The hunt had been a huge success, the pink stains around her white-furred muzzle the only still visible implication of her part in it, that and the swollen sides of her stomach filled to the brim with fresh meat. She had gorged herself as the others had on the meat, the giant aurochs turning out to be surprisingly delicious and supple, the alphas and hunters taking their fair share before the other packs had joined in and even Hollowpoint had appeared with a group of pups on his heels. It didn’t surprise her, he had always been drawn to the young whose age matched his own heart, he could spend hours entertaining him and it came to light that he had done just that. It brought the ghost of a smile to her face as she had watched him play with them all after each had taken their fill, wondering if perhaps he could flourish her beneath the trees, if finally she had found a home deserving of them.

She enjoyed the trees, their towering presence an odd kind of comfort as if someone always watched out for them when beneath their boughs, she also found she had an odd and surprising like for Coszcotl in the few interactions she had with the alpha, and had finally decided she would tell the news to her brother before going to Coza with the idea. The clamor of the feast had settled as spring begun to flourish around them and she found her brother on the outskirts of Taviora, gazing forlornly at the towering mountains of Spirane in the distance. He had been gone quite a bit recently, often disappearing for days at a time, and while she worried she never paid it much thought as he always came home again. “Good morning brother,” she said, coming to sit beside him as the sun finally crested the pointed tips of the mountains before them, “do tell what has caught your attention so early this morning.” Her deeper voice seemed to boom amongst the closeness of the trees no matter how quietly she spoke, but her two toned eyes searched her brothers familiar face with interest, he was rarely so introspective.

The dark male sighed, giving an exaggerated roll of his shoulders as he turned his gaze to his stark sister, though he didn’t quite meet her eyes. This face beyond his solemn demeanor concerned her instantly. “Cheer up brother, surely life cannot be all that bad? The hunt went well, if you still hunger there is more than enough left over for seconds, and I have a surprise for you.” It was the most valiant attempt to sound cheery that she had made in quite some time, for her brother was usually so exuberant and this was greatly out of his characters. His aqua and golden gaze finally found her own, that face that so perfectly mirrored his and finally said, though in a much sadder tone that usual, “Do tell, sister.”

A bare glint of a smile played on her features, glad that finally his curiosity had won out in the situation. “I think we should stay here for a while, perhaps give ourselves a home for once here, beneath the trees. I am sure Coszcotl will not refuse us.”” How often had her brother whined that they traveled too much, always straying from one land to the next before long. She expected him to quite literally jump for joy at this idea, and yet an oddly pained expression had come across his features. “I’m going to live in Spirane,” he blurted, wincing back even as the words left his mouth as if afraid of his sisters reaction to this sudden stroke of independence.

For a moment she stares at him incredulously, surprised by this sudden burst of independent thinking her brother seems to have come across. Always she had made the decisions, been their compass as they found their way through the world and always her black brother followed. It wasn’t that she was against the mountains per say, but she had no love of them as she did the Forest, but beyond it all her brothers refusal concerns her most, the fact that he had said “I” and not “we was not missed either. “Why would you turn away from the shelter of the trees for the dizzying heights of the mountains? There is nothing more there that can’t be found here, and this is where I have decided we will stay.” There was a touch of forcefulness in her voice, almost like a mother to son. She had always made the decisions for them, Hollowpoint had never expressed differing opinions about such things before, so why now? He looks to the ground, fidgeting on his smaller paws before seeming to come to a decision. “I’ve met someone,” he mumbles, the words not far above a whisper and had Astrid not known him so well it may have gone misunderstood. “Met someone?” she echoed incredulously, a wrinkle in her nose as if repelled by the very idea, not entirely sure why meeting someone might make him want to go somewhere she was not.

Hollowpoint had never been the amorous type, though he made friends almost everywhere he ventured they were never that type of relationship, and never were any of them strong enough to make him go where his sister was not. “Yes,” he says, his voice perhaps a touch stronger this time, “Her name is Haven, she… she’s my soul mate. I didn’t know such things existed, but she is mine.” He may have spoken more but his words are lost in a snarl that rips from his sisters maw, standing and pacing before him now. She shakes her head from side to side with the anger that seems so quick to bubble up in her chest. “So you would turn away from me, your only source of family, the only one who has ever been there for you, sheltered you, mended you when you hurt and hunted when you could or would not for the first girl to turn a fancy toward you?”

She did not comprehend the soul bond he had experienced, did not understand that it was not something he could merely turn away from, and though the mountains were but a short trek away distance was not what fueled her anger. The fact that he would choose another over herself, his own flesh and blood, was inconceivable to her. This all compounded by the unspoken abandonment issues Astrid had always harbored and that Hollowpoint had been the only wolf to ever put up with her prickly personality. Hollowpoint whined in his throat, wishing he could make his sister understand the pull in his chest, how much it disquieted him to be away from her even now. Haven had returned to Spirane after the hunt but he had delayed for this reason, knowing he would have to reveal all to his sibling but hoping she would have proven much more amiable to living in the mountains as well. He hoped she would see reason, know he wasn’t just abandoning her for another, “It’s not that Astrid, you know it isn’t and that if this weren’t important I would never-“

His words are cut off as the burly form of his sister hurls toward him, bowling him over and landing flat on his back with her hulking form above. There is an odd gleam in his sister’s two-toned gaze that he had only seen once or twice before as almost too late he realizes she is not quite herself in this moment. Her black lips peel back over her sharp, yellowed teeth and he barely doges their slash toward his face, instead they catch the corner of his ear, tearing it to ribbons no doubt. Instead of yelping in pain, cowading and crying as he so often had in similar situation of her anger he fights back. Pushing against her weight with his longer legs and heaving her off of him, he scrabbles to get up as she regains her own footing and meets her head on this time, their two opposite forms clashing in the still-new light of day.

Time stretches, making seconds seem like eternity as they struggle, looking back neither of them would fully be able to recall the struggle but in flashes. The pained look in Hollowpoint’s eyes, the crunch of teeth on bone as Astrid’s jaws closed around his foreleg, the taste of blood in his mouth after tearing open his sister’s shoulder. Eventually they stand opposite one another, sides heaving and both far worse for wear. Although the distance separating them was short it seemed a gaping chasm had sprung up between their souls. “Enjoy your soul mate, I hope she was worth the cost,” Astrid’s rumbling voice finally falls between them, sealing their fates for now. She lunges once more, as if aiming for his throat but instead diverts at the last minute and disappears between the trees lest her brother see the tears streaming down her white and black face.

Hollowpoint lingered only a moment, watching her white form vanish in to the trees like a ghost. His slender head tilts back, mouth forming a perfect ‘o’ shape as he releases a mournful cry after her, filled with longing and sorrow and the lack of hope that this slight could ever be mended. Finally as his cry echoes between the towering sentinels, the only witnesses to this tragedy, he turns tail and limps back towards the mountains he would come to call home, his soul torn in longing for what exactly he wasn’t sure.