Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 154 by Contrast

Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 154

Contrast, Ander, Clean, Fox, Novel, Serial, Story, Wolf

154

A stillness spread through the crowd. It lasted for only a moment, but in that moment, there were no more screams in the distance. No shouts. No roars. No sounds of teeth sawing through flesh or arrows piercing skin. There was only the crackle of the fires, the moaning of the wind, and the whisper of snowflakes, heavy and grey with flecks of ash.

The scales were perfectly balanced, but all it would take was one tiny nudge to send it over the edge. One side would rise, and the other would fall. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, would die. Mountains of corpses. Rivers of blood. Hearts filled with sin. All of it adding more and more weight, slowly shifting the arm back and forth, losing all balance.

One side would rise, and the other would fall.

"I won't let you monsters hurt my baby!" Vicky screamed, holding a cleaver in front of her, the same cleaver she had used countless times before to chop venison and rabbit and chicken. If it meant she could go home to her little Theo and hug him close, run a hand through his hair, and promise him that all the monsters had gone away, then she had no qualms against using this very cleaver to chop through Wolven necks instead.

Traido heard that voice, that mother's voice, and the anger flared up inside his chest once again. He squinted through the rolls of bandages wrapped around his face, but his left eye had gone completely dark, and the world as seen through his right was little more than a blurry mess of crimson shapes and shadows. The stone that had come down with the snow had almost completely shattered the left side of his face, breaking his jaw in three different places and crushing most of his teeth into jagged splinters, but that wasn't what fuelled the anger in his heart. He wanted to tell the owner of that voice that she had no right to demand her child be spared. If possible, he wanted to sit her down so she could watch him pour snow down her baby's throat until it choked and died in front of her eyes. Such an act, no matter how brutal, would amount to no less than a fair trade, because why should she get to have a child when his only boy was ripped off his shoulders by the falling snow?

He wanted her to feel exactly what he was feeling. He wanted to take his anger, his hatred, his grief, and spread it to everything his blood-soaked hands could reach.

He opened his mouth as wide as his bandages allowed and roared. He roared to let them know exactly how much pain they had caused him, roared to let them know he would avenge the blood of his son, even if it meant ripping out their throats, one by one...

Michael scanned the crowds in an absolute panic, his eyes jumping from face to face, frantically trying to find the ones who would stand out above all the others. And finally, just as he was beginning to lose hope, he found her, the love of his life, Sarah...

He didn't even realise he had been holding his breath until he let it all whoosh out of his chest in a sigh of relief. She was okay... a bit burnt around the edges, but...

The fire flared up, casting a hellish light across her face, and the breath caught in his throat once again. There was something wrong, more wrong than the lifeless bodies lying strewn about the battlefield, more wrong than the trees blazing in the night, more wrong than the countless eyes staring back at him, glowing like hateful coals in the dark, more wrong than the roars breaking through the silence of this final standoff. He could tell just by the look on her face. Her swimming eyes. The clear tracks her tears had carved into the layers of soot on her cheeks. Her trembling lips. The neckline of her dress, all crumpled up between her fists.

"Sarah?" Her name slipped out from between his lips, and with it came a flash of memory. The two of them, arguing by the front door, the very last moment before this hell began.

I can't stand the thought of sitting here while my entire family is off fighting in the mountain. If you really love me, if you really want to protect me, you'll let me go where I can feel safe. With you, and Mat, and Andrew. With my family.

But what if something happens?

Nothing will happen. He could still hear the floorboards creak as she stood up on the tips of her toes. He could still feel her kiss on his lips. Not if you're there to protect me.

Not if you're there to protect me.

there to protect me

protect me

protect

Michael watched as a fresh tear rolled down his wife's cheek, catching the light of the inferno, and he wondered...

Where was Mateo?

Where was his son?

Nayva ripped the knife from the palm of her hand in a torrent of blood. Looking past her trembling fingers, all she could see was the same face staring back at her, repeated hundreds of times over. The red vixen with the ram's horn between her lips, about to call the snow down onto their heads.

"Rika! Rika, where are you!?" That fool Raika was still looking for her sister, hobbling about on her splinted leg like some lost pup, too delusional to see the truth, too insane to understand that her bitch of a sister was dead and gone and _they_were the ones responsible; all those Foxes, standing in a line with their ram's horns hanging around their necks, looking down on them all...

Well, not anymore...

Nayva plunged the knife back into her hand and ripped it out again, barely feeling the scrape of metal against bone. She had thought that, if she could bloody her own hands like that vixen's - the one Dorin had paraded in front of them all - she could undo her sins, that she could get Allekai back, that she could hold him and tell him she was sorry, explain to him that it wasn't her fault, that none of it was her fault... But that was all wrong. She knew better now... She knew there was only one way to make this right... It wasn't her own flesh that needed to be blooded. Oh no...

She held the knife up to her mouth and licked the blood off the blade, staring at the line, the wall of Foxes, come to finish it at last.

Sorrin swept his eyes across the battlefield, taking it all in. The blood... so much blood... great, stinking pools of it, slowly melting through blankets of snow, freezing into hard, red crusts against stone, seeping through carpets of pine needles and into the earth below. Bodies lay strewn everywhere, some of them moving, writhing in agony, desperately trying to keep their guts from spilling to the ground, but others weren't moving at all. They lay where they fell, their bodies broken, either dead or very close to it. All of this bathed in the dying light of burning trees.

And that's when he saw Mellah, lying down on the ground, covered in black streaks of soot. The fire cast a hellish glow on her face, turning it into a mask of blood and shadow, as if she were already dead on the inside, just like the rest of them, just like -

Nooo!! This isn't my daughter! This isn't my Vallah! This is just an empty pyre! This isn't her!

Mellah! Please!

You can't just burn a stack of wood and say it's her! You can't just say it's over!

Mellah! You're hurting yourself!

You can't tell me to say goodbye to a fire!!

Mellah!

Sorrin closed his fingers, balling his hands into fists so tight that his knuckles cracked and his claws dug painful divots into his palms.

So many faces staring back at him, faces he didn't even recognise anymore. They stared and stared with their dead and empty eyes, as if they weren't really looking at him so much as through him, like someone only half-roused from a terrible dream. Their hands were soaked in blood.

They had already taken so much from him. He would not allow them to take any more. He would not allow them to take the one thing still keeping him alive in this dark, lonely world. If he had to...

He would kill every last one of them.

Father reached down and wiped his freezing hands across her face, but the tears came faster than he could wipe them away. The world swam before her; a broken, distorted blur of blacks, reds, and whites, intermingled with prismatic shapes that burst across her vision every time she blinked and the tears filled her eyes anew.

Layla had been glad, at first. Or at least as glad as it was possible to be when surrounded by so much pain. Seeing all those familiar faces materialising out of the smoke had filled her heart with hope, but now...

She could feel it coming. The hatred and sadness was spilling over on both sides. She could see grief clashing against grief, leaving nothing but blood in its wake. This wasn't some glorious cavalry charge come to save the day, and those people weren't warriors. They were housewives. Grandparents. Many were barely old enough to get a drink at Othello's. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They had no idea how far their enemy had sunk into madness, how desperate they were for revenge, or how indifferent they had become to the preservation of their own lives. If they attacked now... if either side attacked now, it would end in a bloodbath unlike anything that had ever been seen on the face of this earth.

Snow. Fire.

Blood...

Danado was crawling along the ground, barely conscious. He reached out to her with his clawless fingers, his eyes caked in drying splatters of gore, searching blindly, desperately...

Layla took his hand, and the moment they touched, it was as if a calm descended upon him. A smile touched his lips, and he struggled no more. There was no pain in that smile. Only acceptance.

Dan...

Father held her close, and she surrendered completely to the warmth of his embrace.

There was nothing else she could do. If it was going to end like this, then at least she was grateful she wasn't alone.

They were going to die. Every last one of them. Wolf, Fox, it didn't matter. They were all just weights on a grand set of scales... slowly tipping... tipping...

It was at this moment, when Layla was on the verge of giving up all hope, that something happened, something no one could have foreseen.

Although the smile she had worn throughout this night had been fake, little more than a mask to hide her fear, the hope she had instilled in the hearts of those she had touched with her kindness was not.

The first ripple was about to be born.

Little Tio dashed out into the battlefield, feeling absolutely terrible. After everything Layla-Kai had done for him, after all the times she had saved his life and all the times he had nearly gotten her killed, it felt like he was abandoning her. Even though there was nothing he could do besides stand there and wring his hands like a useless pup, he still felt like he was being unbelievably selfish. But he couldn't stay there a second longer. He had heard it, he was sure of it. Somewhere in the midst of this nightmare, a furious growl he had heard countless times before. A voice he would know anywhere, no matter how badly distorted or gravelly it might be.

"Father!" Tio cried, sprinting past a group of injured Foxes, huddled together for protection and comfort, weaving around Wolves who could barely stand, the last few remaining defenders. Some called after him. Some even tried to grab him, but they were too injured and he was too fast. He ducked underneath their reaching hands and kept going, straight into the ring of crazies, calling for his father. He kept expecting a set of jaws to clamp shut on his throat at any moment, but these Wolves had gone over completely. It was as if they were in a completely different world all their own. They barely even glanced at him as he ran by. Mostly they just were just staring straight ahead, weeping silently, or growling and shouting curses at the approaching Foxes.

Tio leapt over bodies that may or may not be dead and skirted around puddles of half-frozen blood, trying to look in every direction at once. If someone had told him there would come a time when he would run through a crowd of Wolves and not recognise half the faces, he would have laughed. He knew everybody in the tribe, and everybody knew everybody else. That was just part of tribe life. And yet that was exactly what was happening. So many faces were changed so far beyond recognition it felt like he wasn't even looking at his own people anymore. Many were covered in blood, so much blood it was pouring down their faces and over their bared teeth, completely obscuring the Wolf beneath. Some still had bandages wrapped around their heads and over their eyes. Some didn't even need any kind of covering. Simply by crinkling their muzzles into a snarl they were able to completely change their faces into something he had never seen before. Something that wasn't as much Wolf as it was wild animal.

Tio cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled: "Father! Father where are you!?" He perked his ears, listening for the sounds he had lived with his whole life. The annoyed grumbles. The raspy laughs. The booming, authoritative orders that could come bellowing out of their tent at a moment's notice.

The rough, yet soothing voice of his father.

He slowly turned in a circle, his eyes darting from unfamiliar face to unfamiliar face, listening as hard as he could, but no answer came.

It wasn't my imagination, he thought to himself, fresh new tears starting to form in the corners of his eyes. It wasn't my imagination! I know it wasn't!

"Father?" His voice was little more than a whisper now, and still he turned, desperately trying to find the right face among all the blank, emotionless masks staring back at him. "Father? Please..."

"Tio?"

He gasped at the sound of that voice and whirled around. There were so many different Wolves in that direction, but none of them stood out in any -

And that's when Tio saw him, groping around like a blind Wolf, one lonely, blood-clouded eye peeking through a mess of tattered bandages around his face. His mouth was slightly open, and Tio saw that most of his teeth had been broken into jagged nubs.

"Tio?" he said again, reaching into empty space. His voice was little more than a garbled slur. "Tio!?"

But despite all this, Tio knew that that Wolf was his father, knew it as surely as he knew the pattern of his own fur or the shape of the mountain.

"Father!" Throwing all restraint to the wind, Tio dashed across the bloody battlefield and leapt into his father's wavering arms with enough force to knock both of them to the ground, oblivious to the stares he was garnering from both sides. "Father!" he screamed, burying his face against his father's chest, taking in his familiar, if bloody, scent, the rock hard slabs of his muscles, everything he had thought he would never experience again.

That thought hit him like a hammer blow to the heart. Without realising it, he had given up hope of ever seeing his father again. It had crept up inside of him, completely unnoticed, growing and growing like some nasty weed. It took being here, being held in his father's arms, for him to notice how defeated, how miserable, how close to the edge of despair he had really come. All those feelings, all the dread, all the worry, all the sadness he had repressed for so long, everything came bursting out of him in one convulsive sob before he could even think of holding himself back.

"I thought you were dead!" he wailed against his father's chest, too ashamed to look up. "They said you were dead! They said you were buried in the pass! That y- That you were fr- frozen!"

He slammed his fist down onto his father's shoulder, shaking with the emotion of it all. He knew he shouldn't be crying like this. He was acting like a big baby. Father would scold him, would tell him that real Wolves didn't cry, that it was shameful to cry, but he couldn't help it. He just... couldn't...

Something warm and wet dripped down on top of his head, right between his ears.

Tio looked up, expecting to see blood leaking from one of his father's many war wounds, but was shocked to find tears running down his face instead.

His father was crying.

"Tio? Is this you, Tio?" His hands patted him on the back and slowly travelled around to the front, where they gingerly cupped his face, gently feeling around the contours of his muzzle and the ridge of his brow. "Is this really you, Tio?"

Tio nodded, too overcome to talk, too amazed to even talk. Never ever, in his entire life, not in his six summers or winters had he ever seen his father shed a single tear.

"Tio!" His father suddenly hugged him close, crushing him to his chest so hard he could barely breathe. "I'm so sorry, Tio!" he cried, his words coming out in a barely recognisable mush. "I'm so sorry! Please forgive me, I'm so, so sorry!"

"It's okay, Father... It's... It's okay..." That's as far as he could get before he broke down completely and all words ceased. There was no need for them. He simply hugged his father and his father hugged him back, completely enveloping him in his arms, rocking him back and forth and screaming at the top of his lungs between uncontrollable sobs, getting the emotion out in the only way he could.

All around them, the Wolves and Foxes had stopped their advance to watch. No one was shouting, or cursing, or doing much of anything. They just looked. And slowly... ever so slowly...

The scales came to a grinding stop.

'Theo'? Did that big Wolf really just call the little one 'Theo'?

No, she must have heard wrong. Wolves all had odd-sounding names like 'Ander' and 'Hezzi' and 'Nilia'. There was no way...

Vicky tried to convince herself that these things, these monsters, couldn't possibly have anything in common with her darling little boy, this very moment sleeping in the basement behind two locked doors, but once that thought intruded, it was impossible to budge. Looking at that Wolf cub right now, she couldn't help but see Theo. Sure, this one was taller. Muddy fur, topped with a messy shock of dark brown hair. A certain roughness around the edges. But the way he was clinging to his father so desperately, burying his face against his chest, and his little fingers through his fur... Hadn't Theo done the exact same thing to her? Hadn't he held her just like that, seeking comfort, or sometimes just because he wanted to show her how much he loved her? To see something like that in the face of all this...

Her eye landed upon the butcher's cleaver in her hands and she dropped it with a scream. The blade tumbled once and embedded itself in the ground, its handle swaying slightly with the wind. For just a moment there, she had caught a glimpse of herself in its mirror-like surface, and the eye that had stared back at her was like something out of a nightmare. It had looked too much like the eyes of the monsters in her dreams, too much like the creatures she had envisioned coming to take her little Theo away.

Too much by far.

Lonin stepped forward, gingerly holding his improvised spear (just a sharpened broom handle, really) between his throbbing fingers. The cold was digging into his knuckles like shards of broken glass, but he didn't care in the slightest. Nor did he give a damn about the swarm of angry Wolves staring at him like a piece of meat. There was only one thing he cared about. Or, to be more precise, two things.

He finally spotted them near the burning wreckage of a large tent, looking like a pair of pups that had gone rolling around in a coal pile, but they were there, and they were fine. His boys. Both of them.

They had kept their promise.

"Hey!" he bellowed across the battlefield, using his 'my judgement cometh and that right early' voice. "Do you boys have any idea what time it is!? I've been waiting up all night!"

They started like two pups caught doing mischief, looking all around for the source of that vengeful voice until they finally spotted their old man walking towards them, parting a veritable sea of angry Wolves along the way.

They exchanged a glance as one, perfectly in sync with each other, and then, as if they shared the same tongue, said a single word in unison, the word that had been the most important to him for the past twenty years.

"Dad?"

And that was all it took. They set off at a run, neck and neck, as if racing each other.

Lonin took a step back, suddenly terrified that they would smash into him headlong just like that Wolven kid had done to his dad (he didn't think his hands would be up for something like that in this cold weather) but they put on the brakes just soon enough to slam into him without knocking him over. It was a close call, though, and he found himself grabbing onto his sons just as much to steady himself as to embrace them.

Well, almost.

"You idiots!" he yelled, fitting his head neatly between the valley of their touching shoulders. "Are you trying to kill me, or what!?"

"Dad!" They said together, sounding like a single person talking with a slight echo. These two were so ridiculously similar that not even he could tell them apart sometimes. The only one who could always do that without fault had been their mother.

"Hey, hey, hey," he said, giving each of them a quick, hard, double slap on the back. A manly hug for manly Foxes, not undermined at all by the tears pouring down his cheeks or the tremble in his voice. "You two had me worried."

"Sorry, Dad..." they said, gripping him so tightly he feared they would cack his ribcage. "Things kind of got out of hand."

"That doesn't matter." He leaned back a little so he could look his boys in the eye, and then slapped his hands down on their shoulders. "Nicholas. Did your big brother look after you okay? Did he make sure you didn't do anything stupid?"

Nicholas glanced at his big brother, swallowed the lump in his throat, and nodded. "Yes, Dad. He did."

"And you." Lonin turned his attention to the other. "Did your little brother look after you okay? Did he make sure you didn't do anything stupid?"

Bartholomew sniffed and nodded vigorously. "Yes, Dad. He sure did."

"_That's_what matters." He pulled them in for another hug, not caring that they were still in the middle of a battlefield, not caring that all three of them were blubbering like a bunch of snot-nosed toddlers. All he cared about was that his boys were okay. Somehow, by some miracle, they hadn't gotten their stupid selves killed. They had both come back to him.

They had kept their promise.

"Sor... rin..." It hurt to talk. There was a terrible, burning ache deep down in her throat. Her hands -

(You can't tell me to say goodbye to a fire!!)

were covered in shiny blisters.

Mellah blinked, but the world didn't get much clearer. There was heat and smoke and the hard touch of frozen ground beneath her back. She painfully rolled over onto her side, fighting the urge to vomit. Every breath was a struggle. She got up on one elbow, blinking back the steady stream of tears.

Why? Why were they giving up so easily? Why were they burning an empty pyre? Why were they -

She felt a strong pair of arms pulling her in close, and knew immediately that they belonged to Sorrin. His were the only hands that could be so rough and yet so gentle at the same time, making her feel that somehow, everything would work out all right in the end, as long as they had each other to lean on.

"Mellah?" he said, pulling her up into a sitting position. "Are you all right?"

She blinked a few times and his concerned face came swimming out of the shadows, framed by black torrents of smoke, just like on that terrible night oh so long ago, when she was forced to say goodbye.

"Sorrin?" She reached up with one shaking hand and touched his face, as if to make sure he was real. "Sorrin?"

He took her hand, first pressing it against his cheek, and then giving it a gentle kiss. "It's me, Mellah. I'm here. It's okay now. I'm here."

"Sorrin!" She threw herself into his arms completely, needing to hold him, needing to be held back in return. The sobs burst out, completely out of control, tearing through her burning throat in waves of pain that she could do nothing about. She cried because she was so happy to see him again, and she cried because, for just a moment, she had gone back to that terrible night.

The night of the empty pyre.

"Sorrin!" she bawled into his chest, rubbing her face back and forth while he held her, gently stroking the top of her head. "Sorrin!"

"It's okay, Mellah." He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. "It's okay."

The knife was shaking in Nayva's bloody hand, making her reflection jitter and twitch; a red ghoul with wide, staring eyes and coagulating gore for hair.

She had seen that vixen drop her knife, the one with the wide blade. Could see it even now, embedded in the ground at her feet, but Nayva would never do anything as silly as that. As stupid as that.

She gripped the knife tighter, feeling the reassuring bite of its pinewood grip against her lacerated palm. She would never let go of this knife. Never ever. That bitch might have lost her nerve, but not Nayva. She didn't care if her targets were armed or not. She didn't care. Allekai hadn't been armed, and that hadn't stopped them. Hadn't stopped them in the least. So then why...

Why was everyone just standing around like a bunch of mental defectives!?

She whipped her head from side to side, taking it all in. Her fellow Wolves, those that had been wronged, those whose flesh and blood had been stolen from them. They were all standing in place as if bound by some invisible rope, all of them staring at the same few scenes playing out in the middle of this field of blood and snow.

Traido and his ensa, sitting there bawling their eyes out. Didn't they know everyone was watching? Didn't they know any one of those Foxes could come up at any second and bury a spear in their backs? Even worse, did they not understand how much of a shameful display they were putting on?

If she and Allekai had had a son, they would have taught him better. They would have taught him to be a strong Wolf, just like his father. Just like...

The shaking was getting worse. She wanted to tear her eyes away from them. Those two Wolves. A Father and a son. Holding each other. Loving each other. It was something she would never get to experience, and it was all because of those damn -

Her eyes jumped to the trio of Foxes just a little further on. She did not know them, did not know who they were, what they did, or where they lived, but she could tell at a glance that they were family. A father and his sons.

That idiot dropped his spear, she thought, staring down at the sharpened stick lying at their feet. He dropped his only weapon, and for what? To hug his sons. They were even worse than Traido and his little brat.

The shaking was so bad now she had to hold the knife with both hands. What in the Cora's name was wrong with her!?

"Jonah, ya idjit! Just look at ya! All burned around the edges, clothes all torn up, lookin' like some sorta throwaway ragamuffin!"

It was happening again. An old Fox with tufts of grey fur growing out of his ears was looking a young one up and down, slapping the soot off his shoulders while everyone else was just staring on in silence, slowly turning white with frost.

"What is wrong with you people..." she muttered under her breath, curling and uncurling her fingers around the haft of her blade, making the wounds gape and shut with a repetitive squelch. She measured the distance between them, wondering how many strides it would take, how many seconds to reach them and plunge this piece of iron into their throats, wondering if anyone would try to stop her. Probably not. And even if they did, so what? Wasn't that what this was all about? Killing at the risk of being killed? Feeding the hunger at the risk of never feeling anything again?

She wanted to do it. She wanted to go and do something. Put an end to this bizarre, downright creepy development, but for some reason she was doing the exact same thing as everyone else. She was just standing here, watching everything unfold, one interaction at a time.

"Father..." the young one said, his voice all a-tremble. "I..." He took a deep, shuddering breath and shook his head, biting down on his quivering bottom lip. "I don't..."

"Just shut up and get over here, ya idjit." The old one grabbed him and hugged him close, patting him on the back in much the same way as that other Fox had done to his sons, in much the same way as -

As Traido and Tio. As any Wolven parent and their kids...

A sharp pang shot through her. Not in her hand, but deep down in the pit of her stomach. A queasy, uneasy feeling, like she was about two steps away from vomiting all over her feet. She looked to the two Wolves in question, and they were still going at it, holding each other and crying, just like the Foxes. They were almost in a perfect line from this angle. The old Fox and his son. Then Traido and Tio. Then the Fox with the twins.

Three different fathers. Four different sons. Two of them were Wolves, and five of them were Foxes. And yet, standing here, looking at them hugging their children...

Nayva could barely tell the difference.

Completely different, and yet not different at all.

She grabbed hold of her head as if it was about to split open at the seams. The knife's edge was a freezing line against her temple. Blood trickled down her arms and dripped from her elbows. She clenched her teeth, grinding them against each other in an attempt to still these confusing, contradicting thoughts.

They were different. They were completely different. They were low, sneaky, conniving murderers. Each and every last one of them. Just because they could put on the same pose as a pair of Wolves didn't mean anything, and just because Traido had found his boy didn't mean her situation had changed in the slightest. Allekai wouldn't come stumbling out of the crowd, brushing the snow off his shoulders. Allekai wouldn't come walking up to her and pull her into a warm embrace. Allekai wouldn't whisper how much he loves her into her ear or tell her that everything would be okay. Allekai wouldn't come sweep her off her feet to take her home. Allekai wouldn't do any of those things because he was dead.

The shaking began to lessen. Her thoughts began to calm. In a strange way, thinking about Allekai was making things clear again. For a moment she had been confused, but not anymore. They were different from her. Whether they were Fox or Wolf, they were different. They still had their loved ones. They didn't lose anything to the snow. They still lived in a world where there was no pain, no grief, no loss. They couldn't be farther from her, from any of them.

Nayva's eyes swivelled in their sockets and came to a stop on Sorrin and Mellah. Two of the first backrollers, right after Ander. Sitting there in the dirt, little more than silhouettes against the flames, their shadows trailing out towards her like some accusatory finger.

"It's okay, Mellah, it's okay..." that musclebound lummox whispered over and over, rocking his hysterical mate back and forth while she screamed and cried into his chest, barely getting a breath in edgewise.

Why did she get to keep her mate after everything she'd done? Why did she get to be hugged like that, rocked like that, comforted like that? The bitch didn't deserve it.

Nayva took the knife and held it up to her eyes in just the right way, so that it looked like a gigantic blade was slicing their heads off right at the neck.

If she couldn't keep her mate, then what right did they have to keep each other? What right did any of them have?

She slid the blade across their throats, imagining what it would look like to do it up close, for real. How the blood would gush over her fingers. How their eyes would widen and how they'd claw at the spurting, gaping wounds before collapsing into each other's arms in a writhing, twitching heap. If they really wanted to be together that much, then maybe she'd grant them the opportunity to stay that way forever. Or better yet, maybe she'd just slit Sorrin's throat. Let Mellah know exactly what it feels like to lose the only Wolf that would ever truly love her. Leave her all alone in this world. Give her something real to cry about. Then she'd know. Then they'd all know.

Nayva raised the knife above her shoulder, but just as she was about to take the first step towards that blazing fire and the two shadows huddled in front of it, a high-pitched shriek filled the air.

"Gordon!" It was a plump vixen bitch with reddish fur, wearing some kind of hideously ugly winter garment with little pictures of flowers cavorting around the edges. She was absolutely beside herself, going from Fox to Fox, even some Wolves, grabbing them by the shoulders and looking up into their shocked faces, asking, "Have you seen my Gordon? I've looked everywhere for him! A big Fox, large ears, fur a little darker than mine! Where is he?"

Without fail, they'd all shake their heads, and she'd just stumble off to some other hapless soul who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nayva turned away in disgust. She didn't want to witness yet another miraculous reunion between mother and son or sister and brother or whatever. Every one of those made her sick to her stomach. They reminded her of how unfair this world was. How deeply cruel, or perhaps just completely and totally indifferent. Quite frankly, she didn't know which of those was the scarier thought. She just wanted to do what they came here to do. Slice and slice and slice until all these feelings went away.

But then...

"Jon! Jon, you've been here since the start, haven't you? Where is Gordon? Where is my husband?"

Nayva's foot stuck fast after only a single step. Her ear swivelled back of its own accord, that single word echoing back inside her head.

Husband. It was a Fox word. A word she didn't know. And yet, just by the shrillness of her voice and the desperation of her actions, Nayva knew it could only mean 'mate'.

She turned her head and saw the old Fox shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head, but just as the plump bitch was about to walk away and repeat the process anew, the son reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. He said something too softly for Nayva to hear, and apparently neither did the plump vixen. Either that or she simply couldn't understand what the son was saying. She looked so confused.

The twins came up behind her and put their hands on her shoulders, too. She jumped, her eyes darting from face to face, looking for all the world like a rabbit caught in a snare.

One of the twins said something, and the other nodded, but the vixen still didn't seem to understand. She asked them something and, one by one, the young Foxes shook their heads.

What are you doing with him!? What are you doing to Allekai!? I want to see him! I want to talk to him! Why are you - Why are you covering his face like that?

She knew what that felt like. A cold hand on your shoulder. Warm eyes filled with unwanted sympathy staring you down. And then a slow shaking of the head. It was exactly the same...

Let me through! No! Let me through you son of a bitch! Get your hands off me! Allekai! Let me see him! Let me -

Refusing to believe those sympathetic stares, she had ripped free of their grasp, had run through the thick blanket of snow, had dropped down to her knees and lifted the tarp...

The vixen's face shattered completely, as if she had been struck by a hammer. All the strength left her legs and four pairs of arms came shooting out to grab her, holding her in place as she tore the hair from her head and shrieked to the sky, shrieked just like -

Nooo!! Nooooooo!!

Will you get her out of here!? And cover his face damnit!

Nayva, come on, it's too dangerous! The whole mountain could still -

Let go of me! No! Allekai! Allekaaaaiii!!

By the Cora, get her the hell out of here!

Noooooo -

"- oooooooaaarrgh!!" she screamed and screamed, hitting her fists against the shoulders of those who were trying to help her, trying to break free, even going so far as to slap the old one in the face. "Noooo! You're lying! My Gordon can't be dead! He can't be! He promised he'd come back! Now where is he!? Where is Gordon!?"

The Foxes tried to calm her down, but their words -

Why don't you try some, Nayva? Maybe getting a little something in your stomach will do you good. Look at you, you're shaking all over. Come on, just a little bit? Please? It's really good. If you want, you can -

It's okay, Nayva. You're safe. I'm sure that's all Allekai would have wanted. Just try to -

Here, you can have this blanket, if you want. It smells of Foxes, but -

Try to calm down, okay?

Try to -

Calm.

Just -

"Shut up!" the vixen screamed, covering her ears. "Just shut up!"

Words didn't mean anything. They were just a meaningless jumble of noise. It didn't matter what was being said or who was saying it. It wouldn't change the fact that her husband, her mate, her Gordon, was gone. Gone forever.

Nayva slowly lowered her knife. It suddenly felt very heavy in her lacerated hand. Just... heavy.

She stared at that vixen, just like everyone else, and it was like seeing herself in a crystal clear pool of water, or perhaps even the shining surface of a blade. She was a Fox and Nayva was a Wolf, but that didn't mean anything. Right now, they might as well be the same person, separated by only a few hours in time.

We did that... she thought. The way I'm feeling right now is the same feeling we were going to give them. If the snow hadn't come down... her mate's blood could just as easily have ended up on my blade as anyone else's...

That pang struck her again, much harder than before, and she nearly doubled over with the force of it, clutching at her chest and gagging at the bitter taste of blood and bile rising up in her gullet.

"No... please, don't..." she mumbled beneath her breath, trying to keep it out, but the words of that crazy vixen with the orange fur, the one who had called the snow, kept flashing through her head.

Would you have left us alone? If a crying Fox cub said those same words to you, what would you have done?

What was happening to her?

"Peter?" Another vixen came shuffling up to the growing cluster of Foxes, her hands held up to her mouth as if in prayer. Tears were already streaming down her face. "Is Peter...? Is he...?"

Nayva turned away at the last second, unable to bear the sight of this any longer, but she was too late to block her ears from the quiet little sob that followed. So quiet... almost the exact opposite of the first vixen's wailing screams, and yet they were the same. They struck in the exact same way. It was the sound of someone finding out that an important person in their lives was gone forever. Whether it was a mewl or a cry or a moan or a shriek of pain, it was the same thing, only in different forms passing over different tongues. All the same...

Same as me...

Nayva looked down at her mutilated hand, and for the first time noticed just how badly she had sliced it apart. All this time, she had barely felt anything other than the searing pain in her heart, but now it was all crashing home. The slits she had carved into her own flesh, gaping wide like hungry mouths, oozing blood. She could even see the bones in some places. Could see them move around when she tried to make a fist. Why did she do this to herself? She could barely remember... Was it to try and cover her sin, somehow? Or was it just a childish attempt to drown out her pain with something else, anything else?

I want to hate you for what you did to me. I want to hate you for every second that I remain in this world, because... if I'm too busy hating you...

She looked down at her hands. A knife in one, a bleeding crisscross pattern of gashes in the other.

...then I won't have time to hate myself.

"Heh... hehe..." The laughter began to bubble out of her.

Me? Not enough time to hate myself? Did I really say that? Did I really believe that?

She covered her mouth in an attempt to hide her giggles, smearing the iron stench of blood all over her nose.

I've been hating myself this entire time. I've been punishing myself this entire time. Allekai didn't want to come, but I forced him to. He said he couldn't let me come here alone, that it would be dangerous. It was all my fault, and now... now he's dead, and I'm all alone...

She didn't know when it happened, but her sniggers had somehow turned into wet, snotty cries of despair. She could feel the tears pouring down her face, the hot breath of her sobs bursting out of her mouth and nose and slamming into the bloody wall of flesh that was her palm, creating a sticky mess.

She pulled her hand back and nearly wretched at the sight of all the red strings peeling back from her face.

Allekai sure wouldn't want to kiss me now, she thought, and that was all it took. The last of her resistance crumbled away and she dropped down to her knees, staring in horror at the steady flow of tears dripping down onto her ruined, blood-soaked hands.

No, don't come over here... Sarah pleaded in her head, watching as Michael crossed over the battlefield, unmindful of the myriad of eyes following his every step.

She couldn't do this. She needed him, oh gods she needed him now more than she had ever needed anyone in her entire life, but she couldn't face him. Not like this.

Not like this!

She bit down on her fingers in frustration, wanting to go to him, wanting to jump into his arms, wanting to hold him and scream into his chest, wanting to be held, but at the same time wanting to run in the opposite direction, run and run as far as she could, run away from her husband, run away from the fire, run away from everything until she collapsed into the snow. Because, if she stayed here... if she allowed him to touch her, to hold her, then she would have to... she would have to -

"Sarah." Michael dropped down to one knee and took her in his arms. It was the softest, most gentle hug she had ever received from him, as if he was afraid he might break her if he squeezed too hard. "I'm sorry I'm late, love," he whispered, and that was all Sarah could take. She had thought she had reached the absolute limit again and again, but the miraculous, and equally horrifying thing about life was that, no matter how far it pushes you, there's always another limit to reach beyond the last, and Sarah had passed hers several times over. She hugged him back, raking her fingers across his back and crying into his chest, trying to get the words out but failing each time. They just disintegrated into meaningless sobs and screams.

"It's okay, love, it's okay," Michael crooned, gently rubbing her back. "I've got you. Everything is -"

"He's gone!" she finally pulled the words out of herself, screaming it against his heart. "He's gone, Michael! Mateo is gone!"

"Gone?" His grip tightened on her shoulders. "What do you mean, 'gone'? Gone where?"

Sarah didn't want to answer that. She knew she had to, but she couldn't. So when Michael pushed her back so they were face to face, all she could do was turn her gaze to the wretched inferno, still blazing out of control, shining a hellish spotlight on her misery.

Michael looked to the flames, then back at her, a small frown creasing his brow. "What do you mean, Sarah? I don't understand."

She couldn't answer him. She could only cry.

"Sarah, please!" He gave her a firm shake. "Talk to me! Where is Mat!? Where is our son!? Where is -"

"- my boy!?"

Traido could not see the owner of that voice. To him, the whole world was still just a reddish blur, filled with moving shapes and shadows. He had no way of knowing whether that voice belonged to a Wolf or a Fox, but that didn't matter. He knew that voice just the same. He knew it because it was no different from what his own had been just a few minutes ago.

A heart wrenching scream tore through the fury of the storm and Traido hugged his boy even closer. He had to make sure that the little life he was hugging to his chest was real, and that the screams of anguish attacking his ears weren't actually his own, echoing back at him from the deep, dark hell he had just barely escaped.

Because right now he really, really couldn't tell the difference.

Mother was holding her. This wasn't the hard, angry kind of grab she was used to, where her bony fingers would often sink into the soft meat of her wrist before throwing her down to the floor. This was a hug. Mother was actually hugging her, holding her close. Perhaps even loving her...

It was something Renna had longed for her whole life, something she had dreamed about in the early hours of the morning, before the sun could rise over the Cora's peaks and shine its light on the harsh reality of tribe life. But if this was a dream... some world nestled between sleeping and waking, then why...

Why was something she had sought her whole life mixed in with a nightmare like this?

The fire rose up and up, looming over them all like a giant. She could feel its heat on her face...

No! There is no heat because this is just a nightmare! You can't feel anything in a nightmare!

But that wasn't true. She could feel it just as surely as she could feel the warmth of her mother's arms wrapped around her chest, and the tears falling into her hair. She could feel the rock-hard ground beneath her knees. The frozen kisses of errant snowflakes blowing into her face. The dry, scratchy sensation in her eyes, making them water, making her want to blink.

Still feeling like she was trapped inside a terrible dream, she reached up and touched her mother's hand (even this minor action felt slow and sluggish, like she was trying to push her arm through mud instead of air). She looked up, hoping that the tears she had felt on her head weren't really tears at all, but they were streaming past her muzzle in a split line, and they looked frightfully, terrifyingly real.

"Mother?" she said, hoping that something would happen to finally prove that this was a nightmare, hoping that her face would erupt into a spider's nest, or melt into a gloopy puddle of blood, or perhaps even turn into her old face - the sneering, hateful face she'd always wear right before striking her across the mouth. Any of those things would be fine. Anything to prove that this really was a nightmare. At least then she would know!

But the face looking down at her right now wasn't any of those things.

"Renna? Are you okay?" The corner of her mouth almost twitched into a smile, but something held it back. She wiped a forearm across her face, but before she could get rid of the tears...

"Where is Hezzi?"

Mother froze with her arm still covering her eyes. Renna watched her mouth tremble, saw the way her throat worked up and down, struggling to swallow back whatever cry or sob was trying to break out.

"Hezzi... he..." She wouldn't look at her, could only hug her closer, could only press her forearm even tighter across her own eyes, choking on words like fishbones.

Renna looked all around her, at the huddles of Wolves and Foxes, holding each other, crying on each other's shoulders, screaming, reaching for the fire, the shredded pieces of canvas and animal hides, cloaked in flame and waving in the wind.

Was Hezzi in there?

This actually came as a relief. It wasn't anything as dramatic as the Cora itself stepping down from the mountain tops, but it was still all the proof she needed. This really was a dream. A nightmare unlike any she had ever had, but still just a nightmare. She would wake up any second now.

"I'm sorry..." Mother whispered, holding her so tight it was almost beginning to -

No, it can't hurt because this isn't real. Or maybe Mother really is hugging me in real life, hugging me while I sleep, and that's what I'm feeling.

"I'm sorry, Renna... I couldn't do anything! I had to get you out! I couldn't... I couldn't carry both of you! I'm so sorry, Renna! I'm so, so sorry!"

Renna didn't say anything. She didn't do anything. She didn't think anything. She just waited for this dream to finally end. She wanted to wake up so she could check on Hezzi. She wanted to be there when he finally opened his eyes. She wanted to scold him for scaring her so badly, and then hug him (if Bethany-Kai allowed it, of course).

The seconds crawled by, but the dream did not end.

Flames gave birth to more flames, but the dream did not end.

Snow fell from a pitch black sky, mixed with ash, but the dream did not end.

Mother held her close, rocking her back and forth and crying against her neck, but the dream did not end.

Why? Why can't I wake up? You already got me, you already scared me senseless, you stupid nightmare! This is the part where I'm supposed to wake up!

The smoke was burning her eyes -

No, it can't burn. I'm just really, really tired is all. I haven't gotten any real sleep in days. Maybe that's why I can't wake up. I probably fell asleep right on top of Hezzi's chest, and nobody has the heart to give me a good shake.

The fire was eating through the support beams like a swarm of ants stripping away the last few shreds of meat from a rotting ribcage. One of them snapped in a flurry of embers and ended up leaning drunkenly against a massive blazing tree trunk, something so out of place it only reaffirmed that this had to be a dream. The pungent smell of burning leaves and boiling tree sap was strong in -

Of course it's strong. We're in the woods, remember? This whole place smells like that. And there's a fire, too. Right in the middle of the tent, to keep everyone warm and get the water boiling for all of Bethany-Kai's doctoring tools. Probably someone just threw on some wood that was a still a bit green, that's all. It smells nice, actually.

"Renna?" Mother gave her a bit of a shake. "Renna? Are you here? Snap out of it, Renna!"

"It's okay, Mother." Her voice sounded small and far away, even to her own ears. "This can't go on forever. I'll wake up soon, and then everything will go back to the way it was."

"Renna? What are you talking about?"

"I know he's fine. He promised me. He said he'd never drop dead and leave me behind. He said the afterlife would be way too boring without me, so I know he's fine. I know this can't be real."

"Oh Dorin please help me what is wrong with her!?"

Dorin's face dropped into view. He was frowning and tilting his head, looking her up and down. He reached out and pulled down on her cheek a little so he could look into her eye. There were big, nasty cuts all over his face and neck and shoulders. This was definitely the most detailed nightmare ever, she had to give it that.

"She's delirious," he said, leaning back. "Maybe that hit to the head was a lot harder than we thought."

"Oh my baby, my Renna, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I tried my best, I'm so sorry..."

Mother bent down, kissed the top of her head, and that's when she felt the sharp sting of pain across her scalp.

Renna cried out and stiffened against her mother's embrace on pure reflex. The sting was almost gone already, but as it faded away, so did the terrible realization only grow inside the pit of her stomach, like a gigantic black hole, ready to swallow her from the inside.

Pain. That was pain just now. Not the illusory pain of a dream, but real pain. And if the pain was real, then...

Renna reached up, slowly, tentatively, and touched the top of her head. It was wet and warm, and the moment she applied even the tiniest bit of pressure, the pain returned, sharp and deep, seemingly reaching all the way down to her skull.

"Don't do that, Renna." Mother took her by the hand and gently pulled it away from her head. "You had a... a bit of an accident. It's not serious, but..."

Renna didn't catch what she was saying. She was too busy looking at her own bloody fingers. This blood...

She smeared it between the pads of her thumb and index finger. It quickly became dry and sticky, and the bitter scent of iron floated up to her nostrils.

It was real. This blood was real. The pain in her scalp was real. The pebbles beneath her legs were real. The flakes of ash and snow drifting down from the sky were real. The heat was real. The flames were real. All of it was real. Which meant...

The fire suddenly seemed much, much bigger than before. Writhing, undulating faces of light and shadow, staring down at her, smirking with joy.

"Hezzi..." Renna started to get up, but Mother quickly pulled her back in a panic.

"No, Renna!"

"I have to help him!"

"No!"

"Let go of me!" She raked her claws over the soft meat of her mother's forearms, opening four shallow scratches in the blink of an eye. "I said let go of me!"

"No, Renna!" Mother hugged her tighter, biting her bottom lip against the pain. "I won't let you go! Not again, you hear me!? Not again!"

"NO!"

Renna raised her bloody hand for a second swipe, but Dorin grabbed her by the wrist. "Renna! Calm down!"

Renna slapped him with every ounce of hysterical strength she could muster and two of her claws got snagged on the corner of his mouth. There was a painful tug in her knuckles, and suddenly the blood came spraying out of his mouth in a crimson fan. Dorin staggered back, both hands clasped over his spouting face, blood dripping from between his fingers.

"Dorin!"

Renna was barely aware of what she had done. The entire world was going through a terrible transformation in her eyes, folding in on itself and growing darker along the edges, as if the hole in the pit of her stomach had grown to such an extent that it had begun to swallow not just her, but everything around her, turning her world into nothing more than a long, black tunnel with fiery faces waiting for her at the other end, jeering and laughing.

Hezzi was at the end of that tunnel. Waiting for her. He was hurt. It was her job to take care of him. There wasn't a whole lot she could do. She couldn't fight like Nilia, or treat his wounds like Bethany-Kai, but at the very least she could be there. She could hold his hand. She could dampen his forehead with a moist cloth if it got too hot. She could talk to him. Maybe he couldn't hear her as he was now, but she could still talk to him! She could remind him of the promises they had made to each other and all the things they were going to do once this awful mess was finally put to rest. She could do that, couldn't she? She might be useless for anything and everything else, but she could still sit and hold his hand and just talk to him, couldn't she!?

"Hezzi!" She kicked out and Mother finally let go with a grunt of pain. "Hezzi!"

She took off at a sprint, her eyes locked on the fiery monster ahead, but she had barely taken a single step before she felt something grab her leg. As the world began to tilt alarmingly, Renna looked back over her shoulder and saw Mother lying in the dirt, curled up into a tight little ball with one hand clutching her stomach and the other wrapped around her ankle. There were tears standing out in the corners of her eyes, but her teeth were bared and her brow was furrowed into a look of intense determination, sparking a flash of memory in Renna's mind, the coldest memory of her life, of her mother lying down with her face pressed up against the side of the tent, her back turned completely on her one and only daughter.

This was the exact opposite of that.

Renna shut her eyes against the expected impact, but instead of meeting the cold, hard ground with her face, she fell into something much softer.

It was Mellah, hugging her and blocking her path at the same time.

For a moment all three of them were frozen in that position. Aisa, curled up on the ground, one hand clasped around Renna's ankle. Renna, down on her knees and looking up at Mellah. Mellah, holding the child's face up and out of the dirt.

For Renna, it caused a terrible feeling of vertigo, a sense that she was reliving three altogether different moments at the same time, altered just enough to not fit.

Mother wasn't supposed to be holding onto her like this, staring after her with tears in her eyes. She was supposed to be pushing her away and turning her back in indifference. She was supposed to yell, "GET OUT!!" at the top of her lungs. And there wasn't supposed to be this much light. It was supposed to be pitch black. It wasn't supposed to be this hot. It was supposed to be freezing cold. She was supposed to be staring down at the snow, watching her own tears slowly sink into the fresh white powder. And Mellah wasn't supposed to be pushing her back. She was supposed to be helping her up! Pulling her along! She was supposed to take her to Hezzi!

"No, Renna!" she cried, pushing her away from the flames. "You can't! It's too late!"

"Hezziiii!!" Renna screamed, fighting with everything she had, reaching over Mellah's shoulder in a desperate attempt to get to the fire before it was too late. Didn't they understand that Hezzi was still in there!? Didn't they understand he needed help!?

Mother was getting up. She could feel her grabbing hands, trying to pull her back.

"No! Nooo!!" Renna tried to wrench herself free, but Mellah had a hold of both her hands and was continually pushing her back. Renna could feel herself begin to overbalance...

Dorin grabbed her by the shoulders, and that was the end. Renna fell back into her mother's arms and they locked around her middle like a set of iron chains. Renna tried to claw at her hands, but Mellah was pinning her down. Two she-wolves constraining her from both sides as she thrashed and flailed, trying to break free.

"Hezziii!!" she wailed, tears streaming down her face, distorting the fire into blurry, orange faces. "Hezzi! Nooo!!"

"Stop it, Renna!" Mellah said. "There's nothing we can do!"

You don't know that! Renna wanted to scream, but her voice had devolved into a meaningless roar in her throat. She had saved Hezzi before, and she could do it again! Would do it again, if only they would let her go!

She ripped one arm free, intending to strike Mellah right in the face with it, but just as she cocked back in preparation for the blow, it was seized by one of Sorrin's big, meaty hands. Renna screamed and tried to pull free, but Sorrin didn't budge. He didn't even say anything. He simply looked down at her with those big, sad eyes and slowly shook his head, a single tear rolling down his cheek.

"No! Noooo!!"

Renna wanted to strike out at him, let him know that it was far too early to give up like this, that every second they wasted here was a second they would never get back.

Dorin grabbed her other arm and pinned it to the ground with all his weight. There were now four adult Wolves holding her down with everything they had, and only just barely succeeding. She was like an animal possessed, fighting tooth and claw, snapping her jaws at whatever was in reach, tensing all her muscles in a desperate attempt to break free, her tiny body shuddering under the strain until it simply couldn't take any more.

It was as if something finally let go inside of her. Maybe she ran out of steam, or maybe the reality of the situation finally struck home. Not even Renna was entirely sure. All she knew was that she simply couldn't fight anymore. All her muscles went limp and she collapsed against her mother's chest, staring beyond Mellah's shoulders at the blazing inferno, rising up and up, spewing smoke and embers into the winter sky.

Hezzi...

She could see him so clearly. Everything about him stood out so vibrantly, the stupidest, most random little details she never even knew she had taken note of until now. The impatient way he'd bounce his knee whenever he had to sit still for too long. The way he'd sometimes get all embarrassed and flustered if someone caught him wagging his tail. The gross way he'd often cram food into his mouth and lick his fingers afterward. The way his ears would twitch and swivel around even though there were no particularly interesting sounds to be heard. The way he'd sometimes fall asleep in random places on sunny days. The way he'd crouch down for hours to watch a spider build a web. Whether it was a bedroll or a seat or just the ground, he'd never get up like a normal Wolf, but always _jump_up, as if he had just remembered some vitally important engagement, even if he had nothing at all to do that day except loaf around.

By the Cora, she loved him so much. So, so much... and now everyone was telling her it was too late? That after everything he had done for her, after he had fought so hard, there was nothing she could do for him? That he was just... gone?

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair!!

"It's not..." She wanted to tell them this. She wanted to let everyone know. She wanted to scream into the very face of the Cora itself that something this wrong, this unfair, couldn't possibly be allowed to exist in a sane world. She would take a thousand beatings. She would let every bone in her body be broken in half. She would have her limbs hacked off her body. She would leap head first into Wardo's pit of biters. She would endure any amount of pain, any torture, no matter how cruel. Anything so she could have Hezzi back. Anything so she could hold him and hug him and tell him how much she loved him, because she hadn't told him enough yet, not nearly enough yet! Anything, anything to balance it out again, anything to make that fire spit him out!

But she couldn't say any of that. The only sound that left her mouth was a pathetic little mewl, barely audible over the crackle of the flames.

She didn't know when it happened, but all the arms holding her back... they weren't restraining her anymore. They were embracing her. Maybe that had been the case all along. She could feel how much they cared for her. Mother. Mellah. They were so warm, so gentle... and every bit as powerless as her.

More were coming in. Many faces closing in from all angles. Through the sheen of her tears, Renna saw Layla, doggedly limping closer, with Bethany-Kai and Rufio-Sai under each arm, helping her with every step. She saw Sarah-Kai and Michael-Sai, clutching at each other in their grief. The Fox twins and their father. Even some of Dorin's friends; Denko, Ivio, Yannek, Seffer and Vekka. Thoka was bringing up the rear, carrying Danado on his back. All of them coming together, all of them looking at her with such sadness...

Renna screamed. Mother held her close and whispered unheard platitudes in her ear, and Renna screamed. Mellah hugged her face to her chest, and Renna screamed. She screamed until she was all screamed out, then she took a rattling breath and screamed again, tears washing down her face and leaving a wet patch against Mellah's chest, making her face feel hot and muggy. She screamed until it felt like her throat was tearing itself apart. She screamed until she could barely breathe. She poured all her pain, all her anguish, all her grief into that scream, pushing it out before it could consume her entirely. She screamed because Hezzi was gone. She screamed because she loved him.

She screamed because screaming was all she could do.

Her scream was but one of many, all fusing together, so loud and so invasive they put even the mournful wails of the storm to shame. It was pain turned into sound. The pain of having lost someone you loved. The pain of being all alone in this world, spreading to everyone close enough to hear it.

To those looking on from outside, the little group forming in front of the flames was like a family standing before a pyre. But the very notion of such a 'family' was absurd, wasn't it? There were Wolves_and_ Foxes in that group, slowly clumping together like drifts of dust upon the water's surface. They could see their silhouettes - some tall, some short. They could hear the names of loved ones lost, whispered in grief. Hezzi - a Wolf name. Mateo - a Fox name. Why would they ever come together to mourn at the same pyre like that?

All across the scattered remnants of the battlefield, Wolves tried to tell themselves that they were being foolish, that they weren't really seeing what they thought they were seeing, that all those flames weren't actually a pyre. But that wasn't true. Whether by snow or by flame, it was a pyre. The pass was a pyre. This entire valley was a pyre.

Their very lives were a pyre.

So they watched in absolute silence as this strange family cried into each other's arms, sharing their pain, their grief, their sorrow, bathed in the harsh light of the pyre their world had become.

But then a new sound appeared. A soft sound underneath the weeping.

It was the thump of weapons falling to the ground.

One by one, they laid down their arms. One by one, they either dropped down to their knees or just crumpled into sitting positions, their hands covering their eyes and silent tears running down their faces. There was a sense of something moving, something growing, but also of something being left behind. A set of scales, slowly coming into balance.

One by one, they were changing. One by one, they were becoming...

Different.

Many of the Wolves later thought of it as a ripple passing through their people, but it would have been more accurate to call it a hundred ripples. Every scream of pain and anguish, every embrace for a loved one, every tear, every weapon striking the ground, every Wolf falling down to their knees was a single ripple, spreading outward to touch the hearts of everyone in its path, creating even more ripples along the way.

In the silence between the screams, names could be heard. Names of Wolves and Foxes both, whispered by the ones who had come to know them and love them.

The battlefield had turned into a funeral pyre, and upon it were the bodies of their friends, their families, their loved ones. But most of all, it contained the hunger that had brought them all here in the first place. A hunger for death and bloodshed.

A hunger they would never feel again.

There are five things I wanted to address with this subchapter. Loss and reunion on the Fox side, loss and reunion on the Wolf side, and lastly, the fact these things aren't all that different, no matter if you're a Fox or a Wolf. Hopefully I've succeeded in that regard.

It used to be much longer. Hokin used to have a piece where he reflected on his actions and thought about what his mate would have thought about what he was doing, trying to kill a kid. Raika had a part, too, where she stumbled around and finally came to the realisation that her sister really was dead, and not just missing. Nayva also had an extra part, where she almost went crazy and tried to kill Raika, but ended up comforting her instead. In the end, I decided to cut all those parts because 1, pacing (this thing is super long already) and 2, because I had already addressed the five main points I wanted this subchapter to revolve around, so it felt like I was unnecessarily repeating the same things over again, just with different characters.

If you enjoy my story, please help keep my face un-mauled by irritable ostriches by dropping me a donation.

Thank you! ^_^

Paypal: ContrastNecrobat@Gmail.com

Donation Progress $239 / $300 (Unlock Sunday update)

How and Why: The Story behind "Ander" (Journal): https://www.sofurry.com/view/517234

Special thanks go out to the following furs for helping me keep this project afloat with their generous donations. I couldn't do it without your support.

Mystery fur
PyrePup
KmlRock
Faan
Sunny-Fox
Mystery fur #2
Sky Star
Claybrook
1_2Punch
Cahal Silverpaw
TheLoneDriftor
Ariedren

Thank you! You guys are the best! ^_^