Before she can halt them, Vladamir has escaped the clutches and confines of the dens. He darts out and heads at a sedate pace towards his collapsed mother and dead father. Natu watches him with pale blue eyes that swim in pain; pain of a kind that made her finally turn her gaze from Everlyse during her manic moment. Because she knew how alone and bitter the female felt. She knew the sense of panic and betrayal that gripped Everlyse. Ifrit had been hers, a warrior who no doubt promised Everlyse of his permanent presence in her life, and he had abandoned her. Not willingly, of course, but in the clouded mind of grief even the unwilling become accomplices. Hadn't she hated and missed her old mate for so many years? Hated him for wasting away and leaving her alone in this bitter world? At least, she thinks, Everlyse is not alone. They flock to her, her children, Haziel, Reich, all concerned for her, and Natu moves her own gaze to her obsidian mate.

He is calm. He is always calm, her Fenrir, even though she knows what is hidden in those green eyes. She knows the pain he had suffered, a pain shared between them, and she knows that he waits to experience the full force of loss. The golden boy speaks to him and he answers before beginning work on the bear, at the same time Alex and Herschel speak. Her ears flick back before she turns her lean muzzle towards the children huddled beneath her legs and around her. Instinctively she lowers her nose to breath in the comforting scent of her black boy, wanting to pull him close to her and feel his tiny heartbeat against her. Listen to each puppy breath, measure it, cherish it. Because life - it is so quick. Her first children had come and gone, a brief light in this world, and now death lurks outside and she feels a spike of fear for her own and for all the tiny faces looking at her.

"He will be alright," she whispers to Alexander, not quite sure what to say to him. "We will help give him a bath later." Everlyse had much to do to clean herself and seal her own wounds; Natu would take the children and clean them, feed them while she did so. Ankh has pressed her red and black body up towards the edge of the den still, her pale green-blue eyes staring in wide-eyed wonder at the scene, at her father carving the bear apart. Natu's eyes lift to catch his own, hear his ghost voice, and she imagines he can see the sadness in her eyes. And the love there, the love that tells him she will be there to comfort him when time came for him to grieve.

Then she turns her gaze back to the children, watching Ankh take a step out of the den, knowing that the girl was planning to go chase after her father. "Ankh," she warns, eyes narrowed, and the girl huffs before sitting down, refusing to come back into the den with all the stuff going on outside. Ankh turns her little head around now to look at her brother, Herschel, then to Panzer, the white tank. "Pan, look at my daddy! He is carving that bear," she whispers in excitement and awe, not quite realizing the gravity of the situation yet.

Natu leans forward so that her nose presses against the hip of Herschel to draw his attention to her. "Uncle Fen is busy right now, Herschel. And your Uncle Ifrit and Neirin..." She pauses now as sorrow burns in her chest and ears cloud her eyes, making her voice husky. "Oh sweetheart, they have gone to the beyond," she says, not certain yet how to put it for them to understand without creating hysterics from the children.

"Beyond?" Ankh inquires, suddenly turning around. "What is that?" Natu sighs, again dipping her head to breath in the scent of Alexander and presses her maw against his small face to both comfort him and her. "Their spirit is no longer inside of their bodies, children. We are all spirits inside of our bodies and when we die, our spirits are released to the beyond. They will always be watching over us and will always hear your prayers."