Blacktail Deer Plateau when you look at me, i'll be digesting your legs

Hardest post I've ever written? ✔

Many calls Raleska had heard in her time by their new borders, and many faces she had seen come a part of her life, and then leave. Like the flash of a comet as it streaked across the violet sky; there in an instant, brilliant, beautiful, and then gone.

She had resigned herself a long time ago to believing that the wolves in her life were temporary, and her life seemingly interminable - they would shuffle in and out of focus and view, sometimes temporarily, sometimes forever -- and since, she had learned to close her heart to the bruising punches of the world.

But one howl she had not expected; one howl was all it took for the armored part of her to crack, to split - until she found herself walking and then trotting and then jogging and then galloping - towards a howl she knew and loved and hated at once.

No amount of inner training could have made Raleska stand straight and hide her pains that day, as she looked upon her mother, her idol, her blood -- and saw not a hero worthy of idolatry, but a shunned and miserable crone that brought nothing but hellfire on her heels. On their heels, too.

Raleska knew before she even saw Caiaphas, that whoever greeted her was apt to do so contentiously. She saw Rosalyn first, the proud and defiant way her mentor stood -- and then Aningan, confused, but welcoming. Raleska's heart was pounding and she was sure all of them could hear it over the distant roar of the sea; if they could not hear it, they could certain see it -- by the blanched and shellshocked way she seemed to walk, as if lost of all composure.

She met her mother's gaze and again somewhere, that armor splintered - until she was just a little cub looking back at her dam. Yet, Raleska knew what must be done - and it broke her heart to do so.

"Please leave." She found herself standing next to Rosalyn while what remained of her composure fractured into a thousand pieces around her. Rosalyn would be her stone - and while only freshly returned herself, Rosalyn had brought none of the grief to their little home that Caiaphas had. To stand in front of her mother, the last of her family, and speak so -- why, it broke Raleska clean in two.

Yet she would not back down; split or not. She had fought too hard to stay with her family, while her family had fucked off to who knows where -- family, she had found, was not just blood -- it was those you chose around you.. and Raleska chose Caiaphas no longer.