Cedar Sweep Wait for them to ask you who you know

Arturo gave a nod, swift but acknowledging, a gesture of thanks that his son was glad to see that he was faring well. It was an objective thing, in reality. Arturo was alive. He was holding resolutely to his life even when the famine had been close to stealing it from it. It had been like a hunger the Fearghal monarch had never known before and when he had more children he would be sure they knew of it in the hopes that they might be less inclined to take for granted what they had. It was such an easy thing to do, when you knew nothing different. “Bowie is the only one I have not seen,” Arturo admitted to his eldest, drawing in a deep breath. Of course there was worry — there always would be — but Arturo tried to not allow it to eat at him. Bowie was capable and there was a good chance he'd found a pack somewhere — where ever his adventures had taken him — to weather the famine or perhaps he wasn't anywhere near these Wilds and knew nothing of it. “But he was the first to leave, for all I know he could be leading his own pack somewhere.” It wouldn't surprise Arturo. He'd never deigned to curb his children's ambitions. Guide them, perhaps (after all someone would need to take over the Family when he was too old to lead it) but never curb them.

Arturo did not see ambition as a bad thing. Without it he would not have gotten where he was in life. Without it he might still be the scourge of Quicksilver Hollow: the halfblood. But that was a what if that Arturo had never allowed to take hold and he did not linger upon what had and would never be, instead turning his fiery red-orange gaze from the horizon and back to his eldest. “What do you intend to do now? Have you any plans?” Arturo inquired of Bain with soft curiosity.