teal stargazers opened as the frigid wind screamed loudly in large ears which in turn went flat against a narrow skull. the usually warm weather that accompanied summer in blossom forest had fled in favor of frigid winds and chilling rain. while most of land was nustled in dens, cozy and warm, a long figure stood soundly in the night. it was obviously female, from the delicate bone structure to the long face of the kalak. however, sadness clung to the wolf like a child to it’s mother’s side. it wasn’t obvious unless you knew the girl well, but it was there. it was in the slump of her shoulders, the hanging of her long tail, the blankness of her eyes. as “fine” as she had said she was hours earlier, the fae was obviously not fine. there was no comfort to be taken from her mother; pandora was just as lost in her grief as caspian was. she wouldn’t burden odessa with her feelings, either. the tsarina had too much on her mind as is, what with recovering from whatever she had faced in the time she was absent from cold summers, and there was no need to drag her older sister into her personal life. both caspian and sophie were out of the question. they had just lost a daughter and to force her own pain upon them would be cruel. it was a wild throbbing ache in her chest, one that came only from the loss of a family member. she didn’t understand how caspian could continue to function, how her brother continued to breath and speak and walk. the girl, maeve was her name if eriel remembered correctly, was a babe; a child that eriel had never even met, and still the girl felt as though she was sinking.

maybe it was her faith that was sinking, pulling her along with it, not her pain. as a pup, pandora had told her tales of Tor and her mate and how Tor was a merciful and loving goddess. but how could such a loving goddess steal such a precious and important life, a pup’s life, nonetheless. it was as though everything she had ever known about the afterlife, about destiny and fate and the gods, had been a lie and she was left wondering what happened next. how could a pup die? the thought echoed through her mind in the midst of the chaos snapping at the edges of her conscious. it didn’t make sense to her and as she stood, a slight tremor lifting goosebumps across her skin, the world didn’t make any real sense either. for instance, the weather. it had been sunny a few days ago and slowly, as if sensing the approaching demise of a young life, dark clouds had rolled in. it seemed fitting, if she connected maeve’s ending with the storm, that a storm had come to sweep away the unattached soul away. after all, didn’t storms represent life? wild and full of turmoil and sometimes peaceful, soothing, before they were vicious and merciless. maybe it was just eriel in her empty state, but the storm was like an anesthetic to her pain. it was as if, with every gust of wind and torrent of rain, her grief was swept away and in it’s place, an emptiness settled. eriel hadn’t spoken to caspian or sophie since she found out, but pandora’s eyes, once bright and full of life and now stricken and pained, told her all she needed to know. no one had expected sophie to bury her daughter, so caspian had. he had dug the hole until his feet had ached, pandora had said softly, and then placed his and sophie’s daughter to rest and stayed there long after her grave was filled, lost in his mind.

eriel didn’t doubt that her brother could recover from this. he was the strongest of the pack, emotionally at least. axel’s unloving attitude towards his son had made sure of this. while eriel had never met her father, and occasionally loathed him for losing his life before meeting her, her mother often told her of him. of how she could see axel in caspian and how grateful she was to him for giving caspian and odessa the traits they needed to survive. honestly it made eriel sick sometimes. she didn’t understand her mother’s undying love for her long since passed-away mate, but maybe that’s what it meant to be in love. eriel didn’t get love. sure, she had great affection toward romulus, but she also had great affection towards caspian and odessa and sophie and her mother and even her brother and sister’s rugrats, or the ones still alive. it was all the confusion of love and pain and emptiness that boiled inside eriel that had the girl’s mouth opening. it hung open for a minute before it slowly shut and the girl bolted. thorns tugged at her wet coat and branches whipped her willowy frame as she ran, the mud under her paws making each step slippery as she tried to outrun her emotions. however, mother nature takes no mercy and the girl went down, her body rolling through the mud. she stood up slowly, narrow chest heaving as she trembled. without warning, eriel’s voice burst out of her in one long scream of emotion. she fell silent after a moment, teal eyes huge and russet chest moving rapidly.
"words"