, for Bramble. He back turned to Foxtail, the large male snarled at himself and his stupid wandering thoughts…he didn’t even really think that, about heaven and all that… he was just looking for something to make his brain and heart stop churning with grief. He’d like to be himself again… or at least whoever he was supposed to be without Bramble.
He did not know if he could imprint again, he had heard of it happening. The thought made him want to retch. Already Tybalt was forming a new opinion of the whole idea of having his soul bound to another creature, and it wasn’t a pretty opinion either. Foxtail confirmed his little speech as she sat there, condemning him with her barbed words, for having dared to presume his soul and Bramble’s had been the most closely bound in their little trio. Darkly… he wondered if he really loved Bramble at all, or if he’d just been forced to
That was enough. He had to stop thinking.
Tybalt turned his head slowly, so that one of his ears could square off toward where Foxtail sat. He did not look at her but listened to her last set of words—these were more forlorn, though that was not her tone—and he really had no answer. He was silent a minute, lavender eyes roaming over the misty distance, blue trees and grey sky. When he looked forward again and stood, his damp coat clung to his muscular form like a second skin, and the look he turned back on her was piercing, his lavender eyes starkly bright in the gloomy lighting. “We find a way.” A way to what, or where, or something other than laying here together until they both died of heartache. He moved to trot away then, deeper into this foreign land… but paused, waited for her a moment, and then at last continued toward the unknown. When he spoke again it was more gently then before, but his deep voice still rung with a hard edge. “I would settle in a pack if you are amicable to it. It would make things simpler. “ He paused. “We would not always have to be together, just the two of us.” The idea of their continuing on as before, minus one, had been in his head at first… but now, knowing that the only connection he had to Foxtail had been Bramble he was certain she would be eager to be able to put a half dozen other wolves between them whenever necessary. As for Tybalt… He found himself wanting nothing but an end to this day.
