Chimera Fields long intervals of horrible sanity

♥

It was late afternoon when the haggard raven shambled past the territory borders of his home and wandered raggedly, but with dogged determination, back to the blooded field where his parents had been killed. Oddly enough, he couldn’t remember where in the field they had lain, and his steps were shuffling and hesitant. It was a changed wolf who emerged from Neverwinter’s evergreens — sharp, angular shoulders and hips poked out of his dusty fur, which had lost the hard, silver-limned glossiness of his youth. The air was pulled raggedly into his lungs as the moon began to rise and his paws abruptly stopped in their tracks — a large part of him was greatly, greatly confused; there was guilt there, too, weighing down his spirit until he could move no more. The feelings were mere flickers — promises of the agony that would surely come when the last lingering dullness of shock dissolved and left him raw and open. He stood and looked without seeing, and his ribs swelled with his weak-willed breath; he gripped the earth beneath his paws without feeling it; and he wondered again why the bear had not taken him instead.