For now the pups were safe enough. It wasn't that I cared for them, because I truly felt relief without their presence, but it was motherly instinct that demanded they remain hale and hearty. My own were okay for the moment while I decided what to do with them. Boneskull and Kahina would be left to their own devices in Iromar. They were not my blood despite how I had been forced to raise them and I felt only blame at their existence. If their bloodline was strong enough they would survive - clearly their own mother hadn't thought much of them so why was I expected to?

I loped from the confines of the moorland with a buoyant feeling, my head raised and a determined look on my angled maw. The birth of the pups had left my body a wreck. I was once again frail and too slender, just as I had been the year that Exodus had found me. Iromar had suffered from a shortage of game and I had sacrificed meals to give to Aranck in my endeavor to.. weaken him. That was all behind me now and what little energy I had was expended in my haste to seek him out.

Had he waited?

He said he would. But I remember him leaving before and I can't help the way a shadow of that memory clouds my pink eyes as I look about. I throw back my muzzle and howl, seeking him, and pause near the shoreline of the river. If he is close by he will come or at least answer me back but I am taken by the flash of silver fish in the shallow bank and my hunger comes roaring back. The pups had almost murdered me coming out and I felt broken on the inside, certain nothing could be housed there anymore. I had been glad for that thought before but with Exodus I felt... uncertain. What if I couldn't have anymore pups? I hated pups by this point - I had only truly loved my Myrria and she had left. Would Exodus demand such from me?

So while I wait for him I wade into the water, pausing with one paw lifting to skim the water, and wait a few heartbeats as the fish draw near. Then I am splashing and diving and coming up retching up water that I had sucked in. And no fish, much to my displeasure.