There is a saying - that time brings change. But that saying was meant to extend to the normalities of life - aging, dying, births, deaths... but the long list of unfortunate events that had fallen upon Nzingha's shoulders spoke to more than just the normal run of bad luck. Not only was her love gone, but she had been devoid of those words, of that confession. Never once had she been able to utter her deepest feelings aloud, releasing her heart from the prison it had been viciously fluttering in. Bars kept her trapped within herself and she felt terror and urgency in her need to escape, along with fear and horror of her inability to do so. Nzingha had ran with the assassins at her heels for longer than she needed to, but by the time she broke through the ceiling of the Cavern of Secrets, her mind had already started to break. She started to hear footfalls behind her when there were none; started to see shadows in the copses on either side of her when instead there was only still trees without so much as a wind to blow them swaying side to side.

When at last she had made her way home, across the boundary of Munashii Gekko, through briar and thorn to the hill beyond, all of the vargs she had needed to talk to gathered in a single place. Words had fallen from aghast lips, jaws split in two, but never had her lids split in two. The whole while her eyes were kept shut, causing her to travel as she imagined Danger had for all this time - the world an unchanging and infinite black before him. However, it was not so possible for Nzingha as even with closed lids, bright lights shined through them and gave her hints of distance, of shadows overhead. It was possible for her to still see beauty in the world as light danced off of the vessels deep within her eyes, giving her a view at the serpentine structures, along with the dancing lights of her neurons firing, still responding to the light stimuli. It was enough to bring tears to her eyes, for Danger's neurons were dead and he was devoid of such beauty in the world. And now... he was going through innumerable amounts of torture with the threat of Nzingha's own safety keeping him from running. And so guilty tears fell from her tears, guilt that she expressed in her words - her account of the attack.

But nothing was done, other than to express concern. The pack was too small, was too silent, too weak. It crumbled under the weight of responsibility and Nzingha found herself as alone as Danger was... only she still had family. Summer - her father, in a way - and Grey Wind, her uncle.

It a set jaw, Nzingha set about preparing a proper gift for Kershov, the Ice King. She had met him but once and had either annoyed him or amused him with her brutal honesty and incessant curiosity. Whichever way it was, she now had to impress him if he was to allow her access to his pack and to barter a dangerous gift in return for Danger's life. She had no idea that the Kershov she had seen the day that Danger was taken was a different titan all together, and gone from Abendrot. And so she hunted down dangerous prey. It could be nothing common, nothing easy for the Abendrot Alpha. And so she had chosen a coyote - a loner who was used to working alone, and while Nzingha liked to think that she worked alone, she knew all too well that she was not alone, that she had her pack and family at her back. But for this, she needed to do it by herself - to show her worth in Kershov's eyes and hopefully give him cause to consider releasing Danger. It was not an easy kill - in fact, she had nearly lost the scrap fight against the opposing canine, but her perseverance and will brought her to prevail and win. Nzingha dragged the dead corpse through Blossom Forest, her own coat just as ragged as the coyotes own, and just as coated in blood. She did not stop at the boundary, gathering her courage as she crossed it without permission, wanting to gather as much attention to herself as possible.

But instead of Kershov, she found her uncle and another brute and arrived just in time to hear the stranger call Grey Wind the new Alpha of Abendrot. Scruff dropped from her pelt and she gasped once, choking back a sob. "New... Alpha? But... Kershov has to be here. He needs to give me back Danger."

OOC- <3