At Leisure Lake the sun is always shining and only a few stray clouds roam the open sky; paradise is the one word that really describes it. This beautiful lake is clean and refreshing, the very best place to swim and fish. Pups are known to play here while older wolves watch at the side, engaged in their own activities.
She had left after the pack meeting, seeking to speak with Kenshin. He had not said anything about her aborted pregnancy, but she had no doubt that he had noticed. For her mate noticed everything. There was no way that he would have missed the soft bulge in her abdomen... the way her loins curved a big more than they had before. He would have noticed the changes in her behavior as the result of her hormone imbalances... he would have smelled those changing hormones on her perfume. And, as sure as he would have noticed all of these, attuning him to the fact that she was pregnant, he would have noticed when these things ceased to exist. After Kavik had rushed her, hardly injuring her, but knocking her to the ground, she had had extreme pain in her womb. Within a day or two, she had expulsed three tiny perfect bodies. They had not been fully formed, but in their immaturity they were the picture of perfection. She had wept over their dead forms before burying them deep in the ground and bathing in the river to erase their scent. But Kenshin would have noticed her suddenly sunken sides... the return of her normal scent... her despair. He knew. And he said nothing. And she said nothing. Yes, Kahlan had left the pack meeting expecting to talk to him finally about all of this. Expecting to explain why she had remained silent and tried to keep it a secret from him... She heard him following her, as she knew he would. He was her shadow, her other half, the only thing in the world that was hers and only hers. He completed her and was the darkness to her light just as she was the light to his darkness. Together, they were the perfect yin and yang... which was all the more devastating when she turned and saw nothing. Naught a hair of him lay before him, and only his scent remained. For days she had searched for him, but he had traveled over too many bare grounds for her to follow his paw prints and traveled through too many streams for her to be able to catch his scent. For all intents and purposes, it was as if Kenshin never had existed at all. At first there was worry - without her to soothe his demons, they would return and consume him. They would eat out his soul and take over, driving him to sins that were unspeakable. He surely would bathe in the blood of any poor soul that entered his sights or had the bad luck to cross his path. She blamed herself - surely there had been some sign that he had been struggling for control, some signal that she had missed. He was hers and she was his, how could she fail him in this? When she had gotten over that initial emotion, the next had been grief. She had gone through all of the stages... Her endless searching for him had been her denial. Then she had blamed herself for his departure. Next had come anger - anger that he had left her. He had left her knowing full well that she had aborted their unknown pups. Angry that he had left her knowing that the pack was about to be turned upside down since Moth was stepping down. Angry since he had made promises to her that even now her was failing to fulfill. Angry that he had broken her heart. Eventually, she accepted it. The place in her heart he had originally occupied was a cold sorrow now, for she knew he was never going to come back for her. She was once more alone... and so she adapted. Sadness was now a part of her day, but it had made her stronger. She had, after all, essentially been a mother in Channing's despair to her brother's pups. She had healed countless numbers of wolves. Kenshin had made her feel whole, but the role she now took on defined her. And so, alone, she had answered Kershov's call only a few days prior to this one and healed one of his soldiers and had commanded the Ice King, the most feared varg, to remain silent and obey her orders. Before only Moth could stand tall in his shadow... it seemed now that Kahlan, too, had his respect in an odd, unnatural way. Kahlan had been born anew. She was different. But when she suddenly came across Kenshin's scent upon the shores of Leisure Lake as she drank from its cool refreshing waters, she took off toward it full hurtle until he came within her sights. Her suns studied him silently, saying not a word as she watched blood seep from his pelt and melt into the water around him. It was a flashback to when she had last seen him here, also covered in blood. Just like then, she had no fear. But now there was a change... she was not sure if she wanted to help him. The wolf she once was and the one she had become clashed within her. She was torn. |