Aster
Things are beginning to fail. I see it around me. The way the pack seems almost listless, never growing, never moving, just there. Desperation claws at me, this drive to FIX things, but I cannot because I am so torn. Motherhood, it sinks into me. I am unlike my mother in that I drown my children in my presence. Each day it grows harder to be separate from them. They are growing willful and strong yet my attention lately has been focused upon Archana. My poor, sweet, girl. She rages at the world in a way because she senses her difference. I try not to pity her, to educate, but I am frustrated by the lack of progress at times and I see in me the frustration my mother had with Lazarus. The need to FIX but the inability to do so.
Halcyon had grown hale enough, but just so, and then it had straightlined and we were left struggling once more. The pack did not know what to do, the constant shift in power, and as each long day passed the longing in my heart grew. It choked me at times. I missed the moors, the scent of the cattails and the whisper of hissing from the shores of deadly waters. I missed the memories that seemed embedded into my psyche. I missed Aithne. I missed Praetor. I missed cuddling with Lazarus while rain poured and Halcyon comforted us. I missed all these things and the darkness that I had fought back began to rise once more.
I knew my grandfather struggled with this growing failure. I sensed what he did not say, leftovers from our talks before. He felt this was his fault and I wanted to assure him it wasn't but I began to... wonder. It had all gone downhill after he had arrived. Was it true? But then, he hadn't been there when my parents died, and so, I couldn't lay the blame at his feet. It was all mine.
It is the call that rouses me from my internal reflection. I lay spread across the chilled, dying grass near my den. The children are spread throughout, Aspis having fallen asleep at the fore of the den so he could watch me. I think he knew that something wasn't right, but I did not tell them. I rise on groaning limbs, ears pricked and nostrils flaring, and when I trot towards the sound I am struck by a salty scent. It has my hackles rising, my gait turning into a prowl. Whoever was calling came from Glorall and they DIDN'T wait. They trespassed.
Worse, as I neared her, I saw it. A skull in the cavern of her mouth. Dangling. And it smelled... it almost smelled like the moors. So faint that I couldn't be certain, but this trespasser from Glorall with a skull made me growl, low and deadly, as I come to a stop a good distance from her, large paws spread apart. "Who are you and what do you want?"
shatter the sky; lay waste to the earth